If this is 2 p.m. it must be noon
March 7, 2017
Confused? Here's how it works. Alaska used to have four time zones: 0ne for Southeastern (Juneau); a large central one (Anchorage, Fairbanks. Barrow); west coast (Bethel, Nome); and one in the western Aleutians.
Juneau was one time zone removed from Seattle, Anchorage one removed from Juneau, Bethel one removed from Anchorage; and western Aleutians one removed from Bethel.
Then several years ago the Legislature chose to ignore geography and put everyone on the same time zone. The zone the solons chose was Juneau's which put the whole state except the Aleutians, only one time zone removed from Seattle, and more importantly only four earlier than New York, mostly so stock brokers in Anchorage didn't have to wake up so early to work the markets. Mind you, this was before the Internet. Then in summer there is Daylight Savings Time which adds another hour to the formula.
So as a result, Local Noon (another name is Solar Noon) in summer is 2 p.m. And in winter Local Noon is 1 p.m., biorhythms be damned.
Imagine if Gary Cooper had showed up for the gunfight two hours early.
Why does this matter? Well, nowadays unless you are totally in tune with the Earth's rotation not much, but only a hundred or so years ago it was very important.
You see, Local Noon is crucial to celestial navigation. It was all the early explorers had. If no one ever explained it to you longitude is measured in degrees, minutes and seconds from the Prime Meridian, and knowing local noon is the key to finding out how far you are from the prime. In order to learn Local Noon, what they did was take sights with a sextant measuring the sun's height above the horizon. From what was believed to be, say, 11:30 a.m. sailors took sights at short, regular intervals. Before noon the angle to the sun would rise slightly with each sight. The minute it showed a drop, they had the best approximation of Local Noon, the highest point reached above the horizon that day. Comparing this with the ship's chronometer set to the time at the prime meridian, they had their longitude. Some mathematical calculations were involved as well. Keep in mind accuracy is necessary, every second the clock is off amounts to a quarter of a mile, so it it is a minute off the ship is 15 miles from where the captain thinks it is. A couple minutes and you could miss Hawaii.
The problem for the early sailors was no one had a reliable chronometer. They never could be sure of the time at the Prime so to speak. The British Admiralty even offered a large money prize for anyone who could design such a marvel. Seventy years passed before anyone claimed the prize.
And what does this have to do with Alaska? Well, Captain James Cook was the first to give that chronometer a shot. He explored and charted much of the West Coast and in particular Alaska's coast looking for the fabled northwest passage. He never found it, but his charts were so accurate they are still valid today. So it looks like the thing worked. But imagine if the time had been two hours earlier as it is today. Cook would have been in the Aleutians thinking he was in Prince William Sound. Of course he might have arrived on that beach in Hawaii two hours early and missed the battle that killed him.
Now wasn't that fun? Just think. You can sleep until noon by the clock, you're really getting up at 10 a.m. not nearly as embarrassing, in Alaska anyway, but the business people get their extra hour of sleep.
Juneau was one time zone removed from Seattle, Anchorage one removed from Juneau, Bethel one removed from Anchorage; and western Aleutians one removed from Bethel.
Then several years ago the Legislature chose to ignore geography and put everyone on the same time zone. The zone the solons chose was Juneau's which put the whole state except the Aleutians, only one time zone removed from Seattle, and more importantly only four earlier than New York, mostly so stock brokers in Anchorage didn't have to wake up so early to work the markets. Mind you, this was before the Internet. Then in summer there is Daylight Savings Time which adds another hour to the formula.
So as a result, Local Noon (another name is Solar Noon) in summer is 2 p.m. And in winter Local Noon is 1 p.m., biorhythms be damned.
Imagine if Gary Cooper had showed up for the gunfight two hours early.
Why does this matter? Well, nowadays unless you are totally in tune with the Earth's rotation not much, but only a hundred or so years ago it was very important.
You see, Local Noon is crucial to celestial navigation. It was all the early explorers had. If no one ever explained it to you longitude is measured in degrees, minutes and seconds from the Prime Meridian, and knowing local noon is the key to finding out how far you are from the prime. In order to learn Local Noon, what they did was take sights with a sextant measuring the sun's height above the horizon. From what was believed to be, say, 11:30 a.m. sailors took sights at short, regular intervals. Before noon the angle to the sun would rise slightly with each sight. The minute it showed a drop, they had the best approximation of Local Noon, the highest point reached above the horizon that day. Comparing this with the ship's chronometer set to the time at the prime meridian, they had their longitude. Some mathematical calculations were involved as well. Keep in mind accuracy is necessary, every second the clock is off amounts to a quarter of a mile, so it it is a minute off the ship is 15 miles from where the captain thinks it is. A couple minutes and you could miss Hawaii.
The problem for the early sailors was no one had a reliable chronometer. They never could be sure of the time at the Prime so to speak. The British Admiralty even offered a large money prize for anyone who could design such a marvel. Seventy years passed before anyone claimed the prize.
And what does this have to do with Alaska? Well, Captain James Cook was the first to give that chronometer a shot. He explored and charted much of the West Coast and in particular Alaska's coast looking for the fabled northwest passage. He never found it, but his charts were so accurate they are still valid today. So it looks like the thing worked. But imagine if the time had been two hours earlier as it is today. Cook would have been in the Aleutians thinking he was in Prince William Sound. Of course he might have arrived on that beach in Hawaii two hours early and missed the battle that killed him.
Now wasn't that fun? Just think. You can sleep until noon by the clock, you're really getting up at 10 a.m. not nearly as embarrassing, in Alaska anyway, but the business people get their extra hour of sleep.
A&E network produced a series about the development of the chronometer titled Longitude.
A post script: I have always loved the saying attributed to the ubiquitous Old Indian about Daylight Savings Time: "Only the white man would cut the bottom off a blanket and then sew it to the top and tell you it was a longer blanket."
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Links to this post
A post script: I have always loved the saying attributed to the ubiquitous Old Indian about Daylight Savings Time: "Only the white man would cut the bottom off a blanket and then sew it to the top and tell you it was a longer blanket."
No comments:
Links to this post
Labels: alaska, maritime history, time zone
2016
The shame of Alaska
October 20, 2016
A lot has been written about alcohol abuse in Alaska, particularly how it affects people in the remote villages. To combat it, some villages vote to go dry, but the liquor keeps flowing no matter what. Reading about studies or surveys or potential solutions, cold, distanced from the situation seldom brings home how evil the effects of alcohol are.
This came up on facebook the other day. It's a statement that puts the tragedy right in your face. I know the people involved and so do a lot of other people, so I am not going to name them. Suffice it to say the man involved was once a hero to Alaskans. They live in a small village off the road system.
Here is the post, his wife's plea to save her husband:
Feel the tragic consequences. The story is the same across Alaska, lives, whole families destroyed by alcohol. I don't know how much more you could say about the depth of the tragedy than this woman's plea. I showed the post to a friend who also knows the family and we both admitted it brought us almost to tears, the sadness for a friend and the utter frustration of not knowing how to help, how to end this somehow.
This came up on facebook the other day. It's a statement that puts the tragedy right in your face. I know the people involved and so do a lot of other people, so I am not going to name them. Suffice it to say the man involved was once a hero to Alaskans. They live in a small village off the road system.
Here is the post, his wife's plea to save her husband:
My poor husband is in a cycle of drinking until he passes out....bleary eyed, wakes up, goes to the bathroom then glubbs something from lord knows who n passes out again....for a month or more......WHOEVER THE EVIL PERSON IS SUPPLYING, WILL BE RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT HAPPENS!!!!!! You will be guilty of murder....that's what is facing you at the pearly gates.....no heaven for you!!!!
People will be mad at me for posting this, but enough is enough.....his 76 year old body can't take it.....if you know who is snickering about doing something behind my back....they are the covered in the mud of the worst kind.....it's on them!!!' Tell them to quit it....NO ONE WILL BE REPAYING LOANS...
Feel the tragic consequences. The story is the same across Alaska, lives, whole families destroyed by alcohol. I don't know how much more you could say about the depth of the tragedy than this woman's plea. I showed the post to a friend who also knows the family and we both admitted it brought us almost to tears, the sadness for a friend and the utter frustration of not knowing how to help, how to end this somehow.
Labels: alaska, alcohol, alcoholism
Somewhere in the background you can hear a Red Queen shouting
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| This particular moose was only about 10 feet from the pavement. |
August 22, 2016
This headline came up today: "Someone is stealing dead moose from the sides of Alaska's roads." Now at first glimpse it seems like a story where you ask why and go on. But, this is a deadly serious issue in Alaska as attested to by an adventure from the early 80s.
To begin with generally when a moose gets mowed down by a car, truck or train, Troopers call a charirty group and members come out to butcher the moose and pass the meat on to folks in need. But the butchers sometimes don't get there quickly enough.
One winter in the early 80s I found myself living among a group of dog mushers near Willow. Three dog lots were involved and my main chore involved a shovel.
One night we were flopped out watching television after all the chores had been completed. The phone interrupted us and one of the fellows jumped up and answered. This guy was a nervous excitable type who spoke with a thick Eastern European accent. All he spoke into the phone was: "What? Where?" Now, understand this is an excitable guy, so almost anything would have sounded like a major crisis. He pulled on his jacket and raced for the door, the word "moose" lingering in the smoke of his hasty exit.
All went quiet for almost two hours until we heard the guy's truck race back into the yard and onto the dog lot. By the time we got there all we could hear was a string of what must have been serious swearing in that Eastern European language. He had already jumped out of the truck and was kicking at something on the ground That turned out to be a moose head and part of a neck and our friend kicked it as far as he could. Immediately the gang of puppies roaming the yard attacked and that was that, except for the story.
In between guttural thickly accented grunts of profanity this is what we discerned listening to our friend. He had arrived at the moose dead by the roadside before the charity butchers, but in dog mushing country word of mouth was faster than today's internet. Another musher pulled up at the same time and apparently quite an argument ensued.
Neither of them would give up claim to the moose nor could they arrive at a fair way to split the meat between them.
In the end the other musher hitched the hind end of the moose to his truck leaving our friend to latch onto the head. Then they drove off in opposite directions. Apparently the weak link in a moose carcass is the neck because part of that and the head were all our friend came away with. In his anger he didn't even stop to load it into his truck, just dragged it home bouncing along the road behind him.
