winter of terror

In the winter of 1950-51, a previously unrecorded number of avalanches rocked the Swiss-Austrian Alps, killing over 265 people in the span of three months. Coined the “Winter of Terror”, this series of 649 avalanches destroyed over 900 buildings and thousands of acres of forests. This period is thought to be a result of atypical weather conditions in the Alps: high precipitation due to the meeting of an Atlantic warm front, with a polar cold front resulted in 10-15 ft of snowfall in a two-to-three-day period. Over 40,000 people were buried under snow over the 1950-51 season.