A meizanologist's diary (93)

8 January: I’m on the way back from the supermarket with two slices of marinated buri for lunch when – BAM! – the sky lights up pink. The nearly simultaneous thunderclap has me lighting out promptly for the shelter of the Sensei’s porch. 

All day, the graupel showers tumble in from the northwest, accompanied by the occasional thunderclap. At long intervals, a sunny patch races by too. At 4.30 pm, we seize the chance of a lull to take a walk. Up on the windy river bank, it looks as if we’re hiking between lanes of roiling vapour. 

The satellite images on TV show that the clouds are indeed “streeting” all across the Japan Sea. This wild hassle of anvil-wielding cumulus is spilling off North Korea's Mount Paektu (“White Mountain”), explain the weathermen, in a phenomenon known as the Japan Sea Convergence Zone. 

It's a curious freak of nature that the North Koreans' White Mountain (2,744 m) and our very own white mountain, Hakusan (2,702 m) are almost the same height, and that theirs stirs up the winter winds so that ours can be blanketed in snow. The evening forecast calls for half a metre of new snow in the mountains. We’ll see if they're right on tomorrow's walk with the Sensei's colleague…