Three of us started laughing and making bad jokes, which only infuriated him more. Our friend stormed off and we didn't see him until the next morning.
Out in the dog lot while he was feeding he came across the head where the puppies had dragged it. He gave it one last kick and it disappeared into the woods never to be spoken of again. Until now.
Dead moose along Alaska's roadsides is serious business, but stealing might be too strong a word for the aftermath.
Green Day 2016
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| Mountainside snow provides backdrop for the Green. |
It happened overnight. Having grown weary of meth addiction, detoxing, and general young-woman angst, as I woke up this morning I searched for some other occupation for my mind at least for a while. There was this letter that needed to be mailed but it seemed difficult to justify a drive into town, 20 miles round trip to post a letter, especially since I had made the same trip just the day before.
Then the thought of driving around the countryside looking for any sandhill cranes that might have stopped in the fields on their way to nesting spots farther north. So, I threw the camera into the Jeep and took off.
It only dawned on me when I had almost made it halfway to town. Everything was green. It hadn't been like that just one day earlier; to paraphrase the Mamas and the Poppas, all the trees were brown and the sky was gray Wednesday. Everything has been earlier this year but this came as a surprise. Green Day is supposed to happen in May.
Green Day! For those who haven't seen the explanation before, there is a day in spring when seemingly overnight all the buds in the deciduous trees turn green and the forest canopy takes on a definite green hue. Farther north people call it green-up. That usually happens in May. For example, Green Day was May 17 in 2012 and May 12 in 2011. In the years I have been watching and documenting, it has never happened in April and there are still
10 days left in this month. Greenup in the Fairbanks area happened five days later on the 26th.
So, after I left that vital piece of mail at the Post Office, I headed out into the farmlands in search of cranes, but also now looking for a good illustration of Green Day. The first didn't take long, the latter never happened. Sunshine covered the landscape and highlighted the green in the trees, the white on the higher mountainsides but never touched a crane in this valley as far as I could see.
I made a wide circle among the fields, many with tractors working in them, on my way home and since I had to pass the reindeer farm that's about two miles from my house, I thought maybe there would be some calves around. At the fence I pulled off the road where a few adults were grazing nearby. I made a few snapshots but nothing worth saving. Most were on their feet nibbling at the short grass, but one I noticed had laid down and was not moving much, not a very interesting photography subject at all.
I was about to pack it in when I saw a hang glider come into view off the top of the Butte itself. I followed it around through the lens and made a couple of pictures, but again, nothing worth saving. I had gone back to the car and started packing the camera equipment away for the trip home when I chanced to look across the field and saw that one reindeer stand up. As I watched a large dark object dropped out and onto the ground. Holy Crap! She just had a calf. I had to change lenses in a hurry and hustle back to the fence where I was able to watch her clean the calf, watch it take its first halting steps, falling down a couple of times and then finally standing on fairly solid legs, all in a matter of 10 minutes or so.
Who needs cranes? What a treat to watch such a rite of spring, and on Green Day of all days. I watched that cow and calf for some time, then left them after half an hour or so and headed on home, but for the first time feeling the promise of spring. As I drove away I noticed at least four more reindeer lying down in the pasture, the promise of more calves coming soon.
Alaska Reindeer Farm Green Day 2012 Green Day 2011
Then the thought of driving around the countryside looking for any sandhill cranes that might have stopped in the fields on their way to nesting spots farther north. So, I threw the camera into the Jeep and took off.
It only dawned on me when I had almost made it halfway to town. Everything was green. It hadn't been like that just one day earlier; to paraphrase the Mamas and the Poppas, all the trees were brown and the sky was gray Wednesday. Everything has been earlier this year but this came as a surprise. Green Day is supposed to happen in May.
Green Day! For those who haven't seen the explanation before, there is a day in spring when seemingly overnight all the buds in the deciduous trees turn green and the forest canopy takes on a definite green hue. Farther north people call it green-up. That usually happens in May. For example, Green Day was May 17 in 2012 and May 12 in 2011. In the years I have been watching and documenting, it has never happened in April and there are still
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| Fairbanks NWS Chart shows average greenup days there. |
So, after I left that vital piece of mail at the Post Office, I headed out into the farmlands in search of cranes, but also now looking for a good illustration of Green Day. The first didn't take long, the latter never happened. Sunshine covered the landscape and highlighted the green in the trees, the white on the higher mountainsides but never touched a crane in this valley as far as I could see.
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| There's a lot going on in this picture. Overhead a hang glider flies by. The white in the lower center is the reindeer about to give birth. In the background is the Butte itself. |
I was about to pack it in when I saw a hang glider come into view off the top of the Butte itself. I followed it around through the lens and made a couple of pictures, but again, nothing worth saving. I had gone back to the car and started packing the camera equipment away for the trip home when I chanced to look across the field and saw that one reindeer stand up. As I watched a large dark object dropped out and onto the ground. Holy Crap! She just had a calf. I had to change lenses in a hurry and hustle back to the fence where I was able to watch her clean the calf, watch it take its first halting steps, falling down a couple of times and then finally standing on fairly solid legs, all in a matter of 10 minutes or so.
Who needs cranes? What a treat to watch such a rite of spring, and on Green Day of all days. I watched that cow and calf for some time, then left them after half an hour or so and headed on home, but for the first time feeling the promise of spring. As I drove away I noticed at least four more reindeer lying down in the pasture, the promise of more calves coming soon.
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| Shortly after the birth, the calf is able to stand fairly steadily. |
Not with a bang, but with a flush
March 17, 2016
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| The overnight visitor. |
At the Pole the snow is a good two feet deep and another foot fell over the past couple of days. Now the sun is out, it's about 60 degrees on the west-facing veranda (isn't that a classier word than porch or deck?). I spent most of the day getting the remaining firewood under the house and I have a couple of more days of that and then I will head out before the rains come. This hasn't been a great winter but at least I got the month of December and most of the month of March.
Had some interesting fun this week. A chickadee flew into the house and spent the night. I had tried to guide him out and he disappearred quietly and I thought he had gone, but in the morning fluttering around he actually banged into my hat. So I opened a window again and spread some seed on the sill and within a few minutes he flew out apparently none the worse for the experience.
I also learned about a luxury accessory on the snowmachine. All I have ever owned or driven are Ski Doo Tundras; I had the original model and now a 1995 Tundra II. They are popular among bush folk for one because they go on forever and two, they are light enough you can almost pick them up and throw them around when they get stuck.
But when it came time for my son to have one, a Tundra was not going to do the trick. Living in the snow capital of North America as we did, teenaged boys could care less about hot rods, but they knew all the hot snowmachine models and every kid had to have one. I bought my son a fairly modest one, another Skidoo, but a racier one with a 550 CC engine. Among other features, it has a reverse gear which didn't seem all that necessary to me. I inherited it when he went away to college but hadn't used it much. I paid quite a bit of money a couple of years ago to bring it up to useable so I thought I would try it out on this trip particularly because with its more powerful engine it would be better able to haul heavy firewood up the hill.
That part worked great and so did the surprise feature. Yesterday I had to go out for some supplies over a trail that had just received a dump of snow atop its icy surface. Twice I got stuck, once on an icy hill and once when I went off into deeper snow. Both times I was able to unhook the sled and pull it backward to a level spot and then put the snowmachine in reverse and back right out of my problem. I have a new respect for reverse gears and am loving this snowmachine. Do I have to mention the hand and thumb warmers? Of course if my son reads this, he's probably going to want it back. No deal!
Other than that it's been fairly mellow around here as winter fades under the sun, but I am not mentally ready for a garden yet.
Labels: alaska, Alaska winter, firewood, snowmachines
OK, this officially bothers me
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| NASA photo shows the Bering Strait choked with ice. |
March 4, 2016
Alaska is a place where lots of adventurers like to challenge the elements and set off on outrageous expeditions, often underestimating the challenge. In the old days they just never came back. But now, in the days of GPS, SPOT locaters, satellite telephones and several agencies set up to rescue those people, the ones Darwin's theory might have separated from the herd, when they call for help, often requiring heroic efforts by rescuers, and make it back, only to try again if they haven't learned a lesson.
A perfect example occurred in the last couple of days. These two guys decided they would challenge the Bering Strait in late winter, attempting to trek from Wales on the Alaska mainland to Little Diomede, an island out in the middle somewhere. They had skis and kayaks to make their way across ice and open water, in the dynamic ocean environment of winter storms and shifting ice floes.
Thursday the Coast Guard had to fly two helicopters and an fixed wing aircraft all the way from Kodiak to pick them up. It turns out the ice was too thin to walk on and there was too much of it to kayak through it. Imagine that. So they activated their emergency locater beacons and waited for the cavalry.
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| NASA satellite image of Bering Strait without ice. Cape Dezhnev, Russia is on the left, the two Diomede Islands are in the middle, and Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska is on the right. |
The Coast Guard rescue crews stationed in Kodiak are loved in Alaska. Watch the movie "The Guardian" some time. They risk their lives constantly rescuing mariners in trouble along Alaska's coast which is longer than the coastline of the rest of the United States combined, literally from Ketchikan to Barrow and that's about to be extended all the way around to the Canadian border in the Arctic Ocean. Year after year we experience or at least read about these people who go out in the worst weather in their helicopters of all things and pull fishermen and sailors off their sinking vessels. That is their job and they consistently perform admirably.
What's wrong here is this time they had to rescue two guys from a misguided adventure as in "hey look at this map of the Bering Strait, I bet we could ski and kayak across it in winter; I bet nobody has ever done that." There's probably a real good reason nobody has done that, if in fact it has never been done.
So the end result is two Coast Guard helicopter crews plus others are sent in hazard to rescue these yokels from a whim of an adventure that didn't have to happen. It's not the first time and it won't be the last. And from the Guard's point of view, you can't really ignore them and leave them out there. You think of the families of the crews whose fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers face death in their helos just to pluck these people from their own mistakes. Besides the danger, imagine the cost to taxpayers of flying two helicopters and a fixed wing and their crews about 500 miles each way to extract adventurers from the Bering ice. In recent years some agencies have begun charging the people they rescue. It's the least these guys could do to pay for their foolishness. They are damned lucky to be alive to pay it.
