The frightening speed of an avalanche

I'm sure many readers, like me, have seen video clips of avalanches moving down mountain slopes. From a distance they seem almost leisurely in their progress, even when skiers are swept off their feet.

Last month an avalanche came down the slopes of the mountains above King Cove, Alaska, and hit a warehouse behind the Alaska Commercial store there. Security cameras captured the action, and they show just how fast and how hard even a relatively small avalanche like that can hit, and how much damage it can do. Here are three short videos showing different angles of what happened.

The Alaska Dispatch reports:

The avalanche tore the loading-bay door from its tracks, tipped over shelves and buried a forklift inside the warehouse, but because the store had closed early, the room was empty.

"At the tail end of the day, that’s when we take the trash out, or people are back there putting stock on the shelves," Watt said. "We got lucky."

The snow took three days to clear out, Watt said. They managed to get the bulk of the snow out in the first day with Bobcats and numerous people shoveling, but it took several more days to remove the snow from "all the nooks and crannies," he said.

A month later, the weather in King Cove -- 625 miles from Anchorage, near the western tip of the Alaska Peninsula -- has prevented the door from being properly repaired. It's still sheeted over, Watt said.

There's more at the link.

After seeing those security video recordings, I won't think of avalanches again as slow and leisurely!





Peter