Northern Japan blasted by strong winds and heavy snow by Sean Batty
A deep area of low pressure has been slowly moving across the north of Japan over the weekend bringing severe winter weather to many parts along with travel chaos.
More than 170 flights in and out of Chubu airport in Aichi, near Nagoya, were cancelled due to the high winds along with many of the high speed ‘bullet’ trains, as snow buried the tracks.
Reports say that winds during the storm, that hit Hokkaido worst on Sunday, reached nearly 110mph at times tearing off roofs and bringing down power lines, which left many thousands on the north island without power.
Snow also left many towns and villages in Hokkaido buried under several inches of snow. The snow depths on the ground as at 9GMT show that most weather stations on the island were reporting at least 10cm of snow. Move further north though and in the prefecture of Abashiri many of the stations are measuring around 50cm of snow (half a metre). The more mountainous areas are measuring up to 155cm (just over one and a half metres) after the weekend additional snowfalls.
The low pressure which brought the stormy conditions is still only pulling away slowly to the northeast, which keeps the north in the icy blast. The northern city of Kushiro will have temperatures close to or just below normal through the rest of this week. Minimum temperatures in the city could fall to (-15C) [5F] by Thursday.
The Japanese Meteorological Agency still have many areas under strong wind and heavy snow warnings.
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