A motorist drives around an ice boulder along Mud Bay Road earlier this month. Above average snowfall and a cold spring left large snow and ice piles around town.
At 217.6 inches, the winter’s snowfall in downtown Haines was more than five feet above the average for the past 20 years, according to the National Weather Service.
On a single day – Jan. 26 – 23.5 inches fell, and severe weather postponed the Alcan 200 snowmachine race.
Total accumulation was more than three times the total of 60.5 inches that fell in winter of 2018-19, but still far short of the 360.7 inches that fell in town during 2011-12, the high mark for snowfall in the past two decades.
All but about 30 inches of the past season’s snow came in just three months – December, January and February – but chilled by cooler than average temperatures, the white stuff stuck around, creating opportunities for skiers and sledders.
Glenda Gilbert said she saw demand for Flexible Flyers she was selling near the door of her hardware store. “We did pretty good, actually. The whole town got out one weekend.”
The news also was good for people in the business of clearing driveways. “The snow was back up to where it needed to be,” said private plow driver John Hunt. “It was a good year. We needed it. The last two seasons were bleak. I had four days of work in five months last year and five days of work in five months the year before.”
The slow melt-off extended the ski season and also meant Hunt had work in March, from snowbirds who returned to discover their properties still snowed in.
Kimberly Vaughan, observation program leader for the National Weather Service in Juneau, said this year’s big dump bucked a warming trend.
“Generally the trend is most weather stations in Southeast have seen warmer temperatures and not as much snow” in recent years,” Vaughan said. “Even with global warming, we can still have big snowstorms. We’re tallying warming temperatures, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have extremes.”
Making comparisons between current and historic weather data in Haines can be tricky, Vaughan said, as the location of weather stations has changed since weather records started here in 1919, and some historic records are missing.
Figures used in this story were from a weather station called Haines #2, maintained consistently for the past two decades by residents Paul Swift and Jim Green. Other weather stations are operated at Haines Airport and at U.S. Customs.