Abstract
Reported avalanche fatalities in the United States increased markedly through the latter half of the twentieth century, a result of the increasing popularity of winter sports. Despite this increase, the literature concerning US avalanche fatalities is sparse. This paper presents a comparison of three US databases containing avalanche fatality information: Storm Data, the West Wide Avalanche Network (WWAN) dataset, and the National Avalanche Database (NAD). The frequency of avalanche fatalities, their temporal trends, spatial distributions, and the demographic characteristics of the victims were analyzed in each database for the years 1998–2009 for the US mountainous west. The data were then pooled to arrive at an estimate of avalanche fatality frequency in the United States for the study period. While the results indicate a considerable amount of overlap between the datasets, Storm Data reports fewer avalanche fatalities than both the WWAN and NAD datasets. All three datasets report a maximum of fatalities in January and display three spatial maxima: the Rocky Mountains of west-central Colorado, the intermountain region from central Utah through Idaho to west-central Montana, and the northern Cascade Ranges of Washington; however, a large void appears in the Storm Data records in the vicinity of the Montana maximum. These maxima result from a juxtaposition of avalanche hazard in these mountainous environments with a high concentration of winter sports activities.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the following people for their assistance: Spencer Logan, from the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, for providing the portion of the National Avalanche Database used in this research, and for kindly answering questions via email; Janet Kellam of avalanche.org for kindly answering questions concerning the website; Dr. Scott Sheridan (Kent State University) for reading and commenting on an earlier version of the manuscript; Dr. Thomas Schmidlin (Kent State University) for comments on an earlier version of the manuscript, as well as providing some invaluable insights; and lastly, Peter Felsch and John Livingston of the National Weather Service who kindly answered questions regarding data collection procedures. Lastly, we would like to thank the two reviewers, whose comments improved the manuscript.
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Spencer, J.M., Ashley, W.S. Avalanche fatalities in the western United States: a comparison of three databases. Nat Hazards 58, 31–44 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-010-9641-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-010-9641-3