Effects range from strandings to loss of life
Along the northwest coast of Japan record snowfall has caused severe damage to property and transportation facilities. Houses and buildings have collapsed from the excess weight of snow that accumulated to such a dangerous extent. Over 80 people have died in snow-related incidents, ranging from avalanches, collapsed roofs, car accidents, to train derailments. Nearly 2,000 people have been injured so far this winter.
The snow started coming down in December, which was the coldest December for many areas since 1946. Old snowfall records have been broken, with some areas getting upwards of three meters of snow.
Tsunan, in Niigata prefecture, has so far received 394 cm of snow, breaking a previous record of 304 cm in 1996. Tsunan, along with Sakae, in Nagano prefecture, is currently cut off from the outside world. Five hundred people in 193 households are stranded in their homes.
The Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) is working to remove snow from National Route 405 in order to reach these homes. GSDF troops have also been dispatched to other areas to dig out buried roads and homes.
The Japanese government has talked of lending financial support to the 900 or so municipalities that have been hit with record snowfalls, a number that is nearly 4 times the average. Local budgets are stretched thin as snowplows have already logged 150 hours of operation; two hundred hours is the average time for an entire winter season in most of these areas. Katsuyama, in Fukui prefecture, reportedly spent 300 million yen in December on snow-related expenses.
One of the main concerns is the number of isolated elderly who live in some of these sparsely populated areas. A large percent of the fatalities have been people over the age of 60.
All text and photos ©2005 D.Weber
Wow great photos. All really beautiful.
I understand that this year was record snowfall but surely they should be well prepared since it happens every year?
Good post and great photos. I recently was talking with a Japanese co-worker about the snow-related problems in northern Japan. I mentioned that in the northern parts of the US, snow plows run night and day clearing roads during snowstorms and salt is spread on roads to help melt snow and ice. The Japanese co-worker very emphatically denied that salt has any snow- or ice-melting properties and came “this close” to calling me an idiot for believing such a patently false idea. His reason? He remembers that as a junior high school student he did an experiment in which they put salt into cooled water and stirred it, slowly producing ice. This, he says, proves that salt will tend to lower the temperature of water rather than melt snow or ice. I checked this out. Both ordinary table salt and calcium chloride (which is used to salt roads in the US) tend to melt snow and ice. So, two things: has anyone else living in Japan got into this argument? and, can anyone explain simply why both table salt (NaCl) and calcium chloride tend to melt snow and ice? Oh, and another thing: is this an example of one of the problems in the Japanese education system, or is that an exaggeration?
Erm i can’t exactly remember been a long time since i did chemistry and that was at GCSE. But i think it can crytalise in water, he was probably getting this mixed up with ice.
If it was an experiment i don’t see why they would check temperature by if snow formed, they would simply use a thermometer(sp). Im guessing checking temperature wasn’t the main aim of the experiment and he simply assumed it cooled the water.
Please note though i am not entirely sure on this, but i would say salt water= same temperature as normal water. And im pretty sure salt can crystalise or at least do something similar looking in water, perhaps at the saturation point.
I recently was talking with a Japanese co-worker about the snow-related problems in northern Japan. I mentioned that in the northern parts of the US, snow plows run night and day clearing roads during snowstorms and salt is spread on roads to help melt snow and ice. The Japanese co-worker very emphatically denied that salt has any snow- or ice-melting properties and came “this close” to calling me an idiot for believing such a patently false idea. His reason? He remembers that as a junior high school student he did an experiment in which they put salt into cooled water and stirred it, slowly producing ice.
I believe I know the reason for the ice/salt stumbling block.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice-cream
I tried finding mention of salt in the Japanese version of the ice cream article by just looking for 塩 (shio), but came up empty. Traditionally, salt is needed in the production of ice cream.