A bit of an aside here. If you read this blog, you know I use a Spot locater. And while I know I could use it if I ever got into trouble, the main reason I bought it was a couple times I was a day or two late getting back and some people almost reached the point of calling for a rescue or at least a check on me. My daily check-ins with the Spot prevent anyone from calling an unnecessary rescue on me. Now THAT would be an embarrassing situation.
So, the end result is the Coast Guard in Alaska has pulled off another rescue, two adventurers are all smiles as they ride in a helo from the middle of the Bering Strait to Nome and a warm flight home while the Guard flight crews head back to Kodiak, check and repair and restock their gear in order to be prepared for the next call, all in a day's work, in this case a day's work that didn't really have to happen.
Coast Guard rescues two men stranded in Bering Strait (Anchorage Dispatch News)
British explorers describe their rescue from the Bering Sea
A series of unfortunate events
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| You have to pay attention all the time. |
February 6, 2016
A story showed up today in the Alaska Dispatch News about an Anchorage student who died while skiing alone in Montana. It was a fairly short story but it appeared the fellow was experienced. A line in that story stood out and it's something we all should listen to and store in memory.
It goes: "It appeared Wright had an equipment malfunction that led to a series of events that ended with his death."
Small events add up. Years ago 1980 Iditarod champion Joe May told me about an experience during the race in which it happened to him. He had loaned some equipment to another musher who had some problems and then Joe ran into a severe blizzard that drove him into a snow cave on the Seward Peninsula wondering if he would survive. Things add up.
Though my experience this week pales in comparison to those two, the lesson still applies and as my situation deteriorated, I could tell too much was going wrong. Fortunately I never came close the point of no return and at the point where I turned back I was not far from accessible help.
We may never know exactly what string of events developed that led to Nathaniel Wright's death but the message should be carried on, and it goes back to the old saw "for want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe, the horse was lost, for want of a horse the general was lost; for want of a general the battle was lost …"
In my case it could have been that Bic lighter that should have been in my survival pack. In Joe's case it was the heavy winter pants and mittens that he had loaned to his fellow musher and in Nathanial Wright's case something broke and that led through that series of events that eventually killed him.
There is another lesson here, one explained by Iditarod musher Donna Gentry Massay. She lost the trail during a race somewhere in the area where Joe had holed up a year or two before. When she realized she was off the trail and wasn't sure exactly sure where she was, she "stopped and wrote it all out in the snow." In other words she traced her path with a finger in the snow making a makeshift map that helped her figure out how to get back to the trail. I have used that phrase often, "writing it out in the snow." To me it means sometimes when things are going wrong, you have to stop and think your way through whatever problem you are having and figure out where you went wrong, take stock so to speak and gather your wits. That was the process the led me to turn around and go home Monday.
As a friend who is experienced in the Bush commented on yesterday's post, we are constantly learning new lessons. And, too, we shouldn't be forgetting the old ones.
Here is a more detailed version of the incident in Montana. Note that he left his emergency kit in his car.
There is another lesson here, one explained by Iditarod musher Donna Gentry Massay. She lost the trail during a race somewhere in the area where Joe had holed up a year or two before. When she realized she was off the trail and wasn't sure exactly sure where she was, she "stopped and wrote it all out in the snow." In other words she traced her path with a finger in the snow making a makeshift map that helped her figure out how to get back to the trail. I have used that phrase often, "writing it out in the snow." To me it means sometimes when things are going wrong, you have to stop and think your way through whatever problem you are having and figure out where you went wrong, take stock so to speak and gather your wits. That was the process the led me to turn around and go home Monday.
As a friend who is experienced in the Bush commented on yesterday's post, we are constantly learning new lessons. And, too, we shouldn't be forgetting the old ones.
Here is a more detailed version of the incident in Montana. Note that he left his emergency kit in his car.
Labels: alaska, Alaska winter, survival
2015
Clearing up the last of 2014 and riding this rock into 2015
January 8, 2015
In terms of wrap-ups. the weather takes a front page position. First note was that Anchorage, Alaska, in late December marked a whole year where the temperature never fell below zero. The last time that happened was a period of more than 600 days over the years 2000 and 2001. While 2014 may not be a record, the streak may not be over so it could still happen.
In addition to Anchorage's year above zero, the official statistics came down this week that show 2014 was the warmest year in Alaska since records have been kept, the warmest since at least 1918. That's the state as a whole, not individual reporting stations, so only a few local records were broken. But
overall it was the warmest. And on top of that, it turns out 2014 was the warmest year on record for the entire country.
Despite the warm year, the state didn't entertain a very remarkable fire season. According to the Alaska Division of Forestry, 393 fires burned 244,529.5 acres. The largest by far was the Funny River fire on the Kenai Peninsula in May and June which consumed nearly 200,000 acres. I have no idea how many football fields that is.
So we're all warmed up to ride this rock around the sun, right? Wrong.
You see, on November 18, the country, the whole country, recorded the coldest ever overall temperature for that date. The average temperature that day for the contiguous 48 states dropped to 19.4 degrees at 7 a.m. according to one dataset used by forecasters. Every state recorded temperatures below freezing, every state. Yes. that includes Hawaii where the temperature went below freezing at the observatories on Mauna Kea at 13,796 feet above sea level.
It made a mess out of the political argument. I mean every state freezing on the same day, that sure does fire up the climate change deniers. But, then Alaska's warm and the polar ice continues to melt, but the deniers can't see those so they probably don't count. Maybe Earth is just tipping over.
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| There are four grosbeaks and two chickadees in this picture. Good Luck |
The polar vortex is forming again and sure enough the snowy owls are following the pattern. There's a new problem this year, though. Last year there was an overpopulation of their favorite prey, the Arctic lemmings. This year there isn't and owls have been rescued at several locations, stressed and starving. There are some good folks out there trying to save as many as they can but it might be a tough road for the owls and the rescuers.
Meanwhile there's no snow in my yard and rain in the forecast and still no trail to the East Pole. This past week here it got to about 5 below zero, but this isn't Anchorage which is generally warmer, sometimes by 20 degrees.
There are lots of birds, mostly Pine grosbeaks (I counted 13 at one time the other day), more Chickadees than I have noticed before, nuthatches, and at least one downy woodpecker and one hairy woodpecker. A single, lonely redpoll showed up New Year's Day and an exotic that still remains unidentified was here just before Christmas.
And just to get things going on this new voyage through our galaxy:
and
Kirby Delauter, Kirby Delauter, Kirby Delauter
and a personal one:
From now on, it's just us (I might explain that some day).
2014 the warmest on record for the entire country
More earthquakes in 2014 than any year on record
They're baaack: Snowy owls heading south again
From now on, it's just us (I might explain that some day).
2014 the warmest on record for the entire country
More earthquakes in 2014 than any year on record
They're baaack: Snowy owls heading south again
Labels: #jesuischarlie, Alaska birds, Alaska weather, Kirby Delauter, snowy owl, wildfire
You'd think Alaska was under attack
January 28, 2015In his campaign for the Senate last year, Alaska's junior senator said he will stand up to Obama. Well, the president is giving him plenty of reason to stand up. but so far there's been only one such incident when Dan Sullivan spoke to the Senate about, guess what, gun control. And what did he want to control? No he isn't going against all his Republican cohorts to actually control weaponry in the U.S., unless you happen to work for the Environmental Protection Agency or the Bureau of Land Management.
Those are the people he wants to take guns away from. It all began with a confrontation a few years ago when EPA officials had a dustup with a group of miners in Interior Alaska over pollution issues. Some guns were drawn, the folks complained the federal officials overstepped their authority and after an investigation, it was deemed the feds acted properly. So now, that's Sullivan's vital issue, he wants to send federal employees all over Alaska into bear country unarmed. Mind you every damned drunken nutcase in Alaska can take a gun anywhere he wants but those dangerous federal officials are going to have to use sticks and stones to fend off attacking grizzlies.
Meanwhile President Obama launched a major initiative to protect some of Alaska's most precious country from drooling oil drillers wringing their hands to get into the ground in the Arctic.
First he proposed designating 12.2 million acres of the 19-million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as wilderness, effectively removing it from access by those attacking oil drillers. That of course drew outrage from Alaska politicians who can only see dollars and economic growth. Keep in mind these same politicians approved an incentive program for the oil industry which when it was finally analyzed appears to have doled out more money to the industry than the state took in from royalties. And we wonder why there is a budget crisis in Alaska. And our senator who was going to stand up to Obama? He showed up in a picture peeking over the shoulder of the state's other senator, Lisa Murkowski as she protested the move.
Murkowski incidentally is so in the pocket of the oil industry she supports the Keystone pipeline and somehow has managed to rationalize a reason why building a pipeline for the dirtiest oil in the world from Canada across the Untied Sates to salt water in the Gulf of Mexico for export overseas, would be of some economic benefit to Alaska.
And while Alaskans were screaming from the treetops about ANWR (where there are no treetops) in what could be construed as something like a basketball juke and drive to the basket, while Alaskans were taking the fake, Obama in an executive order placed 9.8 million acres offshore in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas as marine wilderness. It looks like that would be at least near the area where Shell spent a whole season unable to drill in the Chukchi Sea and then almost lost its drilling rig during the trip south after the season.
If you read the Alaska news outlets or listen to the television talking heads you would think every single Alaskan opposes these moves, at least in what the politicians are quoted as saying. Not so. There are plenty of us cheering for the president and who want those places preserved, others of us who have experience with oil spills who want no part of a spill in Arctic waters and even more who just like the pretty, wild country and its wildlife. And that's not to mention preserving the traditional lifestyle of the Eskimos who live along that coast.
Along with that there are probably even more who would like to see the junior senator just STFU. We might wonder if one of those EPA guys gets lunched by a grizzly would the government be liable for damages. Maybe Junior would like to establish a multi-million-dollar escrow account of his own money to support their widows and children.
Protection for marine wilderness
Chukchi Sea biological hot spot preservedAlaska Dispatch News report
Chukchi Sea biological hot spot preservedAlaska Dispatch News report
COMMENTS:
Janice Edwards Excellent article, Tim. Thanks for breaking it down for your neighbors in the lower 48.
The day of two sunrises
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| Morning sunrise 2/5/15 |
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| Afternoon sunrise 2/5/15 |
The heck with that groundhog, this sign is more scientifically accurate – this sign that spring is coming on the Orca Jones almanac calendar. This is the first day the sun rises twice to shine in this yard barely covered with snow but full of birds. The complete explanation is in the link below.
