The winter of 2010-2011 brought an epic, historic amount of snow to the East coast of the United States. Many residents of the affected areas have never seen so much snow at one time, and many cities were completely unprepared to deal with the aftermath – despite having plenty of advance notice – as evidenced by the above image of New York City. But as bad as the East coasters have it, this snow is nothing compared to the mountains of powder Japan is buried beneath.
These unaltered photographs give an idea of the type of major snow accumulation in Honshu, Japan each winter. The pictures show the main road through the Japanese Alps which is closed all winter long due to the massive amounts of snow covering it.
Every spring the road is uncovered by snowplows which are tasked with the incredible job of clearing an average of 56 feet of snow.
(all images via: Gizmodo)
The huge piles of snow would be daunting even to the most experienced cold climate dweller. Luckily for New York and the rest of the East coast, the snow here hasn’t quite accumulated to the height of a five-story building just yet. But if it does, maybe Japan can give us some pointers on dealing with the snowmageddon.



