Flash news item in today’s (Sunday Dec 20) Seattle Times. Saturday at about 11 a.m. North of the Arctic Circle in Svalbard an Avalanche. – during the time of complete darkness!! Need I say more. Norway must be well used to winter snowstorms and avalanches But this was an even more severe storm in an area well geared to extreme storms. El nino? A situation graphically described in the book We Die Alone by David Howarth.