Posted on 01/04/2007 10:53:22 AM PST by george76
It's been snowing all day in Anchorage and it's still coming. A combination of snow, fog and ice contributed to more than 100 cars becoming stuck in ditches and snow berms across the city.
The Anchorage Police Department said accidents occurred at a pace of a collision every 10 minutes today.
A snow advisory remains in effect and the job of digging out is only beginning.
Midtown resident Linda Rinard just returned from vacation.
"I just flew in at 9:00 a.m. from Las Vegas; two weeks and sunny Las Vegas," she said.
Sherri Stein picked up Rinard from Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport and brought her to Stein's driveway. Rinard and Stein are among the army of folks with shovels and snow blowers digging out, but only making room for more snow to take its place. The constantly falling snow and fog make it difficult for drivers to see the road.
Some ended up stuck in a snow bank like Jennifer Alger.
"I was just driving down the road and everything all looked the same, just all white. And my tires caught the snow bank, just went right through it, so my car's completely stuck," she said.
The worst of the snow-related accidents happened on the Glenn Highway this morning. Five cars and two people were taken to the hospital. Traffic was forced to reroute on the Hiland Road exit.
Some of those in the ditch say they dove for it as they tried to avoid other cars.
"I just decided to get in the ditch rather than hit them in the middle of the road," said Shannon Overstreet, who was stuck in a ditch.
(Excerpt) Read more at ktuu.com ...
Maybe what you're facing in New England is what western Pennsylvania went through. Thirty to forty years ago there we used to have white Christmases every year, and lots of snow through into February. But the last thirty years has often seen winter drizzle rain instead of snow. Oh, it still gets cold there but the temperatures during storms is warmer -- just enough warmer for it to drizzle rain instead of snow. Pittsburgh ball fields are green in January nowadays.
I should further qualify my statement by noting that 3/4 maniac number just makes Anchorage a typical American city, just with worse road conditions. But drivers everywhere these days seem to be more careless.
Not surprising since livestock outnumbers humans 5 to 1 on this planet. Nearly 12 billion animals are slaughtered annually in the US. Reducing the meat production by only 10% would free enough grain to feed 60,000,000 people.
500,000 pigs produce more fecal matter than 1.5 million inhabitants of Manhattan. 100,000,000 pigs are slaughtered each year in the US.
US farmed animals produce 68,000 pounds of manure per second. 5 tons for every US person, 130 times as much fecal matter as the entire planet.. Factory farms produce 1.4 billion tons of manure, 20 tons annually for every household.
Animal waste is the chief source of toxic microbes in US coastal waters. US livestock uses 80% of US water sources. Confinement farming contributes to 70% of US river pollution and 49% of lake pollution.
Agribusiness keeps animals alive with antibiotics and vaccines. Factory farms use chemical s and hormones and steroids to make animals grow faster and bigger. – this is either passed on to the rivers and lakes or into the person that consumes.
Naw, the cold hurts every month when the heating bill comes in, or in the fall when coal has to be paid for.
Global warming is great! It helps with the heating bills. It also makes for shorter winters for those of us in snow country.
Anchorage has been getting nailed this year. Of course, further down the coast here, we've been getting our share. But with the media all back East, all you hear about is how warm it is in NYC, with the occasional "freak show" appeal of Colorado blizzards. All the cold and low elevation snow since October on the West Coast has never made the MSM radar screen.
Well you are of course living in a rain / snow shadow. It is interesting to see some of the truly arid country in Yukon. Some of it is plain old desert.
That does it! I'm going vegetarian. NOT! But I ought to at least cut down the beef and pork and eat more chicken and beans (or so my doctor tells me).
When you live close to a (relatively) warm ocean, winter is a crap shoot. Some years, you get clobbered, others, you go straight from Fall into Spring. If you like consistent Winters, you should move to the northern Pacific Coast.
"Come on down 40 miles south of Anchorage to Girdwood/Alyeska - 26 FEET in December with 5 feet in the last 4 days.
Best powder skiing on the planet right now!"
Aaaahhh, how I'd love to drive through Girdwood again. It must look so beautiful there right now. BTW, DH grew up there.
We call them folks Yankees.
That could be Truckee if you didn't tell me otherwise.
That's OK. We've had years where we've had snow starting at the beginning of Nov and by Christmas it was: White Christmas? Ho hum. And there was STILL two to three months of winter to go. This year, we'll basically have about 2 months of winter instead of 5. I'm not complaining. Less snow, less shoveling, less salt, less slop, less heating oil,....
Global warming? I say: Bring it on...
This is semi-arid, sub-arctic, taiga. If it didn't freeze up half the year it would be bone dry and dust, or loess even more obviously. It's been like this forever, even during the Ice Age, no glaciers but some ice in the shadows even in June. The wooly mammoths and sabertooth tigers are gone now, but they were kind of scrawny anyway.
Love it. I've been though winters like that and am glad to share the wealth. That cured me of snow.
So I wonder where the funding for that came from?
Wow, they do things differently in Alaska. Do they have mechanics in the ER?
In Fairbanks you get, what, about a 120 or 130 degree delta (highest summer high to lowest winter low) throughout the course of a typical year, once in a great while worse? Pretty extreme stuff!
Try 60 MPH on an icy road where if you screw up, you go over a cliff and land in a tree. I saw some idiot doing 60 (or more) on Calif Hwy 88 last week, with an inch of ice topped by blowing snow, on the way back from skiing. The posted speed limit here is 30MPH for mountain roads with ice / snow on them.
I flew from Anchorage to Valdez in the early 1970s in a small plane. I swear our landing gear tires spun as we barely crested the ridgetops in your area. The pilot scared the bejeebers out of me. For the return trip, I took the boat to Whittier and then the train to Anchorage. What a wonderful business trip that was.
Do you have downhill skiing nearby?
55 in Connecticut? We've got 53 here in Los Altos, CA right now. This sure kills one of the main reasons to move to California.
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