Colorado Avalanches At "Historic" Levels; Slam Onto Highway, Hit Cars: Scary Videos

An avalanche begins to engulf Interstate 70 in Colorado
a few days ago. Nobody was hurt.

UPDATE 3 PM 3/7/19

The avalanche situation in Colorado has definitely worsened since Tuesday.

The National Weather Service in Denver/Boulder has an avalanche warning for most parts of the Colorado Rockies into Friday morning at least.

There's an extreme danger of avalanches in some of Colorado's mountainous regions. The NWS avalanche warning doesn't kid around: "We may see avalanches of historic size. These avalanches will be very destructive and may run to the valley bottoms."

That warning is important, because usually, Rocky Mountain avalanches usually largely stop before reaching valley floors, where most people are. So this goes beyond the usual danger avalanches pose to backcountry skiers and hikers most winters.

The danger is particularly acute today after a series of intense storms dumped up to two feet of dense snow atop lighter, more powdery snow. This makes the snow pack very unstable. Strong winds are blowing across Colorado's mountains today, making things all that much worse.

The Denver Post reports that this is the worst winter in decades for avalanche danger in Colorado.

"'We are seeing avalanches run longer than thehy have in 50 years in some cases,' said Spencer Logan, an avalanche forecaster for the Colorado Avalanche Information Center. 'We've gotten a lot of snow on the mountains and it is starting to come down,'" says the Denver Post.

Another Colorado avalanche this week. Image via
Twitter from Denver 9News 

The Avalanche Center, known as CAIC, says there have been about 2,000 avalanches in Colorado this winter. In an average year, there are about 3,000 avalanches, but most of those occur in the spring when the snow is starting to melt.

That means when the current avalanche warning expires Friday, the risk is far from over. I'm sure there will be plenty more such warnings in Colorado during the coming weeks. Already six people have died in Colorado slides this winter.

Interstate 70 through the Colorado mountains is closed again today. In my earlier post, as you will see below under "Previous Discussion," the highway closed Sunday when avalanches struck vehicles on the road.  Interstate 70 closed again Tuesday while officials intentionally set of avalanches to help prevent larger more destructive ones from launching on their own.

But today, two giant avalanches near Vail and Copper Mountain closed Interstate 70 again today. The avalanche near Copper Mountain ruptured a gas line. The one near Vail hit a truck, but the driver was not injured and a tow truck pulled the vehicle out.

Parts of State Highways 91 and 24 were also closed because of avalanches or worries about them.

Some ski areas, like Breckenridge, closed upper mountains to skiers so that they will stay safe.

Colorado isn't the only place in trouble with avalanches. A snowmobile rider was killed Monday by an avalanche in Wyoming. The National Avalanche Center is showing lesser, but still considerable avalanche risks in parts of Utah, Idaho and California.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION 3/5/19

Several avalanches roared down from the mountains and onto Interstate 70 near Copper Mountain, Colorado in the past week.

At least two hit several cars along the highway, but spoiler alert: Nobody was hurt. Videos are below.

At least one pickup truck was pushed off the road, and several motorists had to crawl out of sunroofs or car windows to escape once the avalanches subsided.  Many of these motorists then had to spend hours digging out their cars to continue on their way.

Although avalanches in the mountains are fairly common, ones that impact highways are not. Colorado highway officials said these were the first avalanches to hit a major Colorado highway since 1983.

The Colorado Rockies have been hit by unusually heavy snowstorms in recent weeks, leading to the increased avalanches.

Colorado isn't the only state dealing with avalanches crashing down onto highways. In Idaho, a snow slide buried a one quarter mile long part of Route 21 between Lowman and Stanley beneath up to 40 feet of snow.  Nobody was hurt there, either.

A couple of dramatic videos from dash cams emerged from the Colorado avalanches. Scary!

Here's the first one:



Here's another, more expansive view from a motorist who avoided getting directly hit:

Russian Avalanche Proves We Shouldn't Have Complained About Those Snowy Nor'easters So Much

A heavy, wet snow avalanche begins to bury and push cars in
Russia this week. 

I don't know about you, but I really got sick and tired of repeatedly digging my truck out of back-breaking, heavy wet snow this month during those nor'easters that kept slamming New England.

I have proof, though, that it could have been worse. (No matter what situation you're in, it could almost always be worse.)

In Russia, an avalanche of heavy, wet snow invaded a parking lot.

According to RT, the snow slid down ski slopes at Mount Elbrus in the North Caucasus of Russia this past week. Mount Elbrus, a dormant volcano, is 18,510 feet high, and is the tallest mountain in Europe. 

Unlike many avalanches, which very often quickly and fatally overwhelm people and everything in their paths, this avalanche was relatively slow, at least when it got to the parking lot of the ski area. That meant everybody was able to get out of the way, even if they couldn't save their cars.

It also meant people were able to take photos and videos of the event. Like I said, I complained about having to dig my truck out from heavy, wet snow. In this case, heavy wet snow just shoved the cars across the parking lot and down the hill.

And oh, by the way, the avalanche smashed the cars against each other, and I'm sure many, if not most of them were totaled. Fortunately, the avalanche, aside from not hurting anyone, also did not destroy any major buildings or roads, though you do see in the video a small building getting smushed.

As a side note, you'll notice a lot of the snow in the video you'll see has an orange or tan tint to it.  That's dust and pollen blown into the region by winds from the deserts of North Africa. 

Here's the video.



Another video shows the avalanche blocking in some cars, but not actually moving or crushing them. Still, would you like to dig out that snow so you could actually drive away. I thought not. Here's that video:

WIld Video Of Avalanche JUST Missing Russian Ski Resort

The video in this post is cool. 


