Eight feet of snow in nine days would paralyze most towns for weeks, plugging streets, collapsing roofs and triggering chaos. It just brings Valdez up to normal.

"That wasn't a great snow, an all-star snow, but it was a good snow," said Valdez Police Lt. Bill Comer. With snow standing 4 feet deep in the fields and forming mountains where it has been piled in vacant lots, the city now looks like it's supposed to look, he said. "The people of Valdez are used to a lot of snow."

After a long, warm fall that featured green grass all the way into December, winter came abruptly, said Jeff Bailey of the National Weather Service in Valdez. Five feet fell in a three-day storm in late December. Another 3 feet dropped in a storm that ended Monday. The snow stake outside his office that showed 3 inches at Christmas now marks 40 inches.


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