Winter Living in Misawa

It's official - winter has begun. Snow started falling from the sky about a week ago and it hasn't stopped for more than a couple of hours. We've got at least 2 feet of snow on the ground, and the mounds of snow piled up next to the sidewalk from all of our shoveling is now up to my shoulders. The crazy thing is they say this isn't even a bad storm. Last March they got 24" in 24 hours. =^O

We have a phenomena here in Misawa called snow-banding, where it will be clear with blue skies for about an hour, and then a wall of snow will come out of nowhere and we'll be stuck in blizzard conditions for an hour. Stop and repeat. As you can imagine, this makes for some very interesting flying conditions here in the winter time. We've heard stories of guys coming in to land and all the sudden the end of the runway just disappears in a wall of white.

This also makes it very difficult to keep our sidewalks and cars clear of snow. We're required to go out and shovel by 8:00 am sharp so the school kids can walk to school. The snow is so heavy that it takes a long time - often over an hour. Then a new snow band will move in and dump another 3 inches and we have to start over again. Technically we only have to shovel once a day, but if we don't keep up with the snow, there will be too much to try to move in one morning. I took the picture above and hour after we shoveled for the SECOND time. Can you tell? Nope.

Above, you can see the snow piled up on our cars. It's not unusual to walk into the grocery store or church and walk out with your car looking like that. One day I spent several minutes clearing off one side of my car, and by the time I was finished clearing the other side, the first half of my windshield was completely covered in snow again. Thank goodness we invested in some very effective snow brushes/scrapers.

I am SO, so thankful that James is home and able to shovel for us in the morning. He's been flying nights lately and so he technically could be sleeping in. But he's gotten up early every day and spent over an hour thoroughly clearing the sidewalks and our parking spaces. It wouldn't take so long if the snow plows didn't just pile up all of the snow from the road right behind our cars. It's nice that they plow so frequently, but they just create mounds of ice and snow that we have to break down in order to go anywhere... You'd think they could come up with a more effective way to do that.

I'm realizing that snow is way more fun when you're young and don't have to worry about shoveling and driving in it. However, I will say that the snow here in Misawa is beautiful and I can't help just staring out the window and watching the giant flakes falling outside. In the States snow doesn't stay perfectly white for long, but here we're in a perpetual winter wonderland. Gigantic icicles crown every building on base and the evergreens make it all picture perfect. I'm looking forward to our squadron ski trip this weekend so I can actually take advantage of all of this powder rather than griping about it. I can't ski or snowboard, obviously, but my friend Beth is going to take me out snowshoeing close to our hotel and I may go out and build a snowman or sled with some of the kids while their parents hit the slopes.

Living in Misawa continues to push us outside of our comfort zones and introduce us to all kinds of new things. You'd think that as a Colorado native snow would be fairly routine. But I've never experienced anything like this before. In the Springs they have some crazy blizzards... but then they cancel everything and you stay home for a couple of days until all the snow melts and you can get back to work. Here, life continues regardless of what the weather is doing, and we have to get on as best we can while the snow keeps falling.

I have a new respect for the power of God and the limits of human ingenuity. His creation is at once beautiful and terrifying, and is rightly putting us in our place. Pray for us as we're being challenged without and within.