Ladies and gentlemen, may I present one of the greatest snow forecasts of all time. The Chugach Mountains in Alaska are being slammed with feet upon feet of snow, with a local maximum of 344″ (28.7′) over a 72-hour period #AKwx 1/3 pic.twitter.com/2AzghJwPCg
— Evan Fisher (@EFisherWX) October 31, 2021
On Sunday, October 31st, the NWS put out a snow forecast for the Chugach Mountains in Alaska. They predicted 28.7-FEET of snow in a 72-hour period.
Wait. What?!
20-30 FEET of Snow since this photo was taken last week. Record breaking precip this weekend is saying a lot as Alaska…
Posted by Silverton Mountain Guides Alaska Heli on Tuesday, 2 November 2021
That’s enough that if you were on the 3rd floor of a building, you could just walk out of the window.
Note that the legend on these maps is in *feet*, not inches. As if you weren’t already grasping the magnitude of these totals, 28.7′ is roughly the height of three elephants stacked on top of each other 2/3 pic.twitter.com/yn5ASEnkEg
— Evan Fisher (@EFisherWX) October 31, 2021
Unfortunately, there are no weather stations on those mountain peaks to know if the forecast actually came true––but we can dream, right?
Yesterday’s 16 foot snow forecast may have delivered even more than expected, as word on the street is Whittier received…
Posted by Silverton Mountain Guides Alaska Heli on Sunday, 31 October 2021
This begs the question––if it dumps on a mountain and no one is there to see it, did it even snow? Pics or it didn’t happen…
Actually – that would be about 1,600 tons of water per acre, or one million tons of water per square mile. So this event could be measured in billions of tons of water coming out of the atmosphere.
Now, that said, Harvey dumped multiple billions of tons of water on the Houston metro-area alone…this storm was about like any Nor’easter in New England; a big storm, in a reasonably small area. So, no – this isn’t material to the global moisture content of the atmosphere and shouldn’t lead to anything different anywhere else in the world.
That is a ton of precipitation taken out of the atmosphere. Will this lead to harsher drought conditions in the NorthWest sector of the U.S.? More Californoa wildfires?
Very nice! I’d like to see that!