A record-setting, early-season snowfall tripped up Anchorage

[CaptinCrunch]

Snowy surprise
Six inches of slush adds up to a local record, leaves city a mess

By PETER PORCO
Anchorage Daily News

(Published: September 26, 2004)

A record-setting, early-season snowfall tripped up Anchorage on Saturday by causing power lines to stretch and snap, electrical transformers to pop and power to go off in areas across the city.

The heavy, wet snow landed on birch, cottonwood and other trees that still held some leaves to collect it. The branches bent under the weight and sometimes collapsed. Some broke off onto power lines.

The snow also badly gummed up city roads, thanks to the glop that caught many motorists still traveling on summer tires. But the more immediate cause for traffic delays was dead signals at some major intersections.

Anchorage police reported seven injury collisions and a few dozen other crashes by early evening. None of the injuries was serious, they said.

The real problem was the downed lines, said a spokesman for Municipal Light and Power.

"There's arcing, blown switches and all kinds of dangerous situations," said Gary Fife of ML&P. "Every guy we employ is out with their trucks dealing with priority situations first. Then they'll try to get everybody connected."

The Anchorage Fire Department said a few fires had broken out where wires began to spark, though none of the flames had spread.

By nightfall, ML&P customers throughout its system remained without power, Fife said. The utility serves about 30,000 customers, including many downtown businesses, but dispatchers could not begin to find out how many were affected.

"We have had reports from all over our territory, so at least for us it's systemwide," Fife said.

"We're still being affected by that snow collecting on trees and the branches will bend over and contact our power lines, and we get shorts, electrical arcing, transformers popping, fuses are blowing and switches are opening in a protective fashion," he said. By 8 p.m., they were restoring power to customers and had "turned a corner," he added.

Chugach Electric Association said some trees had fallen into its lines, resulting in a few fires and a loss of power for some of its customers for up to 2 1/2 hours.

Altogether, about 15,000 of CEA's 68,000 customers in Anchorage had been affected, a spokeswoman said. Intermittent outages throughout the day struck customers in small groups here and there, said Carol Heyman. Most of the outages were brief.

"It was a lot of blinking," Heyman said.

Some CEA customers at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport also were affected, resulting in flight delays.

"The airport was fine. We had backup power," said airport director Mort Plumb. But some private ground handlers who help de-ice the planes lost that ability when their pumps could not be operated, Plumb said.

Airport officials also issued a warning during the day that owners of floatplanes in Lake Hood needed to be careful that the heavy snow did not sink the aircraft.

Customers of Matanuska Electric Association also lost power as a result of snow-laden branches contacting power lines. About 7,000 of the utility's 46,200 customers were without power by evening, primarily in the areas of Big Lake, Meadow Lakes and Nancy Lake, said spokesman Bruce Scott.

About 1,300 others lost power in Chugiak, Scott said.

Saturday's snowfall also forced cancellation of a few events, like the ceremony at Delaney Park Strip to celebrate the unveiling of the new Purple Heart Monument.

"There's 100 chairs full of snow out there," said Brad Bradley, commander of the Alaska Department of the Military Order of the Purple Heart. "We're taking them up now."

Snow fell comparatively heavily in Anchorage and north of Big Lake but lightly if at all in Palmer and Wasilla.

"I'm looking out the window at my green front lawn," said Scott, who lives in the Finger Lake area, between Palmer and Wasilla.

Anchorage received a total of "6 inches on the button," said meteorologist Sam Albanese of the National Weather Service.

That's what fell at the Anchorage forecast office on Sand Lake Road near Raspberry Road, which keeps the official record.

And a record it was.

"This is the most snow we've had on the ground this early in the season," meteorologist Dan Keirns said late Saturday afternoon.

The city's earliest measurable snowfall was three-tenths of an inch on Sept. 20, 1947, Keirns said.

The previous record for largest early snow was 2.6 inches on Sept. 29, 1965, which was followed the next day by another 2 inches.

On average, the city gets its first snow by mid-October, according to Weather Service statistics.

The latest first snowfall of the season for Anchorage was on Nov. 11, 1944, and again on Nov. 11, 1950.

The Anchorage forecast office had predicted that Saturday morning might bring flurries followed by rain. It had come close to sticking its neck out with a prediction of heavier snow for Saturday but pulled back, Albanese said.

The meteorologists saw a trough of cold air sitting high over the city and elsewhere in the state, and they saw warm air coming from the Gulf of Alaska. How fast would that warm air mass mix with the cold, bringing snow?

They thought it would move more slowly than it actually did.

"On Wednesday and Thursday we were talking about the possibility of snow coming," Albanese said. "We were worried about snow on Friday and even today, but we didn't put anything out. You don't want to be screaming about snow and not have it happen."

But don't expect Saturday's fluff to stay on the streets, Albanese said. High temperatures into the 40s are forecast for today and well into the week. Which disappointed him.

"I like this snow," Albanese said. "I'm hoping it sticks around. I like to go skijoring, and maybe this will give us an early start."

Apart from the outages, the season's first snow, by arriving on a weekend, gave city residents a relatively painless introduction to winter, a warning to plan for what's ahead and to get their vehicles winterized.

"Due to the snow, we're receiving more new tire purchases with studs and more changeovers," Charles Marshall, manager of the Johnson's Tire Service outlet on Minnesota Drive and Northern Lights Boulevard, said Saturday afternoon. "Compared to this time last year, I would say we're probably doing twice the business, maybe three times the business."

"We're seeing a very brisk sale regarding studded snow tires," said Dick Snyder, general manager of the Costco Wholesale outlet on Dimond Boulevard.