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Whittier, Alaska
Mon Apr 11, 2005
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I’m Bryan Yeaton for The Weather Notebook. Today, Jeremy Pataky visits an Alaskan town that faces some extreme weather challenges.
The port of Whittier, Alaska began as a World War II military outpost, chosen because of the consistently harsh weather that would conceal it from enemy aircraft. The military is long gone, now, but the bad weather hasn’t gone anywhere. Shaded by mountains, the town gets no direct sunlight for nearly three months in winter, and snowfall averages 500 inches per season. Whittier’s 186 residents nearly all live in one building, a renovated barracks. It is connected to the school by an underground tunnel so the kids can get to class even when the weather is severe.
Principal Seymour Skinner: “I’ve got some pictures of our students standing on tops of snowbanks, physically touching the tops of the streetlights.”
Many say the wind is the hardest aspect to deal with, sometimes blowing 50 miles per hour for days on end with gusts to more than 100. Dean Rand and his daughters live on a boat in the harbor.
“Wherever you live in Whittier you know what the weather’s doing. This place is a blowhole, it sits right at the edge of Portage Pass…. I like to say Whittier has the worst weather in Alaska and I don’t even think about the rest of the lower 48, that’s pretty easy living down there.”
Student Heather Rand says winter in Whittier can be fun, too, especially when the sky clears up for a bit.
“It’s fun I mean you can see the stars, you know, in a lot of cities you can’t. And if you put on a lot of snow gear it doesn’t matter what the weather’s like.”
From Whittier, Alaska, I’m Jeremy Pataky.
The Weather Notebook is funded by Subaru of America. We are online at www.weathernotebook.org.
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