Winter’s Fieriest

My first year at Matanuska Electric Association, Inc. (MEA) would soon be history. It would end with a blast. I recall that it warmed up a bit and snowed a lot. The snowfall was at least a foot. On February 3rd the winds came up, and up and up. Eight days later they subsided leaving signs of their impact everywhere.

Snow drifted up to the roof edges at the Palmer Pioneer Home. Aircraft wing covers, snagged by the fence along the north side of the Palmer Airport rippled in the wind, decorative reminders when none were needed.

For MEA it was an all hands on deck time. All employees with knowledge and experience were out trying to get the power back on, often over and over again at same locations. One of the engineers asked me to go with him to see about switching some home service transformers back on. It was night. My job, hold the flashlight.

Our first stop was on Scott Road just west of the Glenn Highway. The wind was howling. Try and try again from the ground, the engineer could not get the hot stick hook into the transformer switch to turn on the power. The wind would not allow it. We two never got the power turned on for anyone.

My winter gear was a stateside fairly thick wool three-quarter length coat with thin plaid flannel lining. The wind came through it so quickly I was surprised it didn’t whistle. I was cold. From 15 minutes in the wind it felt like my kidneys had frozen, but they were just cold, Alaska cold.

Wind history recorded in the Old Farmers Almanac show the winds at 20-50 mile per hour from February 3 through February 11, 1980. But a couple of the records read 999mph which I assume were wind speeds higher than the wind speed recorder could record.

Snow drifts blocked a lot of roads. Lazy Mountain was hard hit. At one point during the 8-day storm a crew working up there called in to report their pickup truck had been blown off the road. Soon, a National Guard tracked personnel carrier was taking crews to work sites.

At the MEA Headquarters building, now Alaska Bible College, my car in the parking lot behind the building got blasted. First came the tiny snow and ice crystals, then sand, which the wind dug out of the frozen gravel lot. The wind kept roaring but the clouds move out early on. A couple of blocks southwest of the headquarters building a moose took shelter in a thicket. She lay in the sun near the street on the south edge of the grove. She was out of the wind, but the tree branches overhead rattled like dried bones.

In Wasilla, my wife was an emergency medical technician and one of the few who could get out on a call. When an east and north east wind blows Wasilla Lake dumps its snow cover onto the Parks Highway. It piles up quick and repeatedly. She recalls that whenever the ambulance had to get through Wasilla on the Parks, a snow plough truck made way through the ever piling snow. February, 1980; the fieriest weather I have seen here in 43 years. Even four years in Barrow was no comparison.

Budd Goodyear is a local freelance writer who has had articles and photos included in publications throughout the state. Goodyear moved to Alaska in 1977 with his wife and children, and has worked in the Valley, Anchorage and Palmer. Goodyear contributes historical pieces to the Frontiersman.