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April 26 - Dick Warner opens the gate to the North Cascades Highway on the west side. |
April 19 - Snowblower plows through the snow, working to open the pass. |
April 13 - Check out the size of this snow wall below the Liberty Bell avalanche zone; it's nearly 50 feet tall. We started digging down from the top of it. That's a lot of snow to move. |
April 12 - The snowblower pioneers a lane through the six-foot deep snow towards Rainy Pass. |
April 13 - Digging down 50 feet to reach roadway below Liberty Bell avalanche chutes. |
April 5 - Crews push the snow banks on boths sides of the highway further and further apart with the snowblower. |
April 5 - The snowblower and backhoe work together to lower the snow level to a height that the snowblower can work with. If the snow level is greater than 10 feet, then it's too deep for the snowblower. |
April 5 - A beautiful view of Liberty Bell and the Early Winters Spires with a snowblower in the foreground. |
April 4 - We are working our way up the west slopes of the Cascades. The snowblower moves through approximately three to four feet of snow with ease. |
April 5 - It takes a lot of equipment to move this much snow off the highway. |
April 4 - Crews dig rocks and dirt out of ditches lining the highway, making it easier for water to drain. |
April 4 - There's miles of ditches along the highway that crews have to clean out. Then there are culverts they have to clean so that water runoff doesn't flood across the highway. It's a tedious job. |
March 28 - Downed and buried trees tend to make it difficult for our machines to move snow off the highway. We had to dig the trees out to make way for our snowblowers and plows. |
March 28 - These trees are huge. It doesn't matter how big they are, we still can't see them when they're covered with snow. They definitely do damage to our machinery when we hit them. |
March 28 - We can move a lot of snow quickly with the help of the snowblower. |
March 28 - The large turbines chew up and spit out the snow much faster than the rest of our equipment. |
March 28 - Pushing snow off the highway, helping make it easier for other snow equipment to do their job. |
March 28 - The snow is nearly five-feet deep. The snowblower cut a path through the snow and exposed the road. The black asphalt and sun combined will help melt the snow more quickly. |
March 13 - As gravity pulls the clump down, the snow rolls down the hill, and 99.9% of the time the center of the rolling snowball collapses in on itself and creates what we call a "pinwheel". If it doesn’t roll down the hill, then it will just slide, which is actually one of the mechanisms of a loose snow avalanche. But, if the snow is the perfect density and temperature, it rolls around onto itself leaving the hole in the center, creating the doughnut-looking shape. |
March 13 - Stanford says he’s rarely seen it happen. The temperatures and snow conditions have to be just right. In 30-plus years of playing and working in the snow, this was the second time he had ever seen them. Snow doughnuts seemingly could grow very big if conditions permitted. The one seen in the photograph is about 24" in diameter. |
March 13 - Snow buries the highway below avalanche chutes. |
March 13 - According to Mike Stanford from our WSDOT avalanche team, snow doughnuts are a natural occurrence in nature. We do not build them. They form when there is a hard layer in the snow and is then covered by several inches of dense snow. Then you add a steep slope and a trigger, such as a clump of snow falling out of a tree or off of a rock face, and voila you have snow doughnuts. |
March 6 - Snow blankets the restroom at the Washington Pass overlook. |
March 13 - Avalanches bury the highway. |
March 6 - Snow marker measures 9 feet deep. |
March 6 - Snow blankets the restrooms at Whistler, between Washington and Rainy Pass's. |