With canyonlike streets and watery floors, it's time for snow to stop

BETH BRAGG
COMMENT

Published: January 26, 2007
Last Modified: January 26, 2007 at 03:25 AM

All together now: Uncle!

Enough already with the snow. I give up. Everybody I know has given up.
Winter wins. Snow wins. Now can we see the sun again?

I woke up Wednesday morning, opened the front door, brushed half an inch of
snow off the newspaper on my porch and flipped to the Alaska section, where
the very first thing I read was this:

"Anchorage won't see any more snow for a while.''

At which point I went out to shovel the driveway. Again. Amid a light
snowfall.

By light snowfall, I mean we only got 1.6 inches that day. Kid stuff.

A lesser city might be paralyzed by 1.6 inches of snow. Not Anchorage. Not
this winter. One-point-six inches of snow is barely worth acknowledging. Not
when every cul-de-sac in town boasts its very own Snowzilla, a sky-scraping
mound of snow that gets taller and wider with each passing week.

We're at least two months away from the end of winter, but with 74.1 inches
of snow, we've already topped the annual average of 69.5 inches.

Twice already I've hired someone to shovel my roof. Both times I waited
until water leaked into the house. Both times I discovered something was
amiss not because water dripped off the ceiling but because it seeped
through the bedroom carpet.

I've been told why that happened, but I still don't understand how a leak
over my head can put water under my feet. All I know is I'm tired of going
to bed with wet feet.

I'm tired of shrinkage too.

Plows have pushed snow off the streets and up against the curbs, erecting
towering walls of snow that turn side streets into narrow canyons. Two-way
traffic is a distant memory. Neighborhood streets have been whittled to a
single lane. A parked car can stop traffic entirely.

If you drive a small sedan like I do, intersections are an adventure. The
berms are so big you can't see over them to look for traffic, so you nose
forward slowly, hoping your car doesn't get clipped.

Imagine the nightmare of being a pedestrian in all this. Plows have buried
the sidewalks that run along busy streets like DeBarr Road, forcing
pedestrians into the road.

"We're back to a real Alaska winter,'' said Paul VanLandingham, the city's
general foreman for streets and parks maintenance.

Oh, joy.

According to the National Weather Service, Anchorage received snow on 22 of
the last 25 days. In December, snow fell on 19 of 31 days.

The sun is little more than a rumor most days, so much so that when I saw
the story this week about the sun appearing in Barrow for the first time in
two months, I thought it was a story about Anchorage.

We just missed setting a record for snow in December -- we got 36.9 inches,
but we needed 41.6 to match the 1955 record. We've had 29.3 inches this
month, but with just six days left, the 1949 record of 36.1 inches looks
thankfully out of reach. We've had two days of double-digit snow -- 11.2
inches on Jan. 3 and 10.0 on Dec. 23.

Even when it's not snowing, you can see random flakes floating in the air.
We're in a perpetual state of precipitation.

Because of that, the snow hasn't gone anywhere. It keeps coming, so city
workers keep plowing, plowing, plowing. That leaves little time for hauling.

VanLandingham said on Thursday that it could be three to four weeks before
snow is hauled from Anchorage's 1,400-plus cul-de-sacs. "We're just now
getting the zero-lot lines hauled,'' he said.

From Dec. 13 to Jan. 13, VanLandingham's crews didn't get a day off. Now
they're working six days a week.

Even if it stops snowing today (hey, a girl can dream), the $1.2 million
budgeted to haul snow from the city's streets will come up $2 million short,
city manager Denis LeBlanc said. The budget is based on averages, which say
we should have 42 inches of snow by now.

Instead we have 75.9. And counting. Let's not forget that the biggest
single- day snowfall in Anchorage history (25.7 inches) happened five years
ago in March.

One of my favorite oddities of an Anchorage winter is seeing a parking lot
full of cars and trucks with their windshield wipers flipped up, like tiny
soldiers standing at attention. Smart drivers know to leave their wipers
like this, because otherwise the wipers might freeze to the windshield.

Now I look at them and imagine they are tiny arms raised in surrender.
Enough already. We give up. Winter wins.