The weather in Chignik has been cold and filled with snow since the end of November and begining of December. Now it is February and it is wet and warm. This is the time the avalanches come down. So we take caution when driving and walking around these mountainsides. And most of the elders here know about the casualties of messing around near the avalanche areas. We’ve had three avalanches in one night. And that tells you that we should not be near these destructive path makers. Just last winter, an avalanche came down behind a locally owned shop and destroyed crab pots and some old boats that were stored in the back. One village elder told me that the winters have been getting worse since the late 80’s and early 90’s. About ten years ago an avalanche-forced people to evacuate their homes. The slide was so massive that it took them one week to clean. It also through a chunk that was thirty or forty feet tall into the bay and when it hit the water sounded like a airplane ran out of gas and crashed. And as I was typing this article, another avalanche came down, it was enormous. It had to be forty to fifty feet tall. As it came down it destroyed everything in sight. We are going to need some warm weather and rain to melt the snow away. But that is not going to happen with the weather we’ve been receiving.
