Winter Storm

Today I woke up to meet a buddy for breakfast, walked out my front door and found this:



I was a little tickled when I saw this. I've been waiting for a good winter blasting here and it looks like we got it.

I proceeded to walk down the icy stairs and to my car, where I found this:



Living near the ocean, I realized I had the opportunity to go down to the beach and check out the carnage wrought by mother nature. Here's a pic, it was definitely better in real life. At one point, the wind was pushing me back. I had to boogey out in a hurry because I got caught in a snow squall. Being on the beach, the only standing object, in the middle of a thunder snowstorm didn't appeal to me much.



We drove around for a bit today, which put me in a bad mood all day. There were people walking right in the middle of road lanes, huge puddles of water everywhere, half the roads were covered in ice and the other half was icing over with black ice. Some genius a while ago here came up with the idea of using a sprinkler system so there's no need for hands on snow removal. I don't know how common this idea is in the world, but I know this: it doesn't work here. Being from Vermont, I have seen some nasty winter roads, and we have some brutal winters, but Kanazawa's roads take the cake for being worse. Instead of paying all that money to turn water on and repair water lines, why not just put down a little salt? Salt dissolves ice, not create it.

The other thing I really hate about the water sprinkler system is it sucks for pedestrians. Before driving here, I was a pedestrian victim of Kanazawa myself. As if 30mph blasts of cold wind aren't enough, as if the falling sleet/snow isn't enough, if a pedestrian isn't careful here they can take a good soaking from a car passing by kicking up all the water on the road. If they manage to avoid that, more than likely their feet will have become horribly cold and wet from walking in the slush solution.

I'm seriously debating moving to Hokkaido, where they have central heating, insulation, and I'd be willing to bet proper snow removal.

Can't wait to see next month's electricity bill after cranking the heat 24/7 just to lose 75% of it out our paper thin, uninsulated walls.

Happy winter everyone!