When I woke up this morning at about 9:00 a.m., it was raining hard. Big puddles of water outside. Very wet.

About a half hour later, the rain turned to snow, as predicted in the weather forecast.

Within an hour, there was more than an inch of snow on the ground. I took Ponta for a walk, and it was already white everywhere you looked. By now, 3:00 p.m., it must be more than 6 inches. We have to go outside every hour and shake the snow off our small cypress goldcrest trees or else they’ll be crushed under the weight.

This is the view from our door, just a few minutes ago when I went to do the shaking:

The neighbors are also keeping busy, shoveling and keeping the card cleared.

The snow accumulation is pretty amazing—we are really getting socked here.

You just know this stuff is going to stick on on the ground for another few weeks…

Train lines in the area are severely affected, and road traffic is jammed. On the JR, Chuo, Sobu, Saikyo, Keiyo, Joban, Nambu—all lines completely shut down.

Up to 40 or 50 cm is expected today.

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Soon after I posted that, the snow stopped—but not the precipitation. Nothing worse than rain after a snow…