The next item on that calendar? The first kiss of spring. That's the day, usually later in February when your are driving generally westward during the part of the day when the sun is highest and you feel a bit of warmth on your cheek for the first time in the year. That's the first kiss. Next comes Green Day but with an Equinox in between. But those are too far off to contemplate yet.
Despite those dates, I am not one of those people tired of winter and anxiously awaiting the advent of spring. Nor am I one of those people who irritate others by proclaiming they love winter for a various number of reasons and happily want it to go on forever. A lot of those people ride bicycles in winter, too.
No, I just want winter to hang in there for a little bit longer than many people do. That's because to my mind March is the best month on the Alaska calendar and it is particularly best for outdoors activity. There's a reason the Iditarod Sled Dog Race is run in March.
To begin with, we get almost a full day of sunlight as the Equinox approaches. Generally in March the weather is fairly mild with most of the potential sunshine actually lighting up the world. Temperatures drop below freezing most nights and rise into the 20s during the day making it cool for sleeping at night and warm for moving around outdoors during the day.
Snow that has fallen over the winter has had time to compact and form a good base and the surface snow solidifies in the cold overnight making travel relatively easy during the early part of the day. Often even a full grown man can walk across the surface until early afternoon when it softens enough that you can break through.
The sun that offered that first tempting kiss in February in March beats down and warms everything in its way. At times on the deck at the East Pole the temperature has reached 70 in direct sunlight and you can sit there in a t-shirt, at least until the sun goes behind a tree and the then it cools off rapidly.
It is also spring, a time of new energy and in that climate energy flows. It's one of the best times for gathering firewood because you can maneuver in the woods so easily. It is a time to haul in supplies for the summer building season over well-packed trails.
Just generally March in Southcentral Alaska is a grand time to be outdoors. And while I am probably as happy as anyone to see spring replace winter, I honestly do want it to happen a little later than most people do. Any time in April would be just fine.
Explanation: The month of two sunrises
The next item on that calendar? The first kiss of spring. That's the day, usually later in February when your are driving generally westward during the part of the day when the sun is highest and you feel a bit of warmth on your cheek for the first time in the year. That's the first kiss. Next comes Green Day but with an Equinox in between. But those are too far off to contemplate yet.
Despite those dates, I am not one of those people tired of winter and anxiously awaiting the advent of spring. Nor am I one of those people who irritate others by proclaiming they love winter for a various number of reasons and happily want it to go on forever. A lot of those people ride bicycles in winter, too.
No, I just want winter to hang in there for a little bit longer than many people do. That's because to my mind March is the best month on the Alaska calendar and it is particularly best for outdoors activity. There's a reason the Iditarod Sled Dog Race is run in March.
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| Afternoon sunshine lights up a male Pine grosbeak. |
To begin with, we get almost a full day of sunlight as the Equinox approaches. Generally in March the weather is fairly mild with most of the potential sunshine actually lighting up the world. Temperatures drop below freezing most nights and rise into the 20s during the day making it cool for sleeping at night and warm for moving around outdoors during the day.
Snow that has fallen over the winter has had time to compact and form a good base and the surface snow solidifies in the cold overnight making travel relatively easy during the early part of the day. Often even a full grown man can walk across the surface until early afternoon when it softens enough that you can break through.
The sun that offered that first tempting kiss in February in March beats down and warms everything in its way. At times on the deck at the East Pole the temperature has reached 70 in direct sunlight and you can sit there in a t-shirt, at least until the sun goes behind a tree and the then it cools off rapidly.
It is also spring, a time of new energy and in that climate energy flows. It's one of the best times for gathering firewood because you can maneuver in the woods so easily. It is a time to haul in supplies for the summer building season over well-packed trails.
Just generally March in Southcentral Alaska is a grand time to be outdoors. And while I am probably as happy as anyone to see spring replace winter, I honestly do want it to happen a little later than most people do. Any time in April would be just fine.
Explanation: The month of two sunrises
Never a dull moment in springtime Alaska
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| Photo credit: Pioneer Peak Hotshot Crew
A member of the Pioneer Peak Hot Shot Crew
communicates with an aircraft on the Eagle fire.
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So, Thursday night 5/28, a 6.8 earthquake in the Aleutians rattled the south coast of Alaska over a span of almost 500 miles. Very little damage reported but so far that's the biggest earthquake we had this year. It was just one of several natural phenomena in the state recently.
But this is about nature in Alaska. Flooding on the Arctic Plain has damaged and closed the Dalton Highway between the Brooks Range and the coast. That's the only supply road to the vast oil fields along that coast. Floods almost closed the main airport at Deadhorse, the closest one to Prudhoe Bay. June 5 is the earliest the state says it can have the road cleared and repaired. Right now I'd like to take that Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, the one who threw the snowball in the Senate last winter and say there's your gorum global warming MF.
To begin with while everyone was watching those floods in Texas and the hypocrisy involved with Texas congressmen who voted no on aid for Hurricane Sandy a couple of years ago demanded emergency aid for their own state, there are also floods in Arctic Alaska. So in the face of that and the claims President Obama is invading the state under the guise of a military training exercise, the U.S. did invade only they did it with FEMA trailers and trucks and an army of emergency responders. Maybe that fence all those yahoos want to exclude people crossing from the south ought to include Texas as well. Starting a new movement here: "LET TEXAS SECEDE."
But this is about nature in Alaska. Flooding on the Arctic Plain has damaged and closed the Dalton Highway between the Brooks Range and the coast. That's the only supply road to the vast oil fields along that coast. Floods almost closed the main airport at Deadhorse, the closest one to Prudhoe Bay. June 5 is the earliest the state says it can have the road cleared and repaired. Right now I'd like to take that Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, the one who threw the snowball in the Senate last winter and say there's your gorum global warming MF.
May 23 saw a new state record, the earliest date ever when a temperature in Alaska was reported at 90 degrees or higher. The temperature was observed and recorded in Eagle in the eastern central part of the state where it reached 91o F. Continuing on, temperatures are expected in the 80s through the following weekend along the south coast as well. More records are expected this weekend including in the town closest to the East Pole.
Meanwhile despite all the heat, it snowed at a field station in the Brooks Range. Temperature last Sunday at Toolik, 71; Friday, snow.
As one could imagine fire danger is high across the state. Fortunately so far there have only been a few small fires, though one near Eagle where the temperature reached 91 the other day, by Friday had grown to 1,800 acres. The Pioneer Peak Hot Shot crew that trains right down the road from here is hard at work on that one. Heavy duty resources like water scooping airplanes and retardant-carrying tankers have been stationed around the state in anticipation of more fires.
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| Coal seam fires. |
As if wildfire danger isn't enough, the Alaska Division of Forestry reported discovering nine coal seam fires burning near Healy close to Denali National Park. These fires burn underground along coal seams sometimes for as long as a hundred years. Every once in a while one breaks through to the surface. They are very difficult to extinguish.By Friday they had burned over more than 700 acres.
Meanwhile it came to light this week that Kodiak Island has reached nearly 100 percent powered by renewable resources, wind and hydro.
Ever notice that every once in a while when you think you have it all figured out, nature rears up and lets you know who's in charge here?
There's a fire in the neighborhood
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Photo by Stefan Hinman//Matanuska-Susitna Borough
The #sockeyefire near Willow, Alaska, the evening of 6/14/15. |
June 15, 2015
UPDATE: A little scare last night 6/16 when lightening set off a couple of fires much closer to the East Pole. Washington state Hotshot team had them controlled by morning. Still waiting and watching but the big fire hasn't grown much in the past two days.
EARLIER STORY: There's a fire going on out there. It grew to 6,500 acres in a single day and still burning hotly the second day. As many as 50 structures have burned and more than 200 people evacuated. It is near the roadside settlement of Willow, 70 miles from Anchorage by road, and is in an area with a large number of dog mushers. As matter of fact, Vern Halter, a musher in the area and a borough assemblyman, told a press conference volunteers had moved between 400 and 500 sled dogs away from the path of the fire in a short period of time the first day.
There are a lot of people with very serious problems. Mine is very minor compared with them but this fire could threaten the cabin at the East Pole. For now I am going through a thought process here. That fire started well south of the pole, pushed by a northerly wind, but apparently the wind shifted to come more from the south which aims it right at my cabin. Parks Highway, the major route between Anchorage and Fairbanks, now closed at Mile 87. Crow flies, that's about 30 plus miles from the cabin. Yesterday the fire was burning at about half a mile per hour. Mentally now going through packing for a quick trip in there to get what I can. Trailer is hooked up and the four-wheeler and that trailer loaded aboard. Chain saw fueled and ready (to get past downed trees) Other than that and a rifle I think all I need is basic trail gear, tools, survival stuff in small backpack and hit it.
In my favor is that fire will have to jump a power line right-of-way that is about 100 feet wide. Also from the direction it is coming it would have to burn downhill to get the cabin, but not so parts of the trail. If I can get past the highway closure I can be in and out in about 3 hours. If I get caught I can probably make it to the Talkeetna River. Also going through an inventory of what's there that I really need and it's mostly things I really WANT, which is different. Most of my stuff that I would want is photos, some books, memories, that kind of stuff. Can only think of one thing I really need. So I will watch the fire and keep weighing things against each other, but in the meantime will be packed and ready so I can just jump in the Jeep and go.
About all I really need is that 16-pound solid steel Sotz wedge splitting maul that can't be replaced. Of course it is the one thing most likely to survive a fire.
A major contributing factor is that we have been hot, dry and windy for the past week with at least another week of it coming. To give a little perspective, Alaska is about 2/3 the size of the Lower 48 states combined. About 2/3 of that area is under a fire watch now, more than 300,000 square miles. Meanwhile, I watch every source of information to check the progress of the fire in case I have to take off in a hurry. Updated Tuesday morning, the forecast predicted northeast winds Tuesday and Wednesday turning easterly Thursday with some clouds showing up. That saves the East Pole for now, but not so good for the folks in Willow. Thinking I will save this list I made of what I wanted to rescue and bring that stuff back next time I go out there.
Just a thought watching the fire. There isn't much I can do from here without being in the way. But, I am sure proud to be an Alaskan today watching how people are helping people.
I have been posting information about the fire all day on Facebook, maps, warnings, updates and not going to repeat them here, but this is a link to my page which is open to the public.
