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Imagine sitting on an airplane for five days waiting to leave the runway. Now imagine the weather getting worse with each passing hour. You've got a sense of what it was like for over a hundred people trapped on a train in March 1910. Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow from the Mount Washington Observatory and this is the Weather Notebook.
Stevens Pass
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The passengers were stranded for almost a week by heavy snows until a deadly avalanche ended their journey in disaster. It happened aboard the Great Northern route from Spokane to Seattle, Washington. As the train approached a two-mile tunnel beneath Stevens Pass, it was halted by snowslides. A day and a half later, the tracks were cleared and the train made it through the tunnel, only to be stopped again on the other side, just past the tiny town of Wellington. From Thursday night through Monday night, the train went nowhere. Some of the restless passengers hiked to a small depot in Wellington to get food and send telegrams. Meanwhile, the snow continued to fall. Trees that were visible above the tracks at first were soon buried in a mass of white. By Sunday, as the tension and boredom mounted, a few people decided to hike eight miles ahead to the next town. On Monday, the snow turned to sleet and then to rain, a sure sign of avalanche danger. Finally, at 2:00 a.m. Tuesday morning, March 1st, a mile-wide avalanche threw the passenger train and a mail train off the tracks and 150 feet down a canyon wall. There were 22 survivors, but 96 people were killed-the worst death toll ever for a U.S. avalanche. The tragedy had one silver lining: it spurred construction in the 1930s of a safer, eight-mile tunnel, the longest alpine tunnel in the Western Hemisphere.
Thanks to contributing writer Bob Henson. Our show is underwritten by Subaru, the beauty of all wheel drive with major support provided by the National Science Foundation.
Weather Report from Stevens Pass
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