WeatherAnchorage has officially logged the snowiest January in its recorded history after another powerful winter storm pushed monthly snowfall totals past a long-standing record, according to data from the National Weather Service reported by Alaska Public Media and The Associated Press. As of 3 p.m. on January 27, the National Weather Service office in West Anchorage measured 39.7 inches of snow for the month, surpassing the previous January record of 34.4 inches set in 2000.
Consider the Kamchatka Peninsula, a Russian territory that reaches into the Pacific Ocean north-east of Japan, which has been battling with record amounts of snow this winter. On January 16 alone, a small city on the peninsula's southern coast, called Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, experienced a baffling five and a half feet of snow, effectively burying local residents and their cars completely. Some areas saw more than six and a half feet in just the first half of January.