“By dusk of the first day the newspapers were calling it the ‘Siberian Express.’”

“So total was the Chief Forecaster’s concentration that except for the rapid flight of his hands across the key board he might have been hypnotized.”

Stretching from Mackenzie Bay in the Yukon to the East Siberian Sea above Soviet Russia, the Artic High gathered and held tributary movements of cold air, adding one to another in an immense eddy. At some point, something had to give. When it did, it was as if an immense dam had fractured, spilling cold water onto a dry spillway below. On December 25, 2019 a thousand mile battering ram of frigid air flooded south from Ambarcik in Soviet Siberia to Point Barrow Alaska. Ignoring political boundaries it rolled like a vast tidal wave over the Brooks Range, down the Bering Strait and across the barren Chukchi Peninsula. Throughout Alaska’s interior, regional cold air sinks responded to its massive pressure differential and in the following hours small currents and tributary watersheds stirred then joined the raging torrent.
By dusk of the first day the newspapers were calling it the “Siberian Express.” In Anchorage the temperature plunged to seventy below zero. The cold found cracks around windows, foundations and doors and as residents desperately stoked fires, checked and rechecked engine heaters and piled down quilts on beds, the cold air rolled over the Aleutian Range and spilled onto the Gulf of Alaska.

There, flowing over the warm ocean, for the first time the cold air met resistance. An oceanographer was partly correct when he claimed a vagrant spur off the North Pacific Current caused the storm. Unlike the mountain ranges, the warm ocean air resisted the assault by sliding above it. As the cold continued to push south, it lifted the warm air higher and as it cooled, its moisture precipitated into clouds.

A day later and a thousand miles west of Juneau, Alaska an eddy formed. Tied inextricably to the earth’s rotation, ocean temperatures, a cyclic transfer of energy between the equator and poles and a wave pattern circling the northern hemisphere, the warm and cold air spun in a slow, counter clockwise mass. For the next twenty four hours this movement intensified before the jet stream began to push the mass south and east, toward the California Coast.

At five a.m. on December seventeenth, the Chief Forecaster for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sat silently in front of a blue monitor. On a satellite photo the storm resembled the main sail of an nineteen century Clipper Ship. NOAA’s Chief Forecaster had always taken pride in his ability to integrate vast and diverse dimensions into an understandable pattern. Though he anticipated the barometers initial drop, the magnitude took him by surprise. Staring into the monitor he marveled as the storm continued to spin its heavy cargo slowly inland.

During the past twenty four hours the West Coast had begun to feel the storm’s strength. From Cape Blanco below Coos Bay Oregon as far south as Monterey, seventy mile an hour winds pushed onshore. Eureka, San Francisco, Sacramento, San Jose, and Santa Cruz experienced three inches of rain in as many hours and the evening news showed frantic sandbagging and muddy creeks in place of roads.

So total was the Chief Forecaster’s concentration that except for the rapid flight of his hands across the key board he might have been hypnotized. Despite his slumping shoulders and fixed expression, however, the NOAA Forecaster was not in a trance. Fascinated perhaps, certainly mystified, he sat without moving, his eyes studying the statistical phenomenon which flickered across the screen.

By itself the Arctic Low was sufficiently powerful to break records. But a week before, a hurricane had raked Hawaii with torrential rains before departing on an erratic northeast path. NOAA had invested five hundred thousand dollars into tracking the two fronts. While one steamrolled toward Oregon, the other had staggered drunkenly across the Central Pacific. As long as the two tracked away from one and other, the West Coast could count on a series of desperately needed storms. Twenty-four hours before, the Arctic Low had stalled five hundred miles southwest of Portland. The tightly wound storm was now pumping moisture into the parched states of California, Oregon, Nevada and Idaho.

What concerned NOAA was the latest data. Still two thousand miles away, the Hawaiian hurricane had made a course correction to North-North East. If it held that heading, there was a chance the two systems would collide. Computer models estimated that probability was at best, twenty percent. Under most circumstances, one in five offered little cause for concern. By the time it reached the coast–if it reached the coast–its punch would fade in the cold northern currents. The Forecaster studied its characteristic pinwheel shape and dismissed the possibility. Keying in the latest 500 millibar chart, he focused on the stalled low.

Glancing at his watch, he answered an incessant phone, “NOAA!”

Five fifteen a.m. The Ketchum Snow Ranger was on the line.

Glancing up from the monitor, the Forecaster inquired, “Getting any snow?” He did not smile at his joke.

“Something less than two feet in the past eight hours,” the Snow Ranger reported, staring out the window.

Sun Valley, Idaho felt the storm’s first tendrils in the early evening of December sixteenth. At nine p.m. a white midge landed beneath the Sun Valley Road stoplight on Highway 75. Ketchum’s Snow Ranger monitored the snowfall into the early morning. The low pressure intensified shortly after eleven p.m and within an hour, four inches lay on Ketchum’s back streets. By midnight six inches had fallen. At two a.m. snow was still pouring out of the night sky. The new accumulation was now thigh deep. “Any idea about the duration?” The Ranger focused on the avalanche report that lay open upon his desk.

NOAA’s Forecaster studied the monitor. “This pulse should move out in, uh, roughly four hours.” He opened an electronic file that showed winds aloft.

“That’s welcome news,” The Snow Ranger paced to the window and stared into the dark snowfall. “Winds?”

“Thirty miles an hour as the depression exits the state followed by five, maybe eight hours of clearing.”

“And then?”

“A second depression, more powerful than this one.”

“Christ,” he commented. The blizzard would soon close Sun Valley Road. NOAA predicted the low would be big. Until then, a major dump amounted to two feet in two days. Not two feet in eight hours.”

“I can’t guarantee anything.” The Forecaster admitted. “Any prediction I make about this storm will only be five percent better than a guess. With those odds in mind,” he hesitated, glanced at the monitor then continued, “..there’s a chance the approaching low will accelerate. If that happens you might only get another two feet.”

“Another two feet?” The Ranger turned to his desk and made a note on the report.

“That’s minimum!” The Forecaster advised him.

“It’ll close Highway 75!” The Ranger flipped the pencil onto the desk’s green blotter.

The Forecaster stared at the monitor. “As far south as Shoshone, maybe even Twin Falls. You’ll lose Galena Summit.”

“We lost Galena last night.”

“Not counting this storm, your snowpack is still less than sixty percent of normal. For this time of year, the pack is unusually cold and dry.”

“After these droughts, we need all the water we can get.” the Snow Ranger pushed his left hand through his gray hair. “I wonder why we’re getting it all at once.”

“Idaho!” NOAA’s Forecaster reminded him. “You fight blizzards during the winter or fire come summer.”

“Let’s hope the City plows can stay in front of it!”

The Forecaster took a deep breath. Effort of any kind–indifferent or brilliant–would make little difference.