Avalanche!

[bull]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16499980/

Wow! What a surprise that must have been on the way up the mountain.

"DENVER - A huge avalanche buried cars Saturday and may have pushed others over the edge Saturday on U.S. 40 near 11,307-foot-high Berthoud Pass, Colorado highway officials said.

"Our crews said it was the largest they have ever seen. It took three paths," said Stacey Stegman, spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Transportation.

Seven people had been rescued and one was taken to a hospital, Stegman said. She called it a good sign that a Flight for Life rescue helicopter had not been summoned."

The slide buried at least two cars, officials said.

Crews were probing the area for other vehicles, including any that may have gone off the road, Stegman said. MSNBC's John Larson reported that rescue crews had used a pole to determine if other cars were buried but found none.

The avalanche was described as 200 to 300 feet wide and 15 feet deep.

"It's rare that we see an avalanche come down naturally," Stegman said, noting that the state had done a controlled avalanche Tuesday. She added that there was no determination yet on what triggered Saturday's event.

Berthoud Pass is the main route to Winter Park, one of Colorado's largest ski areas. Stegman said the late-morning timing meant most traffic headed to the ski area had already passed. She said a tragedy could have occurred "had it been a couple of hours earlier."

Three snowstorms in as many weeks have dumped more than 4 feet of snow on parts of Colorado.

A series of storms over the past three weeks exacerbated conditions, Steve Felten, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, told MSNBC.

"You're getting all this heavy snow piling onto a very unstable base," Felten said.

The Berthoud area usually has slides 2 to 3 feet deep, Stegman told CNN. "This is a tremendous amount of snow to come down the mountain for us," she said.

[Charger_Fan]

I would have expected an avalanche of some sort, after all that snow they got recently. We get 'em here all the time after a sizeable storm hits. The avalanche teams are usually up there within  a day or two.