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Turning Back the Pages: Weather issues of the past

A look back at some of the crazy weather that hit the Golden area 50 years ago.
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This is a postcard that shows how they dealt with the heavy snowfalls and avalanches in the past. The snow and debris of an avalanche would get packed hard so the crews

I can’t tell you how many conversations that I have been involved in this year where the topic was the crazy weather that we have been having since last spring. I thought I wonder what the weather was like 50 years ago and went back to the Golden Star to see what I could find.

The first edition of the Golden Star for 1963 was dated, Thursday, Jan. 3, 1963 and bold headline read: HEAVY SNOW CAUSES AVALANCHES

Four Person Trapped in Rogers Pass Snowshed

An unprecedented snowfall, totaling almost ten feet in less a week, followed by heavy rains resulted in the Rogers Pass section of the Trans-Canada Highway being clogged with snow when avalanches buried the highway in two places, trapping two cars carrying four persons inside a snow shed for several hours.

Caught inside the Lanark snowshed on Tuesday, January 1, were Mr. and Mrs. R.G. Peters and child en route to Kamloops, and Cpl. J. Konopetski of the RCAF, en route to Prince George. The slide covered both entrances to the snow shed, holding the travellers prisoner until released by a highway crew about 9 p.m.

Greyhound bus travellers were transported over the section between Golden and Revelstoke by C.P.R. while passenger cars waited at the two towns until the highway was cleared at about 4 p.m. Wednesday.

Although snowfall is exceptionally heavy through Rogers Pass, records fail to show any previous six day period when over 100 inches of snow fell as it did between Christmas and New Years. During that period 125 rounds of 105 mm howitzer shells were fired to bring down the snow.  B.R. Styles, Superintendent of Revelstoke and Glacier National Parks is of the belief that this shelling and the heavy rainfall which followed the snow has brought down most of the snow.

 

The Golden Star – February 7, 1963 – First Came The Snow….Then The Rain

After an unusually long stretch of cold, snappy weather, the mercury rose to about 10 degrees above last Saturday, and at about 5 pm a heavy downfall of light snow began to blanket the ground. A total of seven inches of fresh snow had covered the Golden area before the flakes stopped falling at about 10:15 Sunday morning.

This brought the total snowfall in this area to 50 inches so far this season.

While village employees worked steadily to remove the snow from the streets and sidewalks, Dept. of Highways snow-removing equipment worked constantly on Highway No. 1 clearing snow from the Highway.

Meanwhile the Canadian Army was one again in action shooting down small avalanches in the Rogers Pass section of the Trans-Canada Highway, to help prevent any major catastrophe.

Late Sunday night or early Monday morning it started to rain and temperatures shot up to about 38 degrees above zero. It continued to rain until about 11 Monday night and during that this time, about one inch of precipitation had fallen to the ground.

Coincidental as it may seem, one inch of rain had also fallen in the Golden area exactly one year prior to Monday’s rain (Feb 3).