Nation & World

ANCHORAGE — The most intense winter anyone in Alaska can remember has piled snow so high that windows are blocked, fuel has been delayed, roofs have been turned into sled runs and boats have sunk.

While snow depths are below normal in most of the nation, Alaska is buried. More than twice as much snow as usual has fallen on the state's largest city, National Guard troops are digging out a fishing community and snow shovels are at a premium.

As a Russian tanker carrying much-needed fuel continued to crawl toward the iced-in coastal community of Nome, weather-weary Alaskans awoke Thursday to more snowfall.

Enough is 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?' "

During a typical winter, Valdez receives 149.7 inches of snow by this date. As of Thursday, the National Weather Service said, 318.4 inches had fallen this winter — or 168.7 inches more than usual. Eight-foot piles surround Hawkins' home. Her 12-year-old son has been sliding off the roof into the yard.

The snow is so deep that roofs on Valdez's elementary and high schools have exceeded legal limits of 90 pounds per square foot, district superintendent Jacob Jensen told the Anchorage Daily News. The City Council decided Wednesday night to close both schools, as well as the junior high, until at least Monday, Jensen was quoted as saying.

Those closures represent yet another entry for the record books: Valdez schools hadn't closed due to snow for at least a decade, probably longer, Jensen said. Other longtime residents say they couldn't remember another school closure due to snow.

In nearby Cordova, more than 172 inches of snow had fallen (the seasonal average is 118), and snow fell throughout Thursday. The Alaska National Guard has been helping move it, but the city is running out of places to put it. Front-end loaders are hauling snow from dump piles to a snow-melting machine.

"That's our big issue, getting our snow dumps cleared for the next barrage of snow," Cordova spokesman Allen Marquette said.

South of the mainland, a fishing vessel, a house boat and a pleasure craft moored in Kodiak Island's St. Paul Harbor sank when they became overloaded with snow, the Coast Guard said.

Anchorage had received 88 inches as of Thursday — nearly three times the average of 30.1 for the date. The National Weather Service counts July 1 through the end of June as a snow season.

More than 7 inches had fallen by early Thursday evening, and up to 16 inches were expected.

The city of 250,000 is on track to have its snowiest winter, surpassing the 132.8 inches recorded in 1954-55.

Behind the snowfall

Two atmospheric patterns are behind the massive snowfall: the Pacific weather pattern known as La Niña and another called the Arctic Oscillation, which shifts air patterns to the south and keeps the coldest winter air locked up in the Arctic.

"Alaska is definitely getting the big dump," said Bill Patzert, a climate expert at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

In the Lower 48, meanwhile, a storm dumped several inches of snow on western Wisconsin and Iowa on Thursday before moving eastward into Milwaukee, St. Louis and Chicago, where up to 8 inches were expected to fall by Friday morning. Such a storm would cause barely a ripple in the upper Midwest, but the same atmospheric patterns that have made this an unusually icy winter in Alaska have produced abnormally warm conditions in regions used to more snow. Nary a flake has fallen in New York City since a freak October storm.

In the ice-choked Bering Sea off Alaska's west coast, a Russian tanker loaded with 1.3 million gallons of fuel progressed steadily toward Nome on Thursday, following a path painstakingly plowed by a Coast Guard icebreaker. Thick ice, wind and unfavorable currents had slowed the vessel, but the tanker and icebreaker were 46 miles from Nome and likely to arrive Friday, Coast Guard spokesman David Mosley said.

The city missed its final prewinter delivery of fuel by barge when a big storm swept the region last fall. Without a delivery, Nome could run short of fuel before another barge arrives in late spring, forcing fuel to be flown in and driving prices as high as $9 a gallon. Gasoline was selling for $5.43 Thursday.

The winter weather has strained Alaska's budget. Officials estimate the tab for National Guard members in Cordova, heavy equipment, fuel and other costs at $775,000.

In Anchorage, schools were open Thursday, but some school-bus routes were canceled because of whiteout driving conditions.

"I think people were girding their loins for a long winter," police Lt. Dave Parker said. While crime hasn't increased, he said, "by the end of March, there might be a few frustrated people."

Help from outside

Shovel-makers were making emergency shipments in Cordova. Plenty of standard shovels were available in town, but a 26-inch scoop that can push a cubic foot of snow or more at a time was tough to find.

The new shovels cost about $50 each, and the city is paying with emergency funds.

"We have the National Guard right now using the standard shovel, and they're getting pretty trashed every day — not the shovels but the Guardsmen themselves," city spokesman Tim Joyce said.

Warming temperatures presented another hazard — avalanche danger — to the Prince William Sound community of 2,200 people.

The one road that leads out of town was closed, and people have been warned not to stand under house eaves.

"There's a real high potential that if it does slide, they'd be buried," Joyce said.

The snow has damaged four commercial buildings and two homes, and a 24-unit apartment complex was evacuated.

The storm system is expected to move on by Friday, but temperatures were expected to fall as low as 10 below zero this weekend, making it more difficult to shovel the snow.