More New Things

There is a component of life your first year of Alaska that resembles getting slapped in the face every few days and getting your world view turned upside down. The change in daylight on a daily basis is certainly a physical and mental shock. We are up to 16 hours and 48 minutes a day of sunlight which is more than we had when we arrived in August. That means that every day is the longest day I've ever experienced until we hit the summer solstice.

This was taken beside our house looking almost due south last night (or this morning April 29th) just after midnight. The clouds had a little red effect from light pollution (Fairbanks is just south of us). Really cool colors in the sky! The light on the right tree comes from inside the house.

This was our house and the northwest sky at midnight last night. White fluffy clouds and a significantly lighter blue sky!

There are certainly social shocks too, like people wearing six-shooters on their hips at places like the dump, cars getting run off the road by dogsleds, no dress codes for anything, showers are scheduled weekly, etc. Then there are the animal things like wolves close to town, moose constantly in the yard, and as of the other day, even the occasional bison. I think if Kate called me someday to tell me there was a grizzly bear fighting a donkey with a polar bear watching I would only ask, "who's winning?"

The Warmer, Wetter Side of Alaska

I spent the day trying to get a little more caught up on work and helping students do make-up labs. Quite boring. So, I thought I'd just share a few pictures I took last night when the light was fantastic.

We've had some rain the last few days. In Fairbanks, with rain comes rainbows.

Click any picture to go to flickr.
With the first rains of the season came the first rainbows of the season. When we first arrived in Fairbanks last summer there were rainbows like 3-4 days a week. Now I have a camera to capture them with! This one was over our street!

Awesome light and little rainbow; Fairbanks, Alaska. Gorgeous valleys anywhere you look.

Light shines through a rainstorm in between Ester Dome and Murphy Dome in the evening (I'm standing on Ester Dome here).

Evening light on a small pond near Smith Lake in Fairbanks, Alaska. I love how the darker reflection came out deeper blue because it was dimmer and basically amounted to having a lower exposure on the reflection side. Almost no editing was needed on this one!

The shore of Smith Lake beginning to thaw with the Sun shining bright on the other side.

Yesterday Liquids Fell From the Sky

The first rain of 2011 in Fairbanks fell yesterday and today, confusing and astounding me. A few days before Thanksgiving we had a freak rainstorm, but it's been all solid precipitation since then. Time to remove the snow tires!


Afternoon clouds and showers. First non-frozen precipitation of the season for Fairbanks: April 25th 2011. Great cloud formations obscuring the Sun just enough.


Dark clouds over Fairbanks, but from one butte we can see another to the South lit up nicely from the Sun. The Alaska Range hangs out in the background about 80 miles away, looming a little higher than the cloud-cover. Fairbanks International Airport is in the foreground. I had just missed by seconds a flock of cranes in this frame.

The Many Signs that Spring is Here and Summer is Coming

(1) I saw a big, fat sparkling white tour bus at the museum yesterday. I hear that the tourists descend fast and hard on Fairbanks as soon as the weather becomes "nice".

(2) The birds have arrived en masse. Sunday I saw the first of the Sandhill Cranes. The geese have been here for a few weeks. There is a plethora of ducks, and today I saw the first gulls. I've taken quite a few pictures out at Creamer's Field; here is another one of my favorites:


A Sandhill Crane leads the geese back to the fields. Actually they were all peacefully resting in the field when a helicopter flew overhead and caused them all to scramble.

(3) Snow and ice is being replaced by water and mud . . . everywhere.


New pools have formed everywhere. Here the fence at Creamer's Field is surrounded by water. Even our house is surrounded almost completely by marsh.
Just one week ago this field was snow. Today it is almost all water and reflects the great blue sky.

(4) Speaking of blue skies, we have them all the time. Today we had 16 hours 27 minutes of sunlight. We also just entered a period where the darkest it gets at night is nautical twilight (the sky is still cobalt-bluish). This means our aurora season is dead until at least September.


The Sun setting at about 9:50 pm last weekend. We had nice sundogs and light pillars as the Sun got low on the horizon.

(5) Folks are watching the Nenana Ice Classic pretty closely. Every year people all over the state bet on when the Tanana River will break up. Typically this happens in late April or early May, so right about now. The jackpot this year is $338,062. Kate and I forgot to buy our tickets, doh.

(6) Saw my first green grass yesterday and first green undergrowth popping up too.

