Melting, Pause, Melt Again

The last couple of weeks have been good. The days have been warm in comparison to recent months. We've even had temperatures reaching the 40's on the warmest days. Last week, for the first time in a while I saw water on the ground, puddling, making a muddy mess. What a glorious muddy mess! Almost simultaneous to the mud was this water running on top of the ice:

Water flows just off the Steese Highway northeast of Fairbanks.

What's left of the snowdome outside the office. Water, liquid water and reflecting blue skies!

Thankfully the blizzards last week all went south of us:
April 8th we watched enormous blizzards go by to the south of us. Closer to the Alaska range, places were getting 100+ mile per hour winds and snow dumped by the foot. We were safe in Fairbanks. About 1 inch of snow in the morning. It ended up being a beautiful day for us.

Blue skies have made for warm days and cold nights. It looks like mid-week temperatures are going to be less than freezing for hi's and back into single digits for lows. It will definitely put a damper on the melting, but I'm still hoping that by next week it will mostly be gone. Ready for color!

No Darkness for Us

A few days ago I mentioned that it is staying twilight until really late. My friend Jason pointed out on facebook today that as of yesterday the Sun no longer goes lower than 18° below the horizon. By the definitions given by the U.S. Naval observatory, this means that at the darkest part of the night we are officially in 'astronomical twilight'.

Astronomical twilight is defined to begin in the morning, and to end in the evening when the center of the Sun is geometrically 18 degrees below the horizon. Before the beginning of astronomical twilight in the morning and after the end of astronomical twilight in the evening the Sun does not contribute to sky illumination; for a considerable interval after the beginning of morning twilight and before the end of evening twilight, sky illumination is so faint that it is practically imperceptible.
USNO Rise, Set, and Twilight Definitions

I took a few screenshots from Stellarium to illustrate the geometry:

At solar midnight, the Sun will be located somewhere behind the horizon in the north direction.

If you take away the ground, the 'elevation' of the Sun behind the horizon can be seen:

As we move toward summer solstice the Sun will keep getting closer and closer to the horizon until it is only about 2° below the horizon. If you drive a little further north to the arctic circle the Sun won't even set, it will just do a little bounce off the horizon on the solstice.

Blah

We woke up to an inch of fresh snow on top of the old crusty snow and ice. Trying to look at the bright side of things, I decided it was so fluffy that it really only amounted to a half-inch.



The forecast is for 1-3 inches today, then a little bit of a cool-down for the remainder of the week. It could be worse though, we could live just a little bit south or north of Fairbanks where 100+ mile-per-hour winds are blowing roofs off of homes:

From the News Miner:
Storm packing hurricane-force winds slams Alaska; travel advisories issued for Richardson, Parks: "Updated at 6:20 a.m.

FAIRBANKS — High winds and heavy snow brought travel trouble across most of the state Thursday, although the severe weather generally skipped Fairbanks.
However, the snow..."

Right darn crazy Alaska weather.

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

The snow was falling hard earlier today on campus.

We still have snow, and quite a bit of it at that. I am absolutely ready to see some color again. The hardest part for me this winter has been the lack of color. The pines are all this grayish-brown color that makes me feel a little comatose a lot of the time. We had some pretty afternoon light on the mountains though, so we all took a break to go out and enjoy it, take some pictures and breath some real air.

Manbharat, Alex and Jason all at the overlook in front of our building.

It was overcast and snowy by us, but 80 miles to the south the Sun shone down on the Alaska Range. Luckily the air was clear enough that we could see it!

Everyday

Office conversations. Also, this is what happens when a professor gets sick and cancels class.

Twilight Nights

The light is staying late! Taken at 10pm on April 6th after the end of the homework session. Absolutely gorgeous night with the crescent moon descending behind the museum.

March hit us pretty hard with light! We already are up to 14 hours 15 minutes of sunlight a day, and gaining just under 7 minutes a day! The Sun sets after 9pm now and stays fairly twilighty, especially looking north, until about 11 pm. It's cool, after the Sun sets we can watch the light sky move from west to north as we rotate away from it.

Hoping for Denali Trip Soon

Plowing started a few weeks ago down in the park, and they have the road open to the Savage River. Hopefully we can find some time to make a few trips down this spring. The definition of road work is different down in the park:


The plows hard at work: photo courtesy of nps.gov

The park has updates every few days on the status of plowing as they work their way out to Wonder Lake.

Our Cat: Otis

Otis takes a break from watching the birds to figure out what I'm doing climbing up the tree by the window. His lip is usually caught on his tooth.

Otis is a special little guy. He sits in our gigantic window and chirps at the birds until his frustration gets the best of him and he goes to sleep through the day in his little kitty cube. Priorities are: eat, sleep, snuggle, play.

Alaska has been rough on him. He knows that dinner time (wet food) happens when it gets dark. Well, over the winter that was a little after 2pm. That was fun. Now it gets dark around 10pm, and changes fast every day. It's so confusing he now just stands at the fridge and screams at us if he's not sleeping or at the window.

His personality might be top notch, but his wits fall a little short. Recently Kate had to save him from a panic situation involving claws and the window screen during a botched attempt to get at the birds/squirrels/mice that run and fly around tormenting him all day. He's absolutely sure that he can get outside by way of the top of the fridge. He also posits that he is an outdoor cat.

