I do not know if any of you have been looking in on the reports in Alaska on the large avalanches blocking the Richardson Hwy on the way to Valdez through the canyon connecting Valdez and the rest of the Alaska road system. I see a time consuming process to get the road cleared. The part of the River flowing through the Canyon got dammed by the Avalanches and blocked part of the Highway. This is the case of all cases where our weird Weather in the US made a difference. If any of you noticed it was in the 30's and 40, even 50's during the day in late January in Alaska, while the eastern half of the lower 48 got weather that made you think you were somewhere up in Alaska in the middle of winter. It seems that Valdez is making out with Ferries and Airline flights, and freight ferried in.
This is a video of the affected area:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4YNelnCOZ4
Things will be back to normal soon
Wretched Alaska weather strikes again. I'm guessing it's charter flights only between Valdez and other cities? I am having a really hard time figuring out how they plan to remove the snow. That much snow would make me think, that waiting until August for it to melt isn't an option because A) time is pretty urgent considering people are stranded, but more importantly B) that's far too much snow to melt in a single summer.
Last time I was dealing with massive avalanches was along WA SR 410 west of Yakima. Eventually they just built over it because the hill-side wouldn't stay put. Of course, you can't do that with snow (or can you, Russia? http://goo.gl/eOEEfN).
The Richardson Highway was reopened Wednesday Morning. I have a picture of a place along the Richardson Highway after it reopened with the news story complete with warning sign:
http://www.adn.com/2014/02/05/3308570/damalanche-is-gone-richardson.html