(7) It's supposed to snow only at night. Although, even the nighttime lows are hanging just around freezing now. To understand how huge a deal this is you need to know that between November 2010 and March of 2011 Fairbanks had 50 Days where the temperature in °F was below zero. The lows were almost always below zero and we had 10 days where the temperature went lower than -40. It's so nice to go outside in a t-shirt again.

(8) I want to be outside all the time!

Three Cranes

Three Cranes, a photo by Lee Petersen on Flickr.

The Sandhill Cranes are officially back! Kate and I saw one out in the field yesterday. Today there were at least 4 between both fields, but maybe five.

Sandhill Cranes feeding on the grounds at Creamer's Field in Fairbanks, Alaska. The flocks in town are dwindling as they head up to the tundra for breeding. We'll see them again at the end of the summer, hopefully in greater numbers.

Trumpeter Swan

Trumpeter Swan, a photo by Lee Petersen on Flickr.

At Creamer's Field: April 25th, 2011.

Saturday

When Kate and I realized we had no candy at 9pm Saturday night what were we to do? Obviously we had to head to Fred Meyer immediately to get some. When driving up our road I looked left down a side-street and saw some awesome sundogs. So, instead of going to the grocery store we drove to Goldstream Valley to take some pictures.


Attempt to get Kate holding up the sundogs. This was the best I could do. The flash completely blew out the sundogs, and no flash left Kate no more than a silhouette.


I find myself staring at the Sun quite frequently up here.
It was a really cool sunset and the sundogs created rainbow colors in the sky for a while as the Sun went over the hills. This is what we saw:


Sundogs, light pillar and huge sky.


Murphy Dome shortly after sunset. The rainbowish color to the left is what is left of the sundog. You can see the radar dome at the summit.


After the Sun set over the hill a huge light pillar remained illuminating the many layers of clouds.

Otis had his own little adventure too. He was permitted a brief supervised trip into the Alaska wilderness (backyard). We noticed that he was completely oblivious to the dogs in the neighbor's yard, the squirrels screaming at him, and the birds squawking over him. There is no chance that this cat gets to go outside on his own.


Otis pretends to be stalking things outside. If there was a mountain lion in front of him he probably would have bumped into it.

Goose, Gooses, and More Gooses

Ohhhh boy, you'll never guess what we saw today: Geese!



The first flocks of Canada Geese arrived in Fairbanks a couple of weeks ago. Today, Creamer's Field (migratory water fowl refuge) was packed! We saw both Canada and Cackling geese, but to be honest I can't really tell them apart (the cackling geese are smaller). The geese (and hopefully soon, Sandhill Cranes) are just stopping here on their way up to the tundra where they breed.



This is a big deal here since it means that the winter is really on it's way out, and that's a good thing. The winter was long, cold, and dark and personally I'm ready to be warm and see some color again.



The thing that really made today really special was that, in classic Alaskan style, the geese did not come in moderation!

When is the sleep going to happen?

Looks like we just had another gorgeous sunset right? Nope, took this at just 15 minutes before midnight last night.

I'm not sure if it's the amount of work that I've had to finish this week as the semester winds down, or if it's because when I walked out the back (north) door of the Reichardt building at 11:45pm the sky was still orange and red, but sleep is getting not happening as good.

Yup, finished grading at 2am, fell asleep a little later, woke up at 6:30am with the Sun shining in the bedroom window. In a few days we pass into a time when the darkest we get is nautical twilight, which happens when the Sun is less than 12° below the horizon.

At 15 hours and 50 minutes of daylight per day and counting, we are almost back to where we started when we arrived in Fairbanks August 17th of last year. I don't think we noticed as much then. It's pretty exhausting driving 4600 miles in a week, and when you're losing almost 7 minutes a day the darkness slips in fast. Turns out that the through some beautiful symmetry and nice periodic motion the light slips in just as fast this time of the year.

Springtime in Denali National Park

Kate, Jason and I took a little jaunt down to Denali National Park on Sunday, April 17th. It was a gorgeous day, a little hazy and overcast to the south, but we still managed to get some great views. If you've never driven on the Parks Highway you should plan to someday. Although be warned, in the spring the frost heaves get a little ridiculous sometimes.


Get the doggy bags ready. A few frost Heaves on the Parks Highway. Some Mountains to the south. This is around where we saw the wolf.
We saw a wolf run into the woods on the way down to the Park, but unfortunately it was to fast for my slower camera skills. There was more wildlife to be seen, even though I was a little disappointed that we didn't get to see more.


