Record 5 metre (16ft) snowfall in northern Japan

Northern Japan usually has a high snow fall but this year's has broken all records.

At one spot south of the city of Aomori the snow blanket is more than five metres (16ft) thick, the most ever recorded.

Link and Video

Japan has had so many natural disasters complicating manmade ones, now this.

I wonder what all this much snow will do to the Fukushima situation, if at all?

At least the snow macaques have their geothermal hot springs they learned to keep warm in

Nuclear winter?

reply to post by KamaSutra


It certainly does, it is amongst the most densely inhabited as well as being a high risk area for many things, EQ,Tsunami, Volcano.

wow, thats alot of snow, i bet alot of their roofs collapsed

more energy and moisture in the atmosphere....

hmmm.....

Holy Crap that is a lot of snow. I had no idea they got this much. I wonder where the next big ski resort will be built.....no need for it to be indoors anymore I guess! They already have 7 of those.....

en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by theabsolutetruth


That is the stuff of nightmares. Maybe from now on they will give more serious thought to high pitched roofs in their new construction. I say this because in North America early settlers added an overhang to their roofs as far back as he 1600s.

reply to post by aboutface


Yeah often those with experience know how to deal with things. Architecture is one of my interests and I want to build my own designed home, the sustainable highly insulated pitched roof log cabin with overhanging roof design always wins. A pitched and overhanging roof is essential when planning for eventualities. It works for Iceland and Scandinavia who keep very cosy homes in subzero winters.

Japan and the rest of the world could use it's geothermal energy more too, Iceland has a natural advantage there that it utilises well, perhaps Japan could use this initiative, given their propensity to high tech designing.

www.renewableenergyworld.com...

www.guardian.co.uk...

The glaciers and rivers of the interior of the country are harnessed to generate 80% of the country's electricity needs through hydropower, while the geothermal fields provide up to 20% of the country's electricity needs. These underground fields, which give tourists and locals their bathing pools, also provide Icelanders with an almost limitless and inexpensive supply of natural hot water.

There is no national grid in Iceland – harnessing the energy comes via the remarkably simple method of sticking a drill in the ground near one of the country's 600 hot spring areas, and using the steam that is released to turn the turbines and pump up water that is then piped to nearby settlements.

Geothermal water is used to heat around 90% of Iceland's homes, and keeps pavements and car parks snow-free in the winter. Hot water from the springs is cooled and pumped from boreholes that vary between 200 and 2,000m straight into the taps of nearby homes, negating the need for hot water heating. It's also purified and cooled to provide cold drinking water.