[HN Gopher] Saving Japan's exceptionally rare 'snow monsters'
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Saving Japan's exceptionally rare 'snow monsters'
Author : 1659447091
Score : 121 points
Date : 2025-12-06 23:06 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| acrooks wrote:
| You can find these in western Canada too:
| https://www.elitejetsetter.com/snow-ghosts-big-white/amp/
| Sniffnoy wrote:
| Non-AMP link: https://www.elitejetsetter.com/snow-ghosts-big-
| white/
| tmoravec wrote:
| I've thought these frozen and snowed trees are common in all
| mountains.
| kakacik wrote:
| Yes they are, you just need brutal enough weather with strong
| winds and can see this few times a year
| paustint wrote:
| We have these in Whitefish Montana - it's foggy most of the
| time here which provides the moisture to create them.
|
| https://skiwhitefish.com/ski-among-the-snow-ghosts-at-whitef...
| Bjartr wrote:
| I wonder how many things like this technically exist but which
| simply don't have the necessary circumstances to exist on earth
| near humans by complete chance.
| shinymark wrote:
| I visit Yamagata every year. I love how in Japan each region has
| their own specialties, it makes it fun to travel within the
| country. It would be sad if the snow monsters disappear.
|
| I usually visit in the summer. The mountains are incredibly
| verdant. I love riding my bike there. Just watch out for the heat
| at that time - bring plenty of Pocari Sweat!
| bamboozled wrote:
| I sheltered at the base of these things once, we reached the
| summit and the wind became quite intense. It was too cold and
| windy to get our skins off to ski down. We couldn't see anything
| either. We huddled in the hollows that formed around the downwind
| side around the base and got changed over and then Ski'd down. In
| hindsight it probably wasn't dangerous as we were dressed for it,
| but it was scary, the wind was truly formidable. We lost a few
| items that flew away.
|
| They are enormous in real life and it's amazing the trunks don't
| break as they sway in the wind.
|
| Worth seeing in real life if in the area.
| crazybonkersai wrote:
| These are common in northern Finland as well. The phenomenon is
| called "tykkylumi" in Finnish.
| kyleblarson wrote:
| Big Mountain ski area in Montana has tons, as do mountains all
| over the world. When I saw this headline my first thought was
| "clickbait headline to push climate doomerism". The BBC did not
| disappoint.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| Such a statement needs a citation, I don't believe you've got
| 20feet /6meter large trees being completely frozen like in the
| image of the article but I've never visited the area before.
|
| I suspect you're just talking about small trees frozen
| over,which are indeed very common (1-3m). The habitat for trees
| being frozen like that just generally comes with strong winds
| all-year-round, which hampers their grows.
|
| That's what made the Japanese ones special in the eyes of the
| people that were interviewed for this article - the gargantuan
| trees looking like monsters because of the size of the trees
|
| > _In the 1930s, we saw juhyo five to six metres [16-20ft]
| across, " Yanagisawa says. "By the postwar decades, they were
| often two to three metres [7-10ft]. Since 2019, many are half a
| metre [1.6ft] or less. Some are barely columns."_
|
| > _The cause is twofold, says Yanagisawa: a warming climate and
| a forest under attack. The host tree, Aomori todomatsu,
| suffered a moth outbreak in 2013 that stripped its needles.
| Bark beetles followed in 2015, boring into weakened trunks.
| Yamagata officials report that around 23,000 firs, about a
| fifth of the prefectural side 's stands, have died. With fewer
| branches and leaves, there is little surface for snow and ice
| to cling to._
| quesera wrote:
| There's no doomerism in the article.
|
| It's just documentation of change, with a reference to
| temperature trends, and to another major cause (which they _do
| not_ suggest, but might also be related to temperature change,
| as it is thought to be in other locations).
|
| The trees are famous, and important to local tourism. It's a
| story.
| acdha wrote:
| What makes it "doomerism" other than being inconvenient for
| your political beliefs? Reading the article, it's a pretty
| anodyne statement of facts with researchers methodically
| showing a combination of factors making a culturally-
| significant phenomena less common than in the past.
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