That is a good one. That is the little meter right near the small hut?

I think it is the one up on its own along the ridge - they take it away at the end of spring.

are you guys seeing any of the rain that was forecast up to the top on snow-forecast.com? Praying for nice conditions for Sunday/Monday!

FT called me and told me to put snowtyres on!

Some flakes might fall here Fri night. Doesn't look much though. The biggest seasonal event will be below freezing clear-ish nights with black ice starting Saturday morning.

Weather event: got wasted last night and turned up to work 2 hours late, now my boss is mad at me and I blew my chances of getting Monday off. Doh.

king, me and tsondagirl have already taken Monday off m8. I cant promise you that we will go back on Sunday, but I can bring your stuff back to Tokyo on Monday if you go back on Sunday.

Was it a good party last night at least.

Yes was very good. To be honest I don't know if I will go if it's just for one day. Anyway we can talk tonight.

This is good news, what a giant leap forward. The 'Avalanche Control Team' (ACT) in Hakuba have got a new website and now publishing the following for Hakuba:

• Current wind speed and direction for Happo and Hakuba Norikura (this is taken from well above the ski resort top lifts)
• Current temperature
• Current sunlight intensity
• Current humidity
• Back data for the last 10 hours!!! (scroll under the wind speed graphic for Happo to find the 'back data' button)
• Current weather summary
• Avalanche hazard rating

There is a bad translation of some text at the top of the page in the green box. I think it is just a standard warning

Go to this link and click 'Yes' for English
http://actjapan.org/amos/amos.html

Or from the home page click the button, second from the top that says
北アルプス北部
雪崩に関する情報

At long last, just like in Europe, I can now get out of bed and see what the wind speed and direction has been every hour for the last 10 hours in the alpine. Near Hakuba Norikura last night it was mostly from the west between 8 and 10 meters per second. Happy happy days! (8 meters per second is about 30kph. Snow transport and slab formation usually starts at about 30kph)

Wow, that is almost unbelievable. In some ways Hakuba is actually getting its act together, albeit slowly. I think there are some english gliches that may cause confusion, though.

As far as I hear, Dave from Evergreen is involved so I am sure he will pick up on any English errors. They are mainly in the green warning text, which I don't think is a daily update or anything.

Today in the mail I received the inaugural Japan Avalanche Network magazine. It has a great summary for the last season along with some incident reports and stories. All round a quality publication that might just surprise those that see it. Hopefully it will be available to the wider Kanji-reading public. Any visitors to Hakuba are welcome to browse my copy. With whats going on at JAN and at ACT, things are looking good.

(note: JAN aren't new, along with a bunch of work, a while back they undertook the back-breaking task of translating three of the most highly regarded English avalanche education books into Japanese. It has taken 8 years to get some momentum)

wow, great. another tool to use. i'm sure everyone involved in that is happy it's up and running. i remember hearing Dave talk about this idea in 2000. good on them for getting the word out.

Nice db, how far up the happo ridge do they collect this data, and where on Norikura?

Great news indeed,

and good job from you too, like always.

Great to have the info out there.

Its pretty obvious, but the insolation data is in Wh/sq m, not kWh/sq m as labelled. The readings in those units are like the laser off the Death Star!

On the nerd tip, on the big bluebirds on Dec 19 and 20, both stations got hit with a max of over 0.6kWh/sq m and a total of 3.6kWh/sq m or so per day. Its hard to say all that much without knowing the slope angle and orientation, but its a fair idea for Hakuba on a clear day when the sun is lowest in the sky. Due to the high albedo of snow, most of that will be reflected away on the mountain.

The Unisys E Asia charts are back up again, in case anyone hasn't noticed. The rain turned to snow a moment ago, but has switched back again.