The photos below shows bamboo trees bent over with the tops stuck in the snow! The snow causes the trees to bend over till the top of the tree touches the snow on the ground. Further snow buries the top branches tying the top of the tree to the ground, and it will stay like that until enough snow on the ground melts, even though the original snow that bent the tree in the first place melts first like it did shown in the photos.

This winter of 2010 has the most snow I’ve seen in the Niigata area of Japan since moving here in January 2002. A couple days ago it snowed again, and the trees were covered with snow, but it melts in the daytime. Only at night the temperature will drop before freezing. In spite of the snow, I consider the winters in Niigata to be pretty mild compared to that Siberian like city in America where I grew up — Chicago. And to think that a few newspapers in the United Kingdom ten years ago ran a story that snow would be a thing of the past by the year 2010. Ha!

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