An enigma of the Parks Highway: There's not much to see, but, oh man is there a lot to see.

The Parks parallels the railroad pretty much the whole way to Anchorage. This is just a few miles before the entrance to the park near the Nenana River.

Finally in the park! Feels like spring, right? That's Denali hiding in the clouds to the right of Double Mountain (The big one in the frame).




The Park Road was open to mile 30, at the Taklanika River. This is 15 miles further than it is typically open to the public. They open it for a few weeks once they can plow and before the tourism season starts. You couldn't really plan a trip for this because there is no guarantee that it would be open upon visiting. Road crews were halted last week when they got more than a foot of new snow.

This is why we can't drive into the park in the winter. Happy Spring! It must have been tough moving all this snow.
After parking at the gate we walked for a few miles further down the road and just enjoyed the scenery and some Spruce Grouse.

Down on the Teklanika River there was a little bit of water showing.

Some more breaks in the ice on the Teklanika River. I was a bit hesitant to walk out there at first, until I realized we were mostly over a gravel bar.

It's a walk in the park!
When we drove back we got some new nice views of a hazy Denali, the tallest mountain in North America (or in the world if you are measuring vertical relief) and a couple of Moose. We saw some Caribou too, but they were much to far away to photograph.

Denali

Never be surprised by what you see in Alaska. Fifteen miles into the park, in the middle of the frozen Savage River. Can you spot the father and daughter ice skating?

A cow and calf on our way out, just to say "thanks for coming"

Spring Denali Slideshow

I'll make a real post soon, but until then here is a slideshow from yesterday's trip to Denali National Park. Updates will happen today.


Created with flickr slideshow from softsea.

Magpies

Also in Denali National Park on April 17th, 2011:

Spruce Grouse

Seen in Denali National Park on April 17th, 2011:

8 Months and Counting!

Kate and I have been here for 8 months!

My "This is Alaska" set has grown to 240 images strong (click to view in lightbox):

Be warned it's a large photo set. After the first year I'll post a trimmed down version.

Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: BP Alaska president to speak on tax structure

Last week we got to listen to the ConocoPhillips Chief executive whine about how difficult things are in the oil industry and that they need tax breaks and incentives to do it. Now we get to hear it from BP. The bill in question doesn't make any provisions that the tax cuts given to these companies be used for drilling or exploration in Alaska. Which means there are no provisions that they would even provide Alaska jobs. It does however have a provision to look at the bill again in three years. In fact, the bill allows the oil companies to take all of the money out of the state. But, you know, I have a lot of faith that these oil companies will do the right thing.

BP Alaska president to speak on tax structure: "ANCHORAGE, Alaska - The group seeking changes in Alaska's oil tax structure is hosting another meeting featuring a representative of one of Alaska's big three oil producers.

BP Alaska President ..."

APRN had another good piece here.

And the Wall Street Journal here.

Have I Gone Mad?

1. . . 2 . . . 3 . . . Run, don't slip, wait it's behind me now, just sit still it will come back in a minute! Ahhh, what do I do? It's everywhere at once!



Tonight, under the twilight, the cobalt sky lit up with green highlights as the aurora exploded overhead. It all started a little before midnight, then I was out until 2am shooting the sky. Within minutes the bands were showing fantastic pinks and reds!



And all of this came before midnight! A little after 12 am the sky became mostly dark (although in a couple weeks that cobalt will be as dark as it gets). Of course, this means that this might be the last great show we really get until September.

Once darkness set in the display really began. I don't know where to start; I took 75 pictures that I am going to keep, so after today I'll probably just post a few a week to keep me occupied during the non-aurora summer. Oh, well we did get some strong 'moon dogs' for a while. That was cool and pretty unique:


The interplay between the aurora, clouds and moon was really cool, and since the aurora was also super bright it could really compete with all the other lights in the sky. It's motion was so fast I increased the ISO setting to a little over 1000 for many of the pictures and took 2 sec. exposures to grab some of the texture. This makes the images a little grainier, but still good.

I have to say that as much as I am ready for the snow to melt, I'm really going to miss seeing the northern lights over the next couple of months. I can't describe how cool it is to see them so bright and fantastic; not to mention directly overhead. It was hard to crank the tripod back far enough last night.

In total, I was outside for about 2 hours just watching and taking pictures. It was truly a wonderful, wonderful time.



I've decided to dedicate a whole set on flickr just to tonight since there are so many images. I hope you enjoy these few for now. Thanks for visiting!