Labels: #sockeyefire, alaska, Alaska weather, East Pole, Sockeye fire, wildfire
A sea otter mother's devotion
July 15, 2015
All the mentions of sea otters in the popular media make them out to be cute, furry huggables. They aren't. They are nasty, aggressive at times and dangerous to other animals including other otters. Nevertheless they are interesting to watch and were a popular feature on the tours I used to drive. They were particularly helpful on gray, foggy days when our sightseeing boat plunged into the fog and you could barely see the railing on the bow, let alone shore.
On those days I could tune the radar so finely that it would pick up one of the rafts of sea otters that used to hang out in the bay we departed from. Once I saw the collection of small blips, I'd head straight for it and as soon as we spotted them, the gloom among the passengers began to lift. On those days I spent extra time with the otters to raise the optimism. The crew knew that once we escaped the bay we would most likely break out into sunshine but the tourists never bought it when we told them that, at least not until we saw the otters. That improved the mood on the boat tremendously and people relaxed a little.
Over the years of observing otters I learned a little about their habits. As one example, you usually see otters floating on their backs with their heads up as if their chins are on their chests. This creates a blind spot directly behind them, and if you watch, you will often see them turn their heads nervously to see what might be approaching from behind. I learned that if I positioned the boat so they could see it and stayed within their sight range they would remain on the surface. But if I started moving around and it looked to them like I might be trying to get behind then into that blind spot, they would submerge and disappear. As a result our passengers usually got as much sea otter viewing as they could stand.
The most unusual behavior I ever saw was one day when I was anchored in a quiet bay while a couple of clients spent the night ashore on a mountainside. I was sitting on the weather deck toward dusk when I saw an otter drifting in the bay. Though light was low making it difficult to make out detail, it looked like she had a pup on her belly, they way they carry them sometimes. They moved around the bay for an hour or more, the mother leaving the pup floating on the surface while she dove for food. They were still at it when I gave up and went to bed and were there in the morning and most of the next day.
Though she always maintained a good distance between us, I noticed the pup never seemed very animated on her belly or when she left it on the surface while she foraged.
In time the clients came down from the mountain and signaled from shore for me to go get them. Once I had them ferried to the boat and all their equipment loaded, I pulled the anchor and headed slowly out of the bay. As I did I hadn't noticed the otter and heard her splash as she dove for cover leaving the pup on the surface. I drove the boat closer to the floating pup not wanting to scare it, but I shouldn't have worried. Very quickly we realized the reason it had not been animated. The pup was dead.
Given the lack of animation I had noticed, I realized it had been dead the whole time I had been watching the otters in the bay. All through that time the mother kept with the baby as if it were still alive. We didn't touch it and motored away from it and I remember wondering how long the mother would keep it with her; how long after a pup dies does a mother hold onto her offspring?
Labels: alaska boating, Prince William Sound, sea otter
Fireweed
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| Photo by Celeste Prescott, Alaska Division of Forestry |
A post about three weeks ago spoke to the fact that the blooms on the fireweed had reached the top of the stalk which meant six more weeks until there's snow on the ground. There are still three weeks to go to make that true but no new snow high on the mountain yet. Still there are a lot of yellow leaves in the trees and more on the ground in the yard.
This picture showed up today from the Alaska Division of Forestry. It shows a portion of burned over area from the Sockeye fire last month, the one that prompted the expotion to the East Pole to bring out precious keepsakes. Here we are about a month later and look at the fireweed already repopulating the burned-over landscape with color, usually the first foliage to grow after a fire, hence the name.
For the record that fire is out now. It burned over 7,220 acres and consumed 55 homes. A tremendous rebuilding effort is under way now to help people get into homes before snow flies. Many of the people living in the area are dog mushers, some familiar names in the Iditarod. It took quite an effort but all of the dogs were moved out of the path of the fire.
So, now as the rebuilding continues and people gradually return to their land, they are greeted by the bright flowers that mark the beginning of new life in a land devastated by fire but with hopes the predictor is wrong this time, allowing more building time before the snow comes.
Top of the stalk, babies
Melissa, McGonnigal and a trail through an Alaska lifetime
Labels: alaska, fireweed, wildfire, wildflowers
Gearing up for winter in Alaska
September 27, 2015
Years ago when he was at the top of his game as an Iditarod musher Rick Swenson told me he liked to look over the outfits of everyone in the race, from the leaders to the last guy. His reason as he stated it was he had lots of ideas for gear in the race, but every single musher has at least one good idea and if he could spot it he could add it to his kit bag. I started doing the same thing.
As time has passed people in the Big Outside and some who have just moved here have asked me about clothing and other items they should or would want or have to deal with winter in Alaska. I have been able to help but I have a limited view and have gathered what works for me and what might not work for others. A couple of weeks ago I came across a good list given by a top musher these days to the people he hires as dog handlers. This is a good look into gear used by someone who knows. Keep in mind most of us are not going to run the Iditarod, but most of us are going to spend some time outdoors in winter, so anybody can find some useful advice on this list.
Dallas Seavey has won three Iditarods and is still in his 20s with a bright future ahead. He also approaches the race with an innovative intelligence and a lot of thought. This is his list, with some additions and comments from my experience. Keep in mind ski and snowboard gear and other winter recreational clothing are a whole different category and not accounted for here. The clothing and other gear he recommends are for people who spend long periods outdoors working or running dogs in sometimes extreme weather. It is clothing you might put on in the morning and not take off until late in the evening, sometimes working hard, sometimes standing on the runners.
Tips and Suggestions for Winter Gear Systems
Base Layer:
• Poly-Pro blend or other synthetic long underwear- tops and bottoms. There are many weights available. I recommend going with all Medium weight or get a variety. You will want several pairs so you can wear a fresh set every day throughout the winter and late fall.
• Wool socks like Smartwools are essential. Get the heavy or extra heavy weight. You’ll wear them every day, and may find yourself changing into dry socks three times a day or more. Fortunately you can dry them on a heater with the boots and gloves and re-wear them without washing them every time. You may find yourself wearing two pair while mushing in cold temps, and should always have a spare set in your sled on training runs longer than 20 miles. (I have found some great socks at Duluth Trading Co.)
Insulation Layer:
• Fleece pants are a good choice for a versatile layering system, and can be worn instead of jeans or Carhartts while mushing. Plan on at least 3 or 4 pair for the season. Get a
In search of truth and beauty
Yesterday driving to Anchorage I was able to slow down along that blind slough of the Knik River where in the past I've seen swans. There were four, two adults and two cygnets. Note to self: 2 p.m. lots of sunlight, four swans, tomorrow for sure, another exercise for this fancy new telephoto lens.
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| You can see the nubs from antlers on this one and he looks heavier and more developed than the other two. |
Disappointed I drove home slowly, scanning the woods for signs of life or, as the common knowledge tells it, something out of place, a color or a shape. But everything seemed to have followed the swans.
Then I turned off the highway onto the road to my house and after about 300 yards or so noticed something dark ahead by the roadside. Absolutely convinced I couldn't have this kind of luck, I sped on but then one of those dark shapes crossed the road, the unmistakable silhouette of a moose. I slowed to a crawl and approached. The shape I had seen turned out to be three, two eating grass on one side of the road and a third across from them. They looked at me as I approached and one moved off into the thick woods, but the other two just went on grazing even after I stopped.
I carefully rolled down the window and fumbled for my camera and that's where I learned
something. Moose don't seem to appreciate Lady Gaga blaring at them. Both stared at me but went back to their meals as soon as I shut off the music
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This one seemed to be getting agitated. Notice the ears laid back and
hair standing up on the neck.
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For their part, the moose were very cooperative even when I moved the car to stay with them as they moseyed along the roadside, affording me ample opportunity to come up with at least one good shot. Fortunately there was no traffic so I could stop in the road or move at my own pace without worrying about other cars. It seemed like I stayed with them for maybe half an hour but it was probably less than that.
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| What's going on back there? |
Over all it made the trip much more satisfying and I still have the swans to anticipate.
And, as for truth and beauty, there certainly is truth here, but it would be difficult to compare the ungainly ambling of a moose with the grace of a swan yet they do have a journeyman's sort of beauty about them.
A post for Suzy
In Alaska you have to pay attention all the time
Phenomenal waves and exploding lows; watching snow melt
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| This was all white yesterday. |
November 5, 2015
Sitting here watching the snow go away. It's kind of like watching paint dry only with a negative rather than a positive outcome. After a decent snowfall last week that left 2 to 3 inches on the ground, the weather stayed cool enough to maintain the world in white. But overnight last night the temperature never went below 40, a chinook wind picked up and now there are spots of grass here and there. The last leaves in the trees blown away by the fresh wind dance across the remaining snow, like birds poking around for feed.
Of course we complain with a big snowstorm and then we complain when there's no snow, but this is getting old. It wasn't until March before there was enough snow last year to get to the East Pole. With a big expotition planned in December rain and warm temperatures in November aren't offering an optimistic outlook. No snow, no go; it's as simple as that.
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I will never call anyone a pansy
again. These guys were under three inches of snow for a week. |
The wood stove received a good cleaning yesterday in preparation for the winter, but it won't be needed for a while after this. And the wind continues to blow.
Remember the line from Gordon Lightfoot"s "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald:" "… when the storms of November come early…?" Well, it's early November. I heard the most frightening weather forecast in my life about one of those November storms. It came to mind today when I stumbled across a facebook post about a new boat with video about how it functioned in Sea State Five. I had not been aware of a schedule of sea states so I looked it up. Turns out there is one called the Douglas Scale which categorizes seas from 1 to 9. State five has waves 2.5 to 4 meters high. The official description of that level is "rough." What caught my eye, though was sea state 9 with the descriptive word, "phenomenal."
Imagine being at sea exposed and hearing a forecast for "phenomenal waves." That raised the memory of the most frightening weather forecast I had ever heard. We had waited patiently for a three-day weather window to cross the Gulf of Alaska in late October. It came when the forecast called for a low pressure system near Kodiak to weaken and dissipate. We took off from Valdez, sailed through Hinchinbrook Entrance and were halfway to Cape St. Elias when a new forecast came across. Within that forecast was this phrase: "… the low near Kodiak has deepened explosively." Deepened explosively! Holy Crap. Among three of us on the boat, none of us had heard that expression before. We managed to beat that storm into an anchorage in Icy Bay just east of the cape where we stayed buttoned down for two days. Even on the third day when the seas had dropped to maybe 5 or 6 feet and we went out in that chop, we only made 50 miles in nine hours because the temperature had dropped into the teens and the boat started icing up from the spray.
