Anchorage snow clearing continues months after record winter storms

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - Many parts of the state experienced record snowfall this winter, including Anchorage, which set a new record in January with over 40 inches.

Anchorage Street Maintenance Director Paul VanLandingham said he believed the city did a good job responding with the initial plowing after back-to-back storms but has been working ever since to remove all the snow left behind.

“When you get that much snow, basically everything has to be hauled all at one time,” VanLandingham said. “So, yeah, we’ve been pretty much hauling every day with the exception of a couple of weekends since Jan. 5 this year.”

VanLandingham said widening roads and hauling snow has been a priority but is now winding down. In a normal year, what remains might have been left to melt, but this year was unusual.

“It was just too congested and too tight for people to navigate through, so we made the decision to keep hauling. What you will see is, after this week, probably no more blowing back into people’s yards and things like that, because it’s starting to become messy.”

Much of the city’s snow from roads and neighborhoods has been hauled to municipal snow dumps, including a new one in West Anchorage, which VanLandingham said can hold a lot of snow.

“We’ve hauled about 70,000 loads,” he said. “Which is 1.4 million cubic yards of material or snow into seven different snow sites. And if you want to put that in a visual picture, a washer and dryer unit is about one cubic yard, so if you want to put it that way 1.4 million washer and dryers are in our snow dump, volume-wise.”

VanLandingham said there is still plenty of room at municipal snow sites, adding that they are engineered in a way where flooding is not a concern. Even so, he said, it isn’t likely that all the snow will melt any time soon.

“There’s going to be snow in these sites till late July, mid-August, just about time for us to pick up all the trash in them and go again next year,” he said.

While hauling has been a priority, VanLandingham said they are most concerned now with removing snow and ice that has been blocking storm drains. After that, it’s time to focus on the potholes that will undoubtedly spring up.

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