Part 4 - The storm

Bering Sea storms are common in the winter.  It’s a part of living in the region.  But forecasters were saying this storm was going to be bad.  It was still too early in the season they said, and that was why this one was going to be so bad.  So bad in fact, some coastal regions of Western Alaska were being evacuated because of storm surge.  I was mentally prepared for my job to get more difficult, maybe some distress calls, some difficulty communicating, but I never thought about what would happen when that storm hit Kodiak.  At first, it just was snowing.  And it kept snowing for days.  I had to go shovel it a couple of times, but nothing we did could keep up.  It just kept coming down.  Plows couldn’t keep up, and the piles that they had cleared from the roads were much taller than I was.  We had maybe a foot a snow fall in the first few days.  Not much by anyone else’s standards, but then the wind hit.

50 mile per hour winds.  This was a hurricane in Alaska.  I had been warned these winds would get bad, but what I wasn't expecting was for them to blow all the snow away overnight.  Drifts of snow that were much higher, it was all just gone.  And it was in the teens.  Even the pilots wouldn’t fly in this weather.  And if there’s one thing I’ve learned about Coast Guard pilots is those people are crazy.  So if they refuse to go out, I know it must be bad.  But it got sunny again, and warmed up a few degrees and I thought the worst was over.  No, apparently that was just a break in the storm.

Then it snowed for days a second time.  Not so much wind this time, so it wasn’t so bad.  It was in the high twenties, so it would have been a nice time to go play in the snow, only I was working.  Of course. Then I came home after a long weekend and I saw what I knew would be bad.  My car’s thermometer said it was 34 degrees out.  This lesson I did learn in Cape May.  Snow melts then refreezes into ice.  Never in my life did I pray that it would get colder, and fast.  Before this got worse.  But pray I did. 

The next day, it was sunny and in the low twenties.  Sure enough, I was right. Ice everywhere.  I had yet to find a pair of ice cleats in my size so I was just going to have learn to navigate this stuff the hard way.  Sometime around noon, I realized I was starving and I decided to brave the roads and go get some sushi.  This should have been a simple task.  Only as soon as I tried to back out of my parking spot, I realized I was not going anywhere anytime soon.  I was stuck.  I got out, no snow behind me keeping me in, so I kept looking.  Sure enough, my front tires were sitting on ice.  And I have a front-wheel drive only vehicle.   After about 45 minutes of trying to get my car to move, I knew I was truly stuck and I needed some help.  Thank God for salt and being stuck on a CG base because I was out in no time.

Only I forgot the sushi place was closed on Monday.  So I settled for pho and pad thai instead.  I now also have ice and a small shovel in my car.  You know, just in case.  And it was a good thing too, because the next day we had white out conditions and it was 4 degrees, wind chill of -25.  But I wasn’t dumb enough to go out in this.  I knew one thing for sure: the snow was kicking my Florida ass.