We kept going slower and slower until we finally made Yakutat where we had to sail over the bar in breaking waves with a very top-heavy boat. We stayed there another couple of days knocking ice off the boat and rearranging the cargo to provide better stability.
Sometimes when a storm blows through here, memories come up about those trips and about those souls currently out there on the ocean when "the storms of November" come early, even if that is a Great Lakes condition. Exploding lows and phenomenal seas are just that whether it's salt water or fresh water and the dangers are the same. But the warm winds that come with them across the land mass do nothing except frustrate Alaskans waiting for snow. Even so, I guess I'd rather be watching snow melt than getting pounded by phenomenal waves in an exploding low pressure system. The stories aren't nearly as good, though.
The Douglas Scales
Degree
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Height (m)
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Description
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0
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no wave
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Calm (Glassy)
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1
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0–0.10
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Calm (rippled)
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2
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0.10–0.50
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Smooth
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3
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0.50–1.25
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Slight
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4
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1.25–2.50
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Moderate
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5
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2.50–4.00
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Rough
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6
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4.00–6.00
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Very rough
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7
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6.00–9.00
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High
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8
|
9.00–14.00
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Very high
|
9
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14.00+
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Phenomenal
|
Degrees
|
Description
|
0
|
No swell
|
1
|
Very Low (short and low wave)
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2
|
Low (long and low wave)
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3
|
Light (short and moderate wave)
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4
|
Moderate (average and moderate wave)
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5
|
Moderate rough (long and moderate wave)
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6
|
Rough (short and heavy wave)
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7
|
High (average and heavy wave)
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8
|
Very high (long and heavy wave)
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9
|
Confused (wavelength and height indefinable)
|
If you are interested in seeing where this happened there is a map on this story. Singin' them songs about them storms at sea Cape St. Elias is at the tip of the narrow island that sticks out in the gulf between Hinchinbrook and Yakutat. Ice Bay is just to the east of the cape. Incidentally, the waves in this story I now know were officially "phenomenal."
Labels: alaska, alaska wildlife, moose
Storm on Denali
December 9, 2015
An extended long gray cloud obscures some of the lower slope of Denali, North America's tallest mountain Monday, Dec. 7, 2015. The peak at 20,300 feet rises above the cloud. What looks like a cloud stretches off the top to the right, but that's not a cloud. It's snow blowing off the summit in one of the wind storms that enhance legends of the mountain.
Labels: alaska, Alaska weather, Denali
Is anyone looking into solar-powered snowmachines?
December 15, 2015
I once met Sidney Huntington who died last week at the age of 100. We had flown to his home town of Galena, on the Yukon River 500 miles west of Fairbanks, to do a story about an air taxi operator who had run out of gas, literally. It was during the big gasoline shortage in the early 1970s. The flight operator had been supporting 18 trappers in the bush but because of the shortage was unable to obtain fuel and those trappers were stranded without a connection.
We had flown there to do a story about the first real victim of the gasoline shortage. In the course of the day we met Sidney. What I found amazing about the man that day was when I asked him what could be done about the gasoline shortage. I expected a tirade about all the city people with their gas guzzling automobiles and their wasteful ways. Instead he ticked off ways people in Bush Alaska could cut back. Living on margins, they seemed to me to be the last people who should have been called on to sacrifice more.
Fast forward to today. A friend posting on facebook about the recent world agreement on cutting back on carbon emissions wondered if someone had yet invented a solar-powered snowmachine. That hit home; what do we do with the folks who depend on small engines for survival – not automobiles, but snowmachines and generators and chainsaws and water pumps, all powered by small gasoline engines.
For much of my adult life I have had a relatively small carbon footprint. At on point the only internal combustion engine I owned was a chainsaw and you can guess how many hours a year that burned up gasoline. If I used a gallon a year it was a lot. My collection grew slightly to a generator that I used to energize power tools, also not a big user. Lately though I find myself using it more, watching movies and the like and I have it running right now to power the cellular signal booster that gives me a relaible connection to allow me to be writing and posting this. Eventually I bought a snowmachine and then a four-wheeler. I installed propane lights and a propane cooking range in the cabin. Over the early years I went 11 years without a car. Then I got married and had to have two – something I still don't quite understand.
So today I looked around and it's a generator, a chainsaw and a snowmachine. Oh yes, and my Jeep sitting out at the trailhead, and I wonder what happens at Carbon 0 to those of us who depend on small engines? Will gasoline prices soar to exhorbitant levels that we can't afford? Will we find solar-powered snowmachines? Unlikely. At least at first we might be victims of the majority. But thinking further, I suppose all of those could be electric with charging energy supplied by solar or wind generation.
Perhaps it is time for some creativity and invention to be able to supply the demand when the time comes because thinking back to Sidney Huntington, those of us living off the grid (even short timers like me) don't have a lot of margin for any more sacrifice.
Shadows oh the Koyukuk, The Sidney Huntington Story
Labels: alternative energy, climate change, energy, snowmachines
2014
OMG there's a snowstorm again this winter
January 2, 2014
Several years ago I wrote a short story for Alaska magazine about a storm in the Aleutians, a place notorious for violent weather. In the course of the research I spoke with a woman named Peggy Dyson in Kodiak. Her husband was one of the original deadliest catchers, pioneering the king crab fishery around Kodiak and eventually in the Bering Sea.
At that time, in the 60s, weather forecasting for such remote areas was pretty rudimentary. So, Peggy set herself up with a radio that would reach out there and she'd send Oscar the weather forecast as best as she could find out about it. In time other fishermen picked up on her broadcasts and listened in, giving her quite a fan base. There were even special cases where a fisherman would ask Peggy to deliver flowers to his wife on their anniversary or pass along a message now and then.
In time the weather service realized what a gem Peggy really was and they hired her, set her up with better equipment and she became the voice of the weather along the entire coast of Alaska.
There was nothing as reassuring as hearing Peggy's call at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. every day: "Hello all mariners." It was always a good idea to tune in to 4125 on the single side-band a half hour early because vessels along the coast would report actual conditions where they were, and one of them just might be where you were heading.
So, one sour day Peggy broadcast a forecast for a severe storm. Had it been in the early days this might not have happened, but working for the weather service she was limited to using official terminology. So, with winds forecast for well above the lower limit of 64 knots, she sent out hurricane warnings.
All hands survived that storm, but not without some bad feelings. Upon returning to Kodiak at the end of the season, Peggy said, one fishermen read her the riot act. Why?
In his terms, "We get 110-knot winds out there all the time, but you went and called it a hurricane and scared the hell out of everybody."
That came to mind today as I watched the newscasts and web sites screaming about the coming winter storm in the Midwest and eastern United States. Good grief, it's winter and there's a snowstorm coming. Imagine that.
With all the new services around, Accuweather, Weather Underground and The Weather Channel, which went ahead on its own and named the storm Hercules, and not to mention all the usual news outlets, there's a lot of competition for who can scare the hell out of people the most.
Of course tomorrow will bring intrepid reporters broadcasting from outdoors and telling people to stay indoors.
The thing is, just report the forecast, forget the shrill warnings and the video of empty store shelves caused by people stocking up for the long haul. This forecast came fairly early in the process and usually those far out forecasts change for the most part into conditions a lot less formidable than originally predicted.
There's nothing wrong with being prepared, but a constant bombardment of severe weather warnings and advice on how to survive are a little much every time a storm moves across the country. And, they may make people jaded enough not to worry when a really big storm comes along.
It's just that "hurricane" forecast all over again, scaring the hell out of people about conditions they have encountered probably several times in their lives.
Labels: Hercules, journalism, winter, winter storm
Alaskans love our engines even if nobody knows it
This is a short video of a snowmachine ski race at the 2009
Arctic Man. They hit speeds of nearly 100 mph at times.
Arctic Man. They hit speeds of nearly 100 mph at times.
January 8, 2014
The Alaska Commons website, a well-known and respected news blog in Alaska published a story yesterday asking the question, "Why don't Alaskans embrace our passion for the sound of engines?" I think I know the answer.
To begin with, a whole lot of Alaska's motor sports take place outside the broad public view. That is the reason for them, for snowmachines and four-wheelers and small airplanes, transportation to the far places where you a can be on your own, or in the Bush villages, for hunting and fishing and trapping. The machines are now an integral part of the subsistence lifestyle of Alaska's Natives. One man's sport machine is another's basic tool for survival. And most likely there is no one around the publicize those endeavors and very few people who want anyone to do that. The only way a casual observer might get a picture of the size of this motoring group is to watch the parade of trailers holding snowmachines or four-wheelers heading out of Anchorage on weekends.
The big exception to those rules is the Arctic Man gathering when every spring the Hoodoo Mountains become Alaska's fourth largest city, hosting a a crowd of snowmachine riders from just about everywhere in the state. It's a winter Sturgis.
But there's another, more likely reason motor sports in Alaska aren't publicized well. Despite the probability that Alaska's residents are at or near the top of the list for per capita ownership of snowmachines, four-wheelers, airplanes, and yes, maybe even river boats, you seldom read about them in any of the news media that serve the state.
This is the subtle myopia of the press these days, or perhaps it always has been. For more than 40 years I have worked on and off in the Alaska news media and in that time I don't recall meeting one person at least on the editorial side of things who owns any of the above vehicles. The possible exception might be Craig Medred who likes to go against the grain, any grain. (Written with respect, Craig.)
At least as some radical conservatives like to point out, a stereotypical reporter lives in a city and owns a Subaru. Recreational preferences of these folks include cross-country skiing; climbing Flattop; running; my favorite, winter bicycling; bicycling in general; and a wealth of urban sports, not one stinky, loud engine necessary among any of those activities. There was a joke in the newsroom that if Congress burned down and somebody local won a 10K, the 10k would lead the paper that night. Instead of trailer hitches, their vehicles are adorned with ski racks and bicycle carriers.
