It’s official! After the big snow storm yesterday morning we have broken the record for the most snow. The previous record was 194.3 inches way back in the winter of ‘64-’65. The new record set this winter is 195.3 inches. Ok, that is a lot of snow, especially from someone from Oregon’s Willamette Valley were the annual snow fall is something like 3 inches.

Of course just to make things more interesting the big snow storm turned into a big rain storm so we now have 16 feet of snow quickly melting. This is trouble because the ground is still frozen and most of the drains are still covered in ice. (Ice with water on top is very, very slick by the way!) Several streets now look like small rivers and our back yard is a lake…with icebergs in it.

But the best (?) part of rain on top of snow when your town is located at the foot of several large mountains, is the extremely high avalanche danger! They were setting up shelters last night for anyone who wanted to leave their homes and sleep on a gym floor. Yesteday afternoon, almost 1000 feet of road was blocked by a snow slide 21 feet deep. Luckily we haven’t had any avalanches in a residential area yet.

I’m very thankful today that our house isn’t in an avalanche danger area. We did look at several houses that are located right in the evacuation area. Now if we could just keep our house from floating away we’d be set. Yes, we live in the flood zone.

If it’s not one thing, it another!

.

posted at 10:14 AM  
Labels: Alaska Living