Towering Snowdrifts Bury City on Remote Russian Peninsula

It’s the biggest snowfall the Kamchatka Peninsula has experienced in nearly 60 years.

The Russian Far East is one of the coldest, most challenging environments on the planet. And still, the residents were unprepared for what they were hit with this year. Piles and piles and piles of snow so high that they towered over people standing next to them.

Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, a small city on the remote arm of land jutting out into icy seas, is a snowy place. But for the last few weeks, even residents used to icy landscapes have struggled with the sheer amount of snow that has fallen since late last year.

The region had several times its usual amount of snowfall in December.

More followed in January, and by the middle of the month an official snow depth of about five and a half feet was recorded in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky on Jan. 16, according to the Hydrometeorological Center of Russia.

Vera Polyakova, head of the Kamchatka Hydrometeorological Center said the area had not received that much snow in nearly 60 years, according to RIA Novosti, a Russian state news agency.

Videos and photos verified by The New York Times showed hills of snow that appeared taller than five and a half feet. They showed snowdrifts, formations created by the wind piling the snow up against obstructions like buildings and fences.

“Snow does not fall down uniformly flat,” said Vladimir Alexeev, a research professor with the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “Wind will make those huge snowdrifts.”

Emergency services reported that two people had been killed by snow falling from rooftops on Jan. 15, according to RIA Novosti. A state of emergency was announced in the city.

But not all the eye-popping images are real. Some A.I.-generated videos circulating on social media have shown apocalyptic scenes of snow rising to the tops of buildings several stories tall.

Some of the clips feature “ridiculously unbelievable snow scenes” that were created with artificial intelligence, while some of the footage is probably authentic, said David Robinson, who leads the Global Snow Lab at Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J.

Andrey Stepanchuk, who lives in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and works for a local travel adventure company, also said some of the videos were not authentic . In reality, he said, the snow was rising no higher than the third floor of buildings. He described the snow as “nothing catastrophic” but said it was a challenge to clean up so much.

The Kamchatka Peninsula stretches out into the Sea of Okhotsk and the North Pacific Ocean for nearly 800 miles, nearing the length of California. Its wild and rugged landscape is dotted with active volcanoes and traversed by rivers filled with salmon.

It has often been the scene of natural disasters. On July 29, a magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck offshore; it was the sixth largest earthquake in the world since 1900, according to the United States Geological Survey. Then the Krasheninnikov volcano erupted on Aug. 3 for the first time in “at least in 400 years,” with ash spewing four miles into the air, according to the Kronotsky Nature Reserve.

But in January, the snow has taken center stage. Marty Ralph, the director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at the University of California, San Diego, looked at visualizations of data from weather models and found that Kamchatka Peninsula received especially heavy snowfall from Jan. 12 to 16.

A strong storm that pulled an atmospheric river of moisture from the northern Pacific Ocean initially swept the peninsula, followed by a weaker storm. Very low temperatures and strong winds that moved over a warmer ocean probably generated more snow, Dr. Ralph said.

A similar situation unfolded in the upper portion of lower Alaska this winter, said Dr. Robinson, the Rutgers snow expert. Juneau recorded 82 inches of snow in December, breaking the December monthly record, as frigid Arctic air interacted with storms pulling in moisture, according to the National Weather Service. When another storm arrived Jan. 9 and 10, a mix of snow and rain fell on the snowy landscape, leading to flooding in some areas.

“These are the types of systems you see along the West Coast of the Lower 48 at times most winters,” Dr. Robinson said.

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