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A1%A9%E5%8C%96%E3%83%8A%E3%83%88%E3%83%AA%E3%82%A6%E3%83%A0
My Japanese isn’t great, but from what I’ve gathered, this article confirms the link between salt and ice melting. You may want to point him there.
Bonomiya, your co-worker is a moron.
Salt doesn’t “melt” the ice. But it lowers the freezing temperature of water. That means it takes a much lower temperature for salt-water to freeze than fresh water.
When you scatter salt on road ice, as the road ice melts, it mixes with the salt and becomes salt-water. This salt water doesn’t re-freeze, so the water is free to evaporate. Thus, no ice.
Ask your co-worker why he can ice skate on a lake in the middle of winter, but not out in the middle of the ocean.
G
Who cares how it works as long as it works.
The reason why salt is used to manage ice is because the addition of salt lowers the freezing point of water to below 0 degrees C. The freezing point of water, or any other solvent, for that matter, is what is known as a colligative property. Fundamentally, a colligative property is a property of a solution that depends only on the concentration of solute dissolved in it, and not the identity. In other words, you could technically use some other salt other than NaCl such as MgCl2, KCl, CaCl2 or even sugar or alcohol - what you use doesn’t matter. But NaCl is cheap, and when it dissolves, it dissolves into Na+ and Cl- ions, effectively doubling the amount of solute in the water, so that’s what usually gets used.
Ice normally forms because the lowering of temperature causes molecular movement to slow down, allowing water molecules to properly orient themselves into the crystal structure we know as ice. This process of crystallization is in equilibrium with the process of melting. The depression occurrs because the salt ions in the water disrupt the formation of ice crystals by preventing the water molecules from properly orienting and contacting each other, tipping the equilibrium towards melting, which allows the water to remain in a fluid state at temperatures lower than 0 degrees C.
Your friend may have confused this with adding salt to ice, stirring that, and then adding a container of pure water into the ice/salt mixture and stirring the pure water in the container. (I’m guessing it was a while since he was in junior high?) Since the ice salt mixture would be way below the freezing point, the container of pure water that gets added would begin to form ice rapidly. I seriously doubt he got “cool” water to freeze just by adding salt. Although melting salt is endothermic (removes heat), you would never remove enough heat to catch up with the freezing point depression you cause by adding the salt - the ionic bonds in salt are very very weak and do not generate much energy when broken. If you take ice-cold water and and salt, you may be able to form sort of a slurry, but you’d never be able to freeze the mixture - remember, adding salt lowers the freezing point of water.
Try this on a hot day - instead of putting your warm beer in a cooler full of ice, add some water and SALT to it, mix it up, and then put your beer in there. It’ll be ice cold in literally minutes. Not only is it colder than ice alone, the slush it creates can contact more of the beer can than solid ice alone.
hmm…potential source of confusion - dissolving salt is endothermic, requires energy. However, it takes more energy to hydrate (dissolve) salt, than the amount of energy you get out of breaking the ionic bonds in salt. So the net result is that the process is endothermic.
Thanks shaggy, great explanation! I actually saw the beer trick on a show we have in the U.S. called Mythbusters (Discovery Channel) - they tried different methods of chilling beer, and the salt mix was by far the most effective.
Wow, thanks to everyone who responded. Now I feel so knowledgable on the subject of salt and ice. My co-worker here in Japan was not the only person to express outrage at the very idea that salt could be used to manage road ice. Other Japanese people I know have raised the same suspicions vis-a-vis my sanity when I mentioned the “salt-thing.” They all — every one of them — told me that they remember doing some experiment in school that “proved” water is cooled by the addition of salt. As I said, does this indicate a problem in the Japanese education system? Am I reading too much into this?
well, perhaps, bonomiya but they did find quite a number of teachers to be unqualified last year.
Thanks for the great explanations there guys
And thats weird Bonomiya maybe it really is just an experiment that all schools do wrong. But i mean you would think that someone would draw it into question.
you would think that someone would draw it into question
Japanese students questioning their teachers??
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