国際活動（グダンスク冬期大会）

Japan, a country in the Far East, is 8,500 km from Gda?sk.

Many cities in Japan receive even heavier snowfall than other snowy cities around the world. The annual snowfall in Sapporo, a city of more than 1.95 million people, is 6 meters.

Japan enacted the Act on Special Measures Concerning Maintenance of Road Traffic in Specified Snow Coverage and Cold Districts (Act. No. 72 of 1956) with the aim of promoting industry and securing the safety of citizens in cold, snowy regions. Under the Act, Japan has been securing winter road traffic by removing snow from roads, preventing snow and frost damage to infrastructure, and mitigating snow hazards.

The Act designates “snowy regions” as those where the annual snow depth is 50 cm or more, “cold regions” as those where the mean monthly temperature in January is 0°C or lower, and “cold, snowy regions” as those that fulfil both of these criteria.

Cold and/or snowy regions account for 60% of Japan’s land area. In the flat plains of these regions, one finds urban areas with high population densities.

70% of the land in Japan is steep mountains. The backbone ranges that run northeast-southwest along the Japanese archipelago block seasonal winds from the Japan Sea that have absorbed large amounts of moisture over the sea, which falls as heavy snowfall.

Therefore, wet snow falls heavily in the Hokuriku regions on the Japan Sea side of Japan. People clear snow from their roofs to keep their houses from collapsing under its weight.

Despite the recent trend of less snowfall in cold, snowy regions, there are many heavy, intense snowfall events in snow-free regions that involve unexpectedly heavy snowfall. In Japanese, These are called “guerilla snowstorms.” When the 2014 Heavy Snowfall occurred from Feb. 14 to 16, 2014, the Tokyo area received 48 centimeters of snow: In two days, the city had more than 10 years’ worth of snowfall, and traffic was paralyzed.