This is false. He is not an outdoor cat. He is an indoor cat, mostly for lack of skills and instinct. He's not what I would call "observant". His probable autism makes him hyper-focus and miss out on all the things that might actually try to get him. His primary defense mechanism from danger and fear is: fall over, play 'heavy-cat'. He went outside in New Hampshire, with supervision. Alaska is different. So, we must jump on any chance we get we try to instill the fear of God into this little man so he's not tempted:



He is, in fact afraid of the front door, so what more could we ask for? He knows that the outside is full of monsters that all want to eat him and he gives us occasional looks that say, "where the hell have you taken me". Otis is really a trooper for making the 4600 mile drive out here, even seeing other monsters on the way!

Back Yard Wanderers

Back Yard Wanderers, a photo by Lee Petersen on Flickr.

Kate looked out the window last night and let out a little yell. These guys were wandering around just outside the window!

Climate Change: It's Confusing Business

No clouds last month. Wow, the average low in Fairbanks in March was -11° F!

March was warmer, and colder, than normal in Fairbanks: "FAIRBANKS — March was both warmer and colder than normal, and that contrast set a new record, according to the National Weather Service.
The sunny month brought mild days with an average high temp..."

Chickadee Icicle

I took this one back in February, but wanted to add it here so that it can go into my birding log (blog ha!). Just a common chickadee hanging out, getting a drink.

Gray Jay

Another bird to add to our tick list. This one was seen on the McKay Creek Trail, off the Steese Highway a little past Chatanika.

Take off your jacket folks, it's warming up!

That's right, we are welcoming high temps in the mid-forties! Sure, it still gets cold at night, but it's nice to go out and do stuff in the day and not need the heavy Primaloft or down jackets. Even Kate, notorious for being unavoidably and eternally cold took off the hat and the jacket during a walk today on the campus trails!


My lovely wife waits for me, the slow husband, who just spent 15 minutes trying to take a picture of a bird. I got the picture though, it's below.

While out on the trails I think I may have managed to get a little sunburn on my face, something I have not thought about at all for the last 7 months. We had a really nice, 2 hour walk back on the trails, and explored a little bit of the boreal forest too.

I love the trees here. They are a bit smaller and spaced much further apart than trees in the lower 48. We're in the taiga, and there is plenty of permafrost so it's harder for the trees to get real big. Since the roots are constrained to the top layer of soil, they can't be as tightly packed.

The forests here are mostly made up of and black spruce, tons and tons of birch, aspen, and I guess you can count alders too. I've never seen birch forests like the ones we have here. You go walking through the woods and it's all white bark everywhere! And in the fall the yellows are unbelievable. When we were hiking up the Healy trail in Denali the valley floor was a river of yellow! It's so cool to see moose trolling around the forest, snowshoe hares and red foxes too. I've shared lots of moose pics, but haven't been fortunate to have my camera on me for a fox encounter, and I have no idea how to take a picture of a snowshoe hare in the snow.

Anyway, I've uploaded quite a few new photos to flickr in the last week. Here's a link to the lightbox that starts at the last recent upload (just scroll through with the right arrow key). That's all for tonight. . . except for the red poll:

I'm not fortunate enough to have a big telephoto lens right now. So when I get photos of animals, you can be pretty sure that I'm as close as I can get. With moose this can be scary, but red polls just take patience. If they don't immediately fly away, they slowly become comfortable with me so I can get close enough to get some good shots. I'm going to have to find a bigger lens for bear season, wildlife is just so cool!

To Do in Fairbanks 3: (Day) Go See a Dogsled Race, (Night) Watch the Aurora

I think a lot of people are put-off by the idea of visiting Fairbanks in the winter because of the cold temperatures. Ok, I won't lie, it's freaking cold here. How cold? Well, I managed to get minor frostbite twice while opening doors with metal handles. I'm a little concerned that they still have door handles made of metal, but, ok. Oh, and its dark too. Really dark. At the worst, the Sun will rise at 11am and set at 2:40pm. I bet you're ready to buy those tickets to Fairbanks in January right now, eh?



Seriously, I knew that mushing was popular here, but I had no idea the extent. If you visit Fairbanks in the winter (which includes most of fall and spring), chances are pretty good that there's a race happening. There are small races almost any weekend it's warm enough at the ADMA. Lot's of them are short sprints, you know, 12-20 miles. But, there are some big races too. Next year the Yukon Quest will be starting in Fairbanks (en route to Whithorse, YT). It's a grueling 1000 mile race across some of the craziest, coldest terrain in the world.



Every March the Open North American Championship is held here. This is a great race over three days. The first two days are twenty mile races, and the last day is a thirty mile sprint. It's awesome to see the dogs, they love to run more than anything! The cool thing about this race is that it goes over the river and through the woods and then right through downtown Fairbanks!







And if there's no race, don't worry you'll almost definitely have some kind of an experience like Kate and I had shortly after the first serious full snowfall (back in the beginning of October). We see them running alongside the roads all the time!

The fact that it's night here most of the time in winter does have one great benefit:


We see a lot of Aurora. If you haven't seen the aurora above 60° latitude, you haven't seen the aurora. It is a reason to come here in the winter all by itself.



A number of places offer 'tours' where you can go out to 'viewing' spots to see the northern lights. Chena Hot Springs does it (we didn't pay the money for it though, we see them all the time). There are a number of other outfits that will get you away from the city lights where the viewing is superb. Or, just drive north.

Calling All Friends. . .

Come on up to


Well, not today though. It was 10 below this morning and I have homework due this afternoon. Tomorrow might be good though. Denali this weekend?

After the late night Quantum and E&M homework session last night I came home to find this view waiting at our porch:



And all you poor New Hampshirites just got snow!
Love you!