“This snow just won’t F’n melt!” posted one Alaska resident to a recent blog about cold summer weather in Alaska.
Mountain ranges surrounding Alaska’s largest city are still dealing with last winter’s snow and last winter’s all-time record snowfall (133.6 inches in downtown Anchorage) could give the city an endless winter this year.
According to accuweather meteorologists are alarmed to see some of the mountains that surround Anchorage are still blanketed in white. According to US Department of Agriculture Snow Survey Supervisor Rick McClure. “Most of the time snow melts in the mountains, unless it’s a glacier or snowfield. We’ve had snow in 4,000-feet elevations that usually melts by early June stay until that time in July. It’s very rare to see snow in the mountains that close to the solstice.”
A titanic problem. And the arctic cold weather has others worried too. According to the experts at our sister site gCaptain, the cold weather this summer is so unseasonably persistant that relief ships, which supply the northern latitude towns with much needed supplies, are stuck in port, unable to navigate through the ice. One ship that did it through, the Zelada Desgagnés, suffered significant damage as the ice crushed the steel in her bow, almost sinking the vessel.
The result? New glaciers may form by compressing the old snow into ice. But don’t get your hopes up, McClure warns that it would take several years of cold springs like this year’s for a cycle of new glaciers to form.