A Really Windy Place

Attu:

The crew at the Coast Guard station on Attu Island was digging out Wednesday following a weekend storm packing hurricane-force winds that left 7-foot snow drifts and a thick layer of ice on just about everything.

The storm shook the Loran Station's 1-foot thick concrete walls. The sturdy station's wind meter peaked out early Sunday with a 178 mph-hour blast.

...Strecker, who has been at the station for seven months, said he's getting more used to the horrendous storms that rip through Attu Island, which is located at the end of the 1,200-mile Aleutian Island chain. He was even able to sleep through the weekend storm, but only because it wasn't pounding the wall next to his bed.

Even so, it was hard to ignore.

"There are no trees out there, so nothing blocks the wind," he said. "It just sounded like you were next to a train station and a train was going by. It kind of sounded like ongoing rumbling thunder and then there would be peaks where it sounded like something hit the building ... like somebody had bumped into the building with a truck or something."

When Strecker placed his hand on the wall during the storm, he could feel it vibrate. The sound of the storm came through the building's ventilation system. The level of the water in the toilets went up and down with each wind gust.

Strecker ventured up to the recreation deck to watch the storm out the one window that remained clear during the storm.

"It looked like you were going through a snowstorm in a jet," he said.

...By the time the storm ended, there was more than a foot and a half of new snow. One of the communication station antennas was gone.

The storm died down Sunday morning, enough to let the station's crew begin the huge job of digging out - even if winds were still gusting up to 80 mph.

"That seemed pretty tame," Strecker said.