Even Alaskans are not used to so much snow

Weary residents continue to dig out

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The worst winter anyone can remember in Alaska has piled snow so high that people can’t see out the windows, has kept a tanker in ice - choked waters from delivering fuel on time and has turned snow-packed roofs into sled runs.

While most of the nation has gone without much seasonal snow, the state already known for winter is buried in weather that has dumped more than twice as much snow as usual on its largest city, brought out the National Guard and put a run on snow shovels.

As a Russian tanker crawled toward the iced-in coastal community of Nome to bring in much-needed fuel, weather-weary Alaskans awoke Thursday to more snowfall — more than a foot was expected in Anchorage — and said enough was enough.

“The scary part is, we still have three more months to go,” said Kathryn Hawkins, a veterinarian who lives in the coastal community of Valdez, about 100 miles southeast of Anchorage. “I look out and go, ‘Oh my gosh, where can it all go?’ ”

The city has seen more than 26 feet of snowfall since November. Snow is piled 8 feet high outside Hawkins’ home and she can’t see out the front or back of her house. Her 12-year- old son has been sliding off the roof into the yard.

In the nearby fishing community of Cordova, the Alaska National Guard is out helping clear snow from streets and roofs. The city already been buried under 172 inches (over 14 feet) of snow since November; snow began falling again after midnight Wednesday.

“You actually get to a point where it almost becomes it’s expected, that it’s going to be snowing,” said Teresa Benson, a Cordova resident and district manager for the National Forest Service.

More than 186 inches of snow has fallen in Cordova this season, including 59 inches for the first 10 days of January alone, according to the National Weather Service. The seasonal record of 221.5 inches was set in 195556.

Anchorage had 88 inches fall as of Thursday — more than twice the average snowfall of 30.1 inches for the same time period. The weather service counts July 1 through the end of June as a snow season.