The Alaska Commons article pointed to all the motor racing that goes on in the state. I am well aware of that, but never having gone, I wonder how many fans motor sports draw. I live close enough to Alaska Raceway Park to hear the drag races every Sunday in the summer. Now, you would think someone who constantly seeks the solitude and quiet of the wilderness would hate that disruption. Not for this person. In my late teens and early 20s I spent time at drag races and can still hear the radio ads that pervaded the airwaves in those days."SUNDAAAAAAY!!! NIAGARA INTERNAITONAL DRAG STRIP, SUNDAAAAAY!!!!"
When I hear those high-rev engines over at the raceway park on SUNDAAAAAYs, I love it. Warm reminders of a misspent youth with loud engines fast cars, lots of beer and a Sunday sunburn from the bleachers or pits. I have yet to wander over there to watch but I look forward to the engines I can hear every weekend. I doubt the sound of a Subaru would even carry this far.
The owner of that raceway has petitioned to build an oval track on the grounds. Of course residents howled loudly about the noise and traffic that would bring into a relatively quiet neighborhood. Supposedly petitions were circulated to stop the project, but no one ever approached me to sign one. I wouldn't have. Friday or Saturday dirt track stock car racing would be another welcome sound over here. In the days of that misspent youth a whole gang of us often went to the dirt track races in Holland, New York. The odor of exhaust, loud engines, beer and warm summer nights made for an intoxicating mix. Often it was the place to take a date though that might have been the reason those relationships never went very far. There are races here not far away but again, I have yet to venture to see them. Maybe next year.
Even the public nature (and romance) of racing doesn't draw the media. I recall editing paragraph-long stories with a lot of agate listing who won what race at what race track on a Saturday night, but that was it. It's surprising given that auto racing nationally is supposed to be the country's most popular spectator sport.
It's back to that stereotype and the myopia. Newsman or not, if you aren't interested in something, you are a lot less likely to want to write about it or assign someone else to write about it. And when an entire media is pretty much inured with quiet sports, the stories just don't come out. And if it doesn't get written about or put on TV, it looks like Alaskans aren't embracing their love of engines.
I can't count the number of stories I have edited about climbing Flattop or hiking Powerline Pass, but I don't recall any about an extended snowmachine trip into the Bush unless it was about the Iron Dog, and even that race gets minimal coverage. A picture of Sarah Palin kissing her husband good-bye at the start and a three paragraph story about the finish in Fairbanks a couple of days later.
This myopia isn't unique to Alaska. Almost anywhere outside the NASCAR cities of the South, motor racing takes a back page in the sports sections to any sport involving a ball, or at least fancy running shoes.
It's not that we don't embrace the sounds of our engines, it's that nobody else hears them, at least not the way we hear them. And, if they do, it brings more complaint than appreciation.
The month of two sunrises
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| Morning (southeast) |
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| Afternoon (southwest) |
February 5, 2014
Around here the month of February is the month of two sunrises. The house is in the shadow on the north side of a 6,000-foot mountain. That's high enough given Alaska's position relative to earth and sun to block the solar rays from ever shining on the house from late November until late January.
When it first appears again it rises and shines for a while over the lower mountains to the east of the tall one, then disappears until the next morning. But now, in early February, it rises twice, shining over the low mountains to the east, then disappearing behind Pioneer Peak and then rising again over the mountains to the west. As a result, two sunrises.
Too bad it can't be more like the movie "Groundhog Day" where the protagonist wakes up over and over on the same day and gets to relive his life based on what he learned the previous times he lived that day. There are several days I wouldn’t mind a do-over, or at least a start-over.
It's not quite so fanciful here, but has some of the same effect. After a winter without sun and the accompanying mood swings, seeing bright sunlight in the morning creates a renewed optimism only to have it dashed in the dimness of mid day, but then have it renewed again in late afternoon. Morning chores seem to get done easier in the brightness of the first sunrise. A good nap during the dimness of midday works well before taking the dog out to play under the second sun. All in all not a bad cycle, but it doesn't last. Soon enough the sun will make it over the top of the mountain and then we head into those days of 19 hours of potential sunlight every day. It's already pretty close to the peak.
So for now only a few more days to enjoy the double sunrise and take advantage of it. The sun will be above the peak soon and with only about 35 days until the equinox when garden planning begins and the sun will be another kind of issue.
Save this date
The month of two sunrises is over. The sun came over the mountain today, so bright in fact that I couldn't get it to register even with Photoshop help. But you can see the sunlight on the snow in the trees for the proof,
And while we are on the subject of the grand scheme of geography, climate and weather, this chart from the Media Matters website showed up today.
While the deniers pound desks on the East Coast of the United States, claiming the harsh winter is proof climate change is a hoax, it turns out that worldwide January was the fourth warmest on record. In the perspective of the globe, only one small area had colder than normal temperatures and unfortunately it happened to the science deniers on the House and Senate science committees and Fox noise. So, here we go again. Ignorance is political justification.
And while we are on the subject of the grand scheme of geography, climate and weather, this chart from the Media Matters website showed up today.While the deniers pound desks on the East Coast of the United States, claiming the harsh winter is proof climate change is a hoax, it turns out that worldwide January was the fourth warmest on record. In the perspective of the globe, only one small area had colder than normal temperatures and unfortunately it happened to the science deniers on the House and Senate science committees and Fox noise. So, here we go again. Ignorance is political justification.
Alaska government maintains a steady assault on wildlife
March 1, 2014
The other day news came out that Alaska officials have petitioned the federal government to have humpback whales removed from the endangered species list. This was just the latest in a series of attacks on various wildlife populations, including the state's own scientists. A quick search turned up the following state actions attempting to remove protections for wildlife in the state in order of open more areas to resource exploitation.
Here are just a few of them, beginning with the wild humans:
About three years ago Alaska biologists were removed from at least one federal science committee because the state had instructed employees representing Alaska that they were to only follow state policy, not the science involved. Rightly the federal science panel refused to seat the Alaska representatives which now leaves Alaska out of serious discussions involving wildlife management in a variety of areas that are important to the state.
Just a few days ago the Alaska Dispatch reported state Fish and Game officials wiped out an entire wolf pack in the area of the Yukon-Charlie Rivers National Preserve. This is a continuation of long-running state policy to remove wolves to protect more popular game species, despite the admonition that the Yukon-Charlie preserve was to be maintained as close to its natural environment as possible. Wolves that inhabit Denali National Park, the state's prime tourist attraction, have been killed in the name of management just outside the park perimeter.
Federal and state authorities have identified a significant population decline for Beluga whales in Cook Inlet. That population has been declared a distinct sub-group of Belugas and received some critical habitat protections. The state has continuously fought this distinction to avoid having to meet control standards on economic developments in the Inlet relative to the whales. However a federal judge has ruled the federal government violated three statutes designed to protect the whales in order to allow oil and gas exploration in Cook Inlet. The Cook Inlet population is on the federal endangered species list. As a matter of fact, it was the beluga issue that prompted the state to silence our own biologists, forcing them to follow policy instead of science.
When the federal Interior Department proposed designating areas of Alaska's Arctic coastal plain critical habitat for polar bears, the state objected strenuously and eventually sued, complaining the designation would threaten the oil industry and the general economy. This issue becomes attached to the federal climate-change discussion which the state also continues to deny fearing additional regulation on industry. Polar bears depend on Arctic ice for hunting and survival and as the polar ice cap shrinks, they are losing critical habitat on the ice and moving ashore in greater numbers.
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has continually attacked the Environmental Protection Agency in attempts to diminish its regulatory authority.
A game preserve near Anchorage has raised a small herd of wood bison, which are much larger than the plains bison most people are familiar with. The idea has been to release them into their former habitat in western Alaska. But the state continues to hold up the release because there is no provision in the program to allow hunting which one state official warns would allow protective federal regulations that would hinder development in the areas where they are released.
A Delaware company is attempting to strip mine 32 square miles in the Chuitna River drainage on the west side of Cook Inlet south of Anchorage. In addition to the massive strip mine, the project includes destroying 11 miles of a critical salmon spawning stream. Like the potentially disastrous Pebble project which if allowed could destroy major portions of the rich Bristol Bay red salmon run, the state has remained fairly quiet about the project, which usually means quietly working to make it happen. The governor promised in his election campaign there would be no favoring one resource over another, but this comes from a former employee of Conoco Phillips, which for mineral extraction including petroleum makes him immediately suspect. Any opposition to either project has come from groups of citizens. At least that was until recently when that darned old EPA stepped in.
Granted these are short descriptions of complicated issues and more is to be learned about each one of them, and about other wildlife issues not mentioned. What the list points out is just how dedicated Alaska's state government is to ensuring a healthy future for the wildlife under its jurisdiction. What the list shows is that the state isn't, in fact it is determined to shut down any protection for wildlife it can, to the extreme of actually suing the federal government to prevent controls. It actually did sue the federal government over the polar bear designation.
Taken individually, any one of these can escape notice over time except for those people directly concerned, but when collected in one place they make a convincing argument that the state government is doing anything it can to suppress wildlife populations in favor of monied interests.
Each issue will be decided on its own merits, but the number of issues in all of which the state took a stand against protecting wildlife leaves little doubt where state officials' priorities lie. On the weight of evidence it seems to be a designed attack on wildlife protection, partially hiding an agenda for uninhibited development which often to gain favor and mask the downside is couched in terms of that favorite come-on politicians use to gain support for any issue – "jobs." And with the threat of either losing jobs or the promise of many new jobs, those state officials get the general population to support a position that is very much the opposite of one of the reasons we all came to Alaska, notably our wildlife as part of the grand mystique of the north. Or, and this might be worse: It could be just a knee-jerk reaction to any federal attempt at any regulation at all or to any attempt to protect wildlife whatsoever.
At a time in history when wildlife needs more protection than ever, here on the last frontier we just don't give a damn about no stinking animals, unless it is our precious moose. We will kill wolves and even bears to protect those moose. Anything else is fair game, so to speak.
At a time in history when wildlife needs more protection than ever, here on the last frontier we just don't give a damn about no stinking animals, unless it is our precious moose. We will kill wolves and even bears to protect those moose. Anything else is fair game, so to speak.
Just a side note: Do you think people don't plumb the Internet looking for what is said abut them? This the first post in which I mentioned Conoco Phillips. Within an hour after it was posted, there was the first hit ever from Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Coincidence? There are no coincidences.
