On Today's Date: America's Snowiest City, Valdez, Alaska, Buried
Heavy snow is a fact of life in the Great Lakes snowbelts and Mountain West.
But on Jan. 16, 1990, 35 years ago, an Alaska town was clobbered by a series of snowstorms impressive even by local standards.
Valdez, Alaska, picked up almost two feet of snow (47.5 inches) in just 24 hours, a record for the town.
When the storm was over, 64.9 inches of snow buried Valdez in less than 2 days. That’s like Cleveland picking up an entire year’s worth of snow in less than 48 hours.
This storm shut down schools and blocked roads. But the sheer weight of this snow sunk six boats in the port of Valdez and caved in one city storage building.
This town of 4,000 residents about 120 miles east of Anchorage is America’s snowiest city. It averages 325 inches of snow each year, over three times as much as Buffalo, New York.
If you could make a 27-foot tall pile of their average yearly snowfall, that’s almost twice as tall as an average one-story home