Looks scary, but spoiler alert! This avalanche ended up
missing these buildings at a Russia ski resort.

It was just posted this past weekend and shows a massive avalanche barely missing the Cheget Ski and Snowboard resort in Terskol, Russia.

There were no reports of injuries, but we're glad the avalanche appears to have been deflected away from the resort by terrain.

I know a lot of you don't want to see snow related posts now that we're way into spring, but this one is pretty cool.

Video credit goes to Oleg Koshkarev.

Watch:

An Idaho Snow Disaster, And A Beautiful Avalanche In Patagonia

Cracked back wall of an Idaho
supermarket after the roof collapsed
under heavy snow earlier this month.

While we here in Vermont struggle with frequent bouts of mixed precipitation and lackluster snow cover, the ski areas in the Rockies have been rejoicing in, in some cases record breaking amounts of snow.

There's feet and FEET of it on the ground in many spots out there.  

There can certainly be drawbacks to this, and that's the case in northern Idaho, where unprecedented amounts of snow has collapsed many buildings, leading to fear and paralysis among the snow drifts up there.

The city of Weiser in western Idaho is especially hard hit. Much of Idaho doesn't usually get all that much snow, and Weiser's climate is fairly mild. Usually.

But the city of more than 5,000 people is buried under four feet of snow. Many building roofs have collapsed,  including that of Weiser's only supermarket,

That's a problem, since the nearest other supermarket is 15 miles away, and it's hard for some people to travel that far, especially with all that snow in the way.  The Idaho Foodbank set up an "emergency store" in Weiser to help the city get past the crisis, says television station WBOI.

Shane McInroy, the manager of Ridley's Family Market, was on the roof with 11 other people when it began to collapse.

They were up there to shovel away the heavy snow load, but it was too late. The roof collapsed. Witnesses rushed over with ladders to rescue the pople who had been on the roof, says the Idaho Statesman newspaper.

The snow collapses have unfortunately killed at least one person in the hardest hit region of Idaho. According to television station KLEW, a woman either stepped out onto her porch or was trying to get into the house from the porch when the roof collapsed.

Family members found her body trapped beneath the snow and wreckage of the porch roof.

Other collapses in Idaho involved a mill and a church.

The Washington Post says about 100 buildings have collapsed under the weight of the snow in or near Weisner.

The area is a big onion growing region, and many onion sheds have collapsed under the snow, destroying produce and stock.

The snow siege in Idaho recalls the epic snow years  here in New England that have led to multiple building collapses.

Numerous roofs collapsed in eastern and southern New England during the winter of 2015 when record snowfalls buried the region.

Here in Vermont, the last time we had a winter severe enough to collapse roofs was in 2011, when one of the snowiest winters on record - which included snowstorms that featured wet and heavy snows instead of the usual powdery variety, led to numerous roof, barn and porch collapses.

So far, no problems like these in Vermont last year. Though I did pick up a semi-surprise three inches of snow last night at my house in St. Albans.

Meanwhile, I came across a video from August of a large avalanche in Patagonia, seen on a sunny blue sky day in the region.

Avalanches are of course extremely dangerous, but the video captures the powerful beauty of these things.

Watch:

Fatal Italy Avalanche Part Of A Current Brutal European Weather Pattern

In the lobby of the avalanche-destroyed hotel in Italy
a wall of snow and debris is seen pressing into the building
on the left.  

We awoke to the sad news today that a giant avalanche smashed into a resort luxury hotel in Italy, which is likely to have claimed 30 lives.

The avalanche came after incredibly heavy snows hit the mountainous Abruzzo region of central Italy in recent days.

The area has also been hit by swarms of earthquakes in recent months. More earthquakes Wednesday apparently sent the deep snow hurtling down mountainsides.

Incredibly severe weather also hampered rescue operations. Drifts were reported to be 16 feet deep, and it took many hours for rescuers to reach the hotel through blizzard conditions.

Some of the avalanche victims might have survived the snow slide, but froze to death awaiting rescue.

Plus, some of the guests might have already left before the slide hit because they had checked out. However, they were still there when the avalanche hit, waiting at the hotel for crews to clear snow-blocked roads so they could leave, Reuters reported.

The Italy avalanche tragedy is the worst part of a brutal weather pattern that is causing misery in much of central and eastern Europe.

Another huge concern is the refugee crisis in the region combined with the harsh winter conditions.

Snow and freezing cold have hit normally temperate areas of southern Italy, Greece and Turkey.

Even before the latest blast of frigid weather hit this week, at least five refugees had died as of last week from the cold and many others suffered from frostbite and hypothermia, The Guardian reported.

Some refugees in Greece have been moved to warmer buildings, but many others in Greece and elsewhere are stuck in flimsy tents, unprotected from the cold.  

Refugees in Belgrade, Serbia try to wash clothes
and themselves in hard winter conditons over
barrels filled with water and heated from below
with scraps of wood. Photo via Getty Images

In Serbia, women and children are mostly in warm shelters, but up to 1,200 men and unaccompanied boys are outdoors, unprotected as temperatures plunge into the single digits Fahrenheit.

Some countries, and people, are hostile to the refugees, and there are reports of police confiscating clothes and mobile phones from them, preventing them from calling for help or staying warm in the horrible weather.

This is beyond cruel. So-called humans have quite a capacity to destroy others, don't they?

No real relief is in sight as renewed cold and snow are due through the weekend in Greece, Italy, Turkey and the Baltic nations