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Still No Snow on Japan’s Mount Fuji, Breaking Record

Mount Fuji is seen from Enoshima island, in Fujisawa, south of Tokyo, Japan, August 11, 2021. Picture taken August 11, 2021. (Reuters)
Mount Fuji is seen from Enoshima island, in Fujisawa, south of Tokyo, Japan, August 11, 2021. Picture taken August 11, 2021. (Reuters)
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Still No Snow on Japan’s Mount Fuji, Breaking Record

Mount Fuji is seen from Enoshima island, in Fujisawa, south of Tokyo, Japan, August 11, 2021. Picture taken August 11, 2021. (Reuters)
Mount Fuji is seen from Enoshima island, in Fujisawa, south of Tokyo, Japan, August 11, 2021. Picture taken August 11, 2021. (Reuters)

Japan's Mount Fuji remained snow-less as of Monday -- the latest date that its majestic slopes have been bare since records began 130 years ago, the weather agency said.

The volcano's snowcap begins forming on October 2 on average, and last year snow was first detected there on October 5.

But because of warm weather, this year no snowfall has yet been observed on Japan's highest mountain, said Yutaka Katsuta, a forecaster at Kofu Local Meteorological Office.

That marks the latest date since comparative data became available in 1894, he said beating the previous record of October 26 -- seen twice, in 1955 and then in 2016.

"Temperatures were high this summer, and these high temperatures continued into September, deterring cold air" which brings snow, Katsuta told AFP.

He agreed that climate change may have a degree of impact on the delay in the snowcap's formation.

Japan's summer this year was the joint hottest on record -- equaling the level seen in 2023 -- as extreme heatwaves fueled by climate change engulfed many parts of the globe.

Mount Fuji is covered in snow for most of the year, but during the July-September hiking season, more than 220,000 visitors trudge up its steep, rocky slopes.

Many climb through the night to see the sunrise from the 3,776-meter (12,388-foot) summit.

Fewer climbers tackled Mount Fuji this year however after Japanese authorities introduced an entry fee and a daily cap on numbers to fight overtourism.

The symmetrical mountain has been immortalized in countless artworks, including Hokusai's "Great Wave".

It last erupted around 300 years ago.

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In Beirut, a Photographer's Frozen Moments Slow Down Time and Allow the Contemplation of Destruction

A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)
A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)
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In Beirut, a Photographer's Frozen Moments Slow Down Time and Allow the Contemplation of Destruction

A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)
A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)

We watch video after video, consuming the world on our handheld devices in bites of two minutes, one minute, 30 seconds, 15. We turn to moving pictures — “film” — because it comes the closest to approximating the world that we see and experience. This is, after all, 2024, and video in our pocket — ours, others', everyone's — has become our birthright.
But sometimes — even in this era of live video always rolling, always recording, always capturing — sometimes the frozen moment can enter the eye like nothing else. And in the process, it can tell a larger story that echoes long after the moment was captured. That's what happened this past week in Beirut, through the camera lens of Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein and the photographs he captured.
When Hussein set up his camera outside an evacuated Beirut apartment building Tuesday after Israel announced it would be targeted as part of military operations against Hezbollah, he had one goal in mind — only one. "All I thought of," he says, “was photographing the missile while it was coming down.”
He found a safe spot. He ensured a good angle. He wasn't stressed, he said; like many photographers who work in such environments, he had been in situations like this one before. He was ready.
When the attack came — a bomb, not a missile in the end — Hussein swung into action. And, unsurprisingly for a professional who has been doing this work for two decades, he did exactly what he set out to do.
Time slowed down
The sequence of images he made bursts with the explosive energy of its subject matter.
In one frame, the bomb hangs there, a weird and obtrusive interloper in the scene. It is not yet noticed by anyone around it, ready to bring its destruction to a building that, in moments, will no longer exist. The building's balconies, a split-second from nonexistence, are devoid of people as the bomb finds its mark.
These are the kind of moments that video, rolling at the speed of life or even in slow motion, cannot capture in the same way. A photo holds us in the scene, stops time, invites a viewer to take the most chaotic of events and break it down, looking around and noticing things in a strangely silent way that actual life could not.
In another frame, one that happened micro moments after the first, the building is in the process of exploding. Let's repeat that for effect, since even as recently as a couple generations ago photographs like this were rare: in the process of exploding.
Pieces of building are shooting out in all directions, in high velocity — in real life. But in the image they are frozen, outward bound, hanging in space awaiting the next seconds of their dissolution — just like the bomb that displaced them was doing milliseconds before. And in that, a contemplation of the destruction — and the people it was visited upon — becomes possible.
Tech gives us new prisms to see the world
The technology to grab so many images in the course of little more than one second — and do it in such clarity and high resolution — is barely a generation old.
So to see these “stills,” as journalists call them, come together to paint a picture of an event is a combination of artistry, intrepidity and technology — an exercise in freezing time, and in giving people the opportunity to contemplate for minutes, even hours, what took place in mere seconds. This holds true for positive things that the camera captures — and for visitations of violence like this one as well.
Photography is random access. We, the viewers of it, choose how to see it, process it, digest it. We go backward and forward in time, at will. We control the pace and the speed at which dizzying images hurtle at us. And in that process, something unusual for this era emerges: a bit of time to think.
That, among many other things, is the enduring power of the still image in a moving-picture world — and the power of what Bilal Hussein captured on that clear, sunny day in Beirut.