Snow Festival Climate

February 10, 2020

This file photo taken on February 4, 2020 shows a giant snow sculpture supported by Hokkaido Television Broadcasting representing a "kotankoro kamuy" (Blakiston's fish owl) watching over the National Ainu Museum, a soon to be opened centre for indigenous northern Japanese Ainu people, during the Sapporo Snow Festival in Sapporo.

Every year, tens of thousands of tourists flock to the world-famous snow festival in the northern Japanese city of Sapporo, attracted by some 200 massive and intricate ice sculptures, but this year, there's just one problem: no snow. AFP-Jiji Press