Blasting for Avalanche

Last week they tried to cause an avalanche at the snow chute on MT Roberts. I watched the first few cannon shots hit the mountain top. You can see the black marks where the mortars hit.



On the second shot I heard a swooshing sound coming from downtown and noticed that one of the other avalanche areas right above basin road and gold creek was letting loose.


Most of what I saw looked like a large waterfall coming down so it must have been a build up of water behind the ice.


After about 12 shots they gave up without any snow coming down. I'm not sure the danger is over with the warming temperatures but there should be very little snow fall accumulating. It was when Robert was visiting in early May last year when we witnessed several small waterfalls/avalanches so I'll be keeping my eyes open for more activity.

Avalanche Takes out PowerHouse

Some of you may have heard that an avalanche yesterday took out some electric towers/powerlines therefore cutting our source of hydro-electricity that powers Juneau.

I've mark the spot on google maps where I think the dam is located - might be off a bit but you get the idea. Look for my spot marked Sneetisham Dam.

You can see how steep the terrain is - this was taken a little farther down Stephens Passage this summer when I went with the Holmbergs to Tracy Arm Fjords.


The article in the Juneau Empire says it might be 3 to 4 months before the towers are replaced and repaired so that means we'll be burning diesel fuel for the summer as our main power source. That sucks. So if you're planning a visit down here bring an extra sweater and a flashlight - we might be on ultra-power conservation.

BOOM! Planned Avalanche

I didn't quite get out in time to get the snow starting to ripple down the avalanche shute but I did snap a couple of shots while the snow was in progress of whooshing down the mountain. It was a pretty gray day - with occasional snow flurries so you really couldn't see the top of the mountain. About 10:30 they had the road to Thane closed and then they started shooting the Howlitzer canons from across the channel by Sandy Beach. The shots shook the house - it would definitely wake you up. After about 15-18 shots the snow started to slide.

It finally ended with a big explosion of snow and all the ducks and gulls flying over to this side where it was safer!


Not as dramatic as it was last year when we had the 200 inches of snow but it was still a pretty good show.

We broke the record–We are the Champions!

Its official - we now hold the record for the biggest snowfall accumulation in Juneau history. According to the Juneau Empire sometime this morning we broke the previous record of 194.3 by an incredible 194.6 inches! While driving around last night you just had the feeling that more frozen precipitation was on its way and that if we all tried out hardest we could do it!

I had a front row seat for the provoked avalanche this morning but was only able to snap one picture while it was happening. The Cannons were pretty loud and were heard all the way to Fairbanks (by Carol and Ed with whom I was audio-conferencing!)



and through the spotting scope I can see them clearing the road



This is from the Juneau Empire


Here's where they were shooting the cannon from - the green arrow and yellow dot is about where our house it located.

Apparently they are really worried about several neighborhoods around town too and are setting up shelters for those who are in the danger zone. On a scale of 1 to 4 which is the normal avalanche scale, experts are calling this a 5 and are talking about its uniqueness as an urban avalanche http://www.avalanche.org/~seaac/