Twenty Feet Of Snow In Turkish Blizzard?

Here in Vermont we can get really big snowstorms at any time during the winter.

However, mid-February to mid-March seems to be the time of year when we are most at risk for epic snowstorms.  It's certainly cold enough to snow at this time of year.  But the forces of spring are just starting to be felt.

Warmer air, milder than what you'd expect in December and January, feed into large storms. That increases the chances that precipitation will be heavier. If it's cold, that means a lot of snow.

Think the Blizzard of 1888, the Valentine's Day Blizzard of 2007, the epic snowstorm of early March, 2011 and the Pi Day Blizzard in March, 2017.

There's nothing I'm seeing in the forecast at the moment that suggests we'll get a big snowstorm, although some type of storm looks like it will come along Wednesday night and Thursday.

But two or three feet of snow is one thing, as the above examples show.  Imagine a storm that dumps 20 feet of snow.

Such a storm just happened in a community called Yuksekova, near the Iran border. Its elevation is around 6,400, so it's high up. That helps make the area prone to snowfalls.

But not usually like this.

The snow was so deep that some residents trying to shovel roofs to reduce the weight of the snow found themselves throwing snow upward, as we in Vermont would if we were trying to get a couple feet of snow out of our driveways.

Videos of the storm's aftermath shows snow that appears to be fairly wet and heavy, which probably made post-blizzard cleanup even more difficult.

It doesn't look like this is the first time such a big snowstorm hit this region, judging from a newscast I found on YouTube from January, 2019.

Here's some videos.

First one shows post storm cleanup around Yuksekova.  Looks like an absolutely beautiful area, too:



The next video appears to be the downtown area of Yuksekova.  There might not be 20 feet of snow in this area, but it still looks pretty disruptive. Watch:


Another video shows buried homes and walkways that look like canyons in the snow.