Snow brings chaos to Japan

Luc Citrinot in Travel Daily News: Sudden snow in Eastern Japan halted public transport and caused dozens of road accidents last Monday with Japan’s national television network NHK reporting about 267 being injured in road accidents following heavy snow.

Snow delayed train services and disrupted also flights last Monday as Tokyo was blanketed by the first snowfall of the season. The Meteorological Agency issued a gale and snow advisory for central Tokyo, with 7 cm of snow already fallen in the capital, said Kenji Okada, a forecaster for the agency. The snow came 11 days later than the average first fall and six days earlier than last year, according to Okada.

Power was cut to 6,200 households in Tokyo and the surrounding area in the evening. Minor delays were expected for bullet train services to and from the Japanese capital. Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Tokai) said.  Some train lines in Metropolitan Tokyo area were also temporarily halted.

...Tokyo's Narita International Airport said 3,400 travelers spent the night in the terminal after 71 flights were cancelled. Operations returned to normal Tuesday except for a few delays, according to Associated Press news agency...

A snowy street in Tokyo, shot by Masahiro Hayata, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Thousands stuck in China airport as country freezes

Terra Daily via AFP: Thousands of angry passengers were stranded after heavy fog delayed flights at a Chinese airport early on Saturday, as the country was shivered through its coldest weather in almost three decades.

Ten thousand passengers were stuck in Changshui International Airport in the southern Chinese city of Kunming on Saturday morning after thick fog grounded more than 280 flights, state-run Xinhua news agency said.

Angry passengers stranded at the airport for more than a day struggled with airline staff, damaging computer equipment belonging to an airline, while police broke up scuffles, a photographer present at the scene late on Friday told AFP.

"The passengers were really furious, they kept going to the service desk to ask for information, but didn't get any answers," the photographer said. ...

Drought set to close Mississippi River trade route

Responding to Climate Change: The Mississippi River is set to close to barge traffic after officials deemed low river levels had made the route unsafe. The US drought in 2012 was second only to that of the dust bowl era of the 1930s. While this single event cannot be attributed solely to climate change, it is widely acknowledged to have made a significant contribution.

The US army engineers have begun clearing rock pinnacles on the river bed and dredging to keep the route passable with queues of barges carrying corn, soya and other commodities to the Gulf coast.

The American Waterways Operators trade association and Waterways Council policy group estimates that January closures will hold up $2.8bn worth of trade, will affect 8000 jobs as well as creating more problems further down the supply chain.

Reservoirs upstream of the affected areas of the Mississippi have been further reduced as water was released to irrigate the local area. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has predicted that the river’s level will reach an all time low on January 15....

A coal barge on the Mississippi, shot by Roy Luck, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

DHL Express and United Nations Development Program run refresher of preparedness program 'Get Airports Ready for Disaster'

AMEInfo.com: DHL, the world's leading logistics company, will conduct a one-day advanced training course at Beirut Rafic Hariri International Airport, building on its prime program "Get Airports Ready For Disaster" (GARD).

The so-called GARD plus training will now look into the findings of the initial 4-day assessment in July in order to sustainably integrate all aspects of GARD into the national Lebanese disaster risk reduction program. Lebanon is the first country to receive a GARD plus training.

"The GARD plus program enables all parties involved to align and strategize their action plan", said John Chedid, Country Manager DHL Express, Lebanon. "I would like to commend the dedication of the DHL GARD trainers and the facilitators from UNDP as well as those of the 10 participants of the GARD training who have been meeting and interacting regularly to put what they have learnt into practice," Chedid adds.

The participants of the GARD plus program consist out of ten trainees from the previous training, two trainers from DHL and two representatives from UNDP. On the basis of the July findings, the Lebanese participants had formed a working committee that regularly met and worked towards increasing disaster preparedness at the airport...

Denver International Airport in the snow, shot by ashleyniblock, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Mississippi river faces shipping freeze as water levels drop

Suzanne Goldenberg in the Guardian (UK): The worst drought in half a century has brought water levels in the Mississippi close to historic lows and could shut down all shipping in a matter of weeks – unless Barack Obama takes extraordinary measures. It's the second extreme event on the river in 18 months, after flooding in the spring of 2011 forced thousands to flee their homes.

Without rain, water levels on the Mississippi are projected to reach historic lows this month, the national weather service said in its latest four-week forecast. "All the ingredients for us getting to an all-time record low are certainly in place," said Mark Fuchs, a hydrologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) in St Louis. "I would be very surprised if we didn't set a record this winter."

The drought has already created a low-water choke point south of St Louis, near the town of Thebes, where pinnacles of rock extend upwards from the river bottom making passage treacherous. Shipping companies are hauling 15 barges at a time instead of a typical string of 25, because the bigger runs are too big for current operating conditions.

Barges are being sent off with lighter loads, making for more traffic, with more delays and back-ups. Stretches of the river are now reduced to one-way traffic. A long cold spell could make navigation even trickier: shallow, slow-moving water is more likely to get clogged up with ice.....

Barges in the Mississippi near St. Louis, shot by Paul Sableman, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Freezing fog grounds British flights

Terra Daily via AFP: Severe fog has forced the cancellation of dozens of flights scheduled to take-off and land at Britain's airports on Wednesday with more disruption expected later in the day. Flights to Warsaw, Nice, Stockholm, Aberdeen and several German cities were among 20 cancelled by London's Heathrow.

"It's better to cancel flights when there's fog because in fog you can't land as many planes per hour because you have to leave more space between the planes," said a spokesman for the airport. The smaller London City Airport also reported disruption.

A message on the airport's Twitter page said: "Visibility has not improved, flight disruptions are present and expected to continue until further notice. Please call your airline for info."

Britain is in the middle of a cold snap with temperatures hitting minus 10C (14F) in some parts of the country. "The fog is currently pretty widespread," explained Julian Mayes, forecaster for MeteoGroup. "It's currently located over central England as a large area of low cloud, which is descending down as fog....

Freezing fog in the valley of Middlehope Burn (December 2008), shot by Helen Wilkinson, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK,  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

US roads, airports unready for extreme weather

Joan Lowy in the San Francisco Chronicle via the Associated Press: The nation's lifelines — its roads, airports, railways and transit systems — are getting hammered by extreme weather beyond what their builders imagined, leaving states and cities searching for ways to brace for more catastrophes like Superstorm Sandy.

Even as they prepare for a new normal of intense rain, historic floods and record heat waves, some transportation planners find it too politically sensitive to say aloud the source of their weather worries: climate change.

Political differences are on the minds of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, whose advice on the design and maintenance of roads and bridges is closely followed by states. The association recently changed the name of its Climate Change Steering Committee to the less controversial Sustainable Transportation, Energy Infrastructure and Climate Solutions Steering Committee.

Still, there is a recognition that the association's guidance will need to be updated to reflect the new realities of global warming. "There is a whole series of standards that are going to have to be revisited in light of the change in climate that is coming at us," said John Horsley, the association's executive director.

In the latest and most severe example, Superstorm Sandy inflicted the worst damage to the New York subway system in its 108-year history, halted Amtrak and commuter train service to the city for days, and forced cancellation of thousands of airline flights at airports in New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia....

Tail nicked by the wind.... The Space Shuttle Enterprise damaged, at the aircraft carrier Enterprise, not far from the old headquarters of Carbon Based, shot by or Rondiel, Wikiimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license