Posted on 07/01/2011 5:22:59 PM PDT by steve86
Snow 50 feet deep still buries the road to Artist Point at Mount Baker and that will keep the upper portion of the road closed all summer.
"We found snow 50-plus feet deep near the upper parking lot," said Theo Donk, state Department of Transportation (WSDOT) supervisor, who made a trek to Artist Point on Wednesday. "This is the deepest snow I've seen since the world-record year 1999, when the highway didn't open for the summer."
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
Mt. Baker, Washington State
Not sure the problem will go away next winter!
That’s a lot of snow ....
DOT workers who went to the area Wednesday, June 29, to measure snow depth found the parking lot at Artist Point under 30 feet of snow. Nearby areas were as deep as 55 feet.
Read more: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2011/06/30/2083115/artist-point-parking-lot-wont.html#ixzz1Qu01llXj
95 feet is the record one-season snowfall (measured within Mt. Baker Ski Area).
That snow would have lasted till about 8:30 this morning in Charlotte.
I believe Mt. Baker is the only developed downhill ski area in Washington where I haven’t skied. Tried once, but it was pouring buckets of rain (not unusual by any means).
Brrr!
Good article. That “Artist Point” has an elevation of only 5,000 ft which isn’t very high by Cascade Volcano standards. Baker itself tops out at 10,778 ft according to wikipedia. I know they used to ride snowmobiles to the summit. The first earthquake I ever felt was in Bellingham (3.1).
Theo Donk?
Right around Memorial Day, I saw a report that the Wyoming Tetons had a 600 inch base on the ground (50 feet) that was the heaviest accumulation there since 1939. All of those storms that brought flooding to the Mid West dumped record snowfalls on the Olympics, Cascades, Rockies, Tetons, and every other major mountain range in most of the Northwest...
We’re just coming off of flood stage on the Columbia river here, but the water is still very high...
Here in the Tri-Cities the river seems to be down a couple feet but I noticed they haven’t opened the kids’ swim areas for the Fourth (way too much current).
He’s on Facebook along with a couple other Theo Donks.
I’m sure he’s a great guy, I just can’t say the name enough times to satisfy myself.
LOL! That’s the first thing I thought...Theo Donk must’ve caught hell growing up...I’m still giggling!
For the last 5 years the NWS has said the “the hurricane season will be above normal activity this year”.
They were correct one out of the five years.
20% accuracy? really?
De-fund the NWS, CPB, and NPR.
And there is still 55 feet of snow on Mammoth Mountain in the High Sierra of California.
Bonneville Power has been playing merry hell down here with all of the wind turbines. When the river is running high, they cannot dump water, and when a big storm blows in with lots of rain and high wind, Bonneville has been forced to switch the wind turbines off so they don’t fry the transmission lines. Way too much uncontrolled excess power with no place to go is a big problem right now....
Looks like another example of how the Iceland volcano eruption of 2010 caused a lot of snowfall during the 2010-11 winter season in the northern hemisphere.
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