Snows of Yesteryear
Listen in RealAudio
Email your weather question

Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is the Weather Notebook.

Weather has many facets, including providing inspiration for good tales. David Laskin shares one today.

Mount Baker Snows - Winter '98-'99.

If I ever have grandchildren I know just the winter weather story I'll bore them with - and it will go something like this:

Do you kids know what place holds the record for the most snow ever measured in the US in a single winter? Well I do - because as it happens I was there. Way back in the winter of 1998 to 99, when your mom was only eleven years old, it never EVER stopped snowing on Mount Baker in the northwest corner of Washington State. Imagine a scoop of vanilla ice cream, only HUGE - that's what Mount Baker looked like that winter. When we went up there for a ski trip in the middle of January, there was something like an 800 inch base - and every day it dumped down another foot or so.

You'd think with all that snow, the skiing would be awesome - but it wasn't. You couldn't see, couldn't turn, you were always wet, and at the end of the day, you couldn't find your car. Your mom brought along this friend named Deedee, couldn't ski for beans, and I'll be darned if that little termite didn't fall head first into a snow drift and vanish. Deedee? DEEDEEEEEE! It snowed so much they had to close the mountain for two days in February to dig the chair-lifts out.

By the end of the winter, when they added it up all up, Mt. Baker had set a new snowfall record: 1,140 inches. Do the math, kids: that's 95 feet of snow! You know, those really were the good old days.

Writer David Laskin casts his eye at faraway Mt. Baker from his cozy home in Seattle, Washington. The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mt. Washington Observatory. It is supported by the National Science Foundation.