Listing from Revolver Maps web tracker:
Labels: alaska, alaska wildlife, beluga whales, Chuitna River, coal, Conoco Phillips, EPA, humpback whales, hunting, moose, Murkowski, Pebble, polar bears, politics, salmon, whales, wolves, wood bison,Yukon-Charlie
Green Day
I had the grand idea today to find music for this post and looked through the rock group Green Day's playlist, but the closest I found was "Wake me when September ends," which doesn't really fit. So, here is "Spring" from Vivaldi's "Four Seasons," Green day being the real start of Spring around here, after all. (It's long, so maybe start it and then go do your other internet stuff while it plays.)
May 3, 2014
It's that day when the buds pop on the hardwoods and cast a green hue across the forest canopy. That's almost two weeks early. In past posts it has ranged from May 13 to May 17, so, (ok so i just ran through "real," "damned" and "very" as potential adverbs) early. See the Mark Twain quote below for an explanation. Ever onward and greener.
Fire in the hole
NASA Earth Observatory / Rob Simmon
This view of the Aleutian Islands and the Alaska Peninsula shows 52 volcanoes. It came from the MODIS imager on NASA's Aqua satellite. The names have been colored to match official activity status according to the Alaska Volcano Observatory. Green means no activity, yellow is "advisory" with activity possible, orange is "watch" meaning an eruption is close. Those uncolored don't have monitoring equipment on them.
May 21, 2014
For some reason this statement from a teacher has stayed with me since the seventh grade. In a Latin class (yes, I am old enough to have encountered Latin in a public school) we were studying Mount Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii. The stiff, very proper teacher, an imposing presence with her perfectly coiffed white hair told us with all her authority that there were no active volcanoes in the world any more. We believed her. None of these kids in Western New York could refute that and mostly we weren't curious enough to look any further into it. Also, we didn't have Google where we could have found out quickly. If you wanted to know about something that happened since last year's Encyclopedia Britannica yearbook came out, it was a monumental task.
In fact at least three volcanoes around the world erupted in 1954, Kilauea in Hawaii, Ngauruhoe in New Zealand and Bam, which killed 25 people in Papua New Guinea. I am not sure about the others in that class but I lived on in perfect ignorance, believing what she told us and never hearing or reading anything to the contrary.
Volcanoes never really came up in my life for a long time after that. Still in the back of my mind somewhere there lurked the suspicion, the wondering at how a person could say something so absolute about something as fluid as the natural world, a world that included lava. And, why would volcanoes just go dark en masse. I guess now in my mind it was linked somehow to something like the extinction of dinosaurs.
I am not sure when I noticed the first eruption of my experience. I do know when the first eruption affected me. That was in 1975 when Mount Augustine in Lower Cook Inlet, Alaska, blew its top. That sent an ash cloud over Anchorage and was the first time I stretched women's stocking material over the air intake for my car's carburetor to keep that fine caustic dust out of the engine.
upgraded Pavlof Volcano in the Aleutian Islands to RED / WARNING
status. An eruption was occurring and pilot reports indicated ash had
reached 22,000 feet. According to the AVO,seismic tremors increased
starting about 3:00 p.m. AKDT June 2. Satellite images showed a
plume extending over 50 miles east of the volcano.
Since then I've been aware of several eruptions including a few that dusted my surroundings. And, every time one does that I think back to that seventh grade Latin class and the woman who said there were no active volcanoes left in the world. In fact, I now live near what is sometimes called the Pacific rim of fire, a string of volcanoes part of which runs along the south coast of Alaska and through the Aleutian Islands and follows faults between tectonic plates. It seems like one or another of them is at least steaming or smoking almost any time you look.
Though obviously they can be very destructive, volcanoes in the neighborhood are one more element that adds to the lure and mystique of Alaska. And in them lies the constant reminder of how absolutely wrong some of what we heard in public education was in the 1950s. There was a warning going around later during the social eruptions of the 1960s that would have fit the volcano situation and certainly applies now with anyone who wants to saying anything they want to on the internet or on supposed news shows, and that is: "Question everything."
It wasn't until my mid 30s when everything I knew for sure began to unravel. The volcano statement being just one example. I found many things I had held as gospel weren't true or at least were only partially true. I remember telling a friend the older I get, the less I know for sure. It seemed my black and white knowledge had turned into several shades of gray. Of course a lot of this involved science, given all the discoveries since the 50s. What I began to see was an ever-evolving, shape-shifting, multi-colored, vibrant, alive flow of knowledge that took constant upgrading on my part to remain relevant.
This map calls it the "Ring of Fire" we call it "Rim," same thing.
Those three volcanoes that erupted in 1954 are in the same ring.
A line from William Saroyan's "The Time of Your Life" comes to mind, the one where one guy at the far end of the bar, occasionally rises to proclaim "there's no foundation, no foundation all the way down the line." With my body of knowledge now questionable, I was finding little foundation where I could stand. Eventually we have to adjust, reassess what we know according what we learn and to current conditions and move with the flow or be left behind in a sucking swamp of half-truths, untruths and even outright lies. One only has to listen to the same news item reported on a few different programs to see how difficult it is to pin down the truth; somehow we have to develop filters to understand.
In the process we need to decide what is a fact and what is questionable. I started with the fact that there are active volcanoes, lots of them, and at times they do erupt. I have a jar of volcanic ash on my desk at the East Pole to prove it.
Alaska Volcano Observatory
A FRIEND MET ANOTHER VOLCANO DENIER, HERE'S HER STORY: "I will always remember the out-of-state piano teacher my son had when he was learning the Suzuki method at a summer camp on the Alaska Pacific University campus. The young woman who was teaching came from Missouri, and she was well-meaning, but she made a mistake. She had given the students, 9 or 10 years old, a homework assignment to make up a short piano piece based on some aspect of Alaska nature. The next day she asked each of the students to play what they had come up with. My son had created a rather dark and heavy-handed piece to represent the volcanos. I was sitting in the back of the room, so heard her reaction. She said, "That's not what I was looking for. The assignment was to create something about Alaska. There are NO volcanos in Alaska." My son just looked down and did not say anything. As an observer in the back, and mother of the poor kid, I did not feel it was appropriate to say anything, so I didn't. I talked to him afterward, though, and felt he had handled it in an okay manner. I gave him some tips on how and what he could have said. There would have been little point in arguing with her and as the teacher, that's disrespectful. He was never going to see her again anyway. It still bothers me though."
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NASA Earth Observatory / Rob Simmon
This view of the Aleutian Islands and the Alaska Peninsula shows 52 volcanoes. It came from the MODIS imager on NASA's Aqua satellite. The names have been colored to match official activity status according to the Alaska Volcano Observatory. Green means no activity, yellow is "advisory" with activity possible, orange is "watch" meaning an eruption is close. Those uncolored don't have monitoring equipment on them.
|
May 21, 2014
For some reason this statement from a teacher has stayed with me since the seventh grade. In a Latin class (yes, I am old enough to have encountered Latin in a public school) we were studying Mount Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii. The stiff, very proper teacher, an imposing presence with her perfectly coiffed white hair told us with all her authority that there were no active volcanoes in the world any more. We believed her. None of these kids in Western New York could refute that and mostly we weren't curious enough to look any further into it. Also, we didn't have Google where we could have found out quickly. If you wanted to know about something that happened since last year's Encyclopedia Britannica yearbook came out, it was a monumental task.
In fact at least three volcanoes around the world erupted in 1954, Kilauea in Hawaii, Ngauruhoe in New Zealand and Bam, which killed 25 people in Papua New Guinea. I am not sure about the others in that class but I lived on in perfect ignorance, believing what she told us and never hearing or reading anything to the contrary.
Volcanoes never really came up in my life for a long time after that. Still in the back of my mind somewhere there lurked the suspicion, the wondering at how a person could say something so absolute about something as fluid as the natural world, a world that included lava. And, why would volcanoes just go dark en masse. I guess now in my mind it was linked somehow to something like the extinction of dinosaurs.
I am not sure when I noticed the first eruption of my experience. I do know when the first eruption affected me. That was in 1975 when Mount Augustine in Lower Cook Inlet, Alaska, blew its top. That sent an ash cloud over Anchorage and was the first time I stretched women's stocking material over the air intake for my car's carburetor to keep that fine caustic dust out of the engine.
|
|
upgraded Pavlof Volcano in the Aleutian Islands to RED / WARNING
status. An eruption was occurring and pilot reports indicated ash had
reached 22,000 feet. According to the AVO,seismic tremors increased
starting about 3:00 p.m. AKDT June 2. Satellite images showed a
plume extending over 50 miles east of the volcano.
|
Though obviously they can be very destructive, volcanoes in the neighborhood are one more element that adds to the lure and mystique of Alaska. And in them lies the constant reminder of how absolutely wrong some of what we heard in public education was in the 1950s. There was a warning going around later during the social eruptions of the 1960s that would have fit the volcano situation and certainly applies now with anyone who wants to saying anything they want to on the internet or on supposed news shows, and that is: "Question everything."
It wasn't until my mid 30s when everything I knew for sure began to unravel. The volcano statement being just one example. I found many things I had held as gospel weren't true or at least were only partially true. I remember telling a friend the older I get, the less I know for sure. It seemed my black and white knowledge had turned into several shades of gray. Of course a lot of this involved science, given all the discoveries since the 50s. What I began to see was an ever-evolving, shape-shifting, multi-colored, vibrant, alive flow of knowledge that took constant upgrading on my part to remain relevant.
|
This map calls it the "Ring of Fire" we call it "Rim," same thing.
Those three volcanoes that erupted in 1954 are in the same ring.
|
In the process we need to decide what is a fact and what is questionable. I started with the fact that there are active volcanoes, lots of them, and at times they do erupt. I have a jar of volcanic ash on my desk at the East Pole to prove it.
Alaska Volcano Observatory
A FRIEND MET ANOTHER VOLCANO DENIER, HERE'S HER STORY: "I will always remember the out-of-state piano teacher my son had when he was learning the Suzuki method at a summer camp on the Alaska Pacific University campus. The young woman who was teaching came from Missouri, and she was well-meaning, but she made a mistake. She had given the students, 9 or 10 years old, a homework assignment to make up a short piano piece based on some aspect of Alaska nature. The next day she asked each of the students to play what they had come up with. My son had created a rather dark and heavy-handed piece to represent the volcanos. I was sitting in the back of the room, so heard her reaction. She said, "That's not what I was looking for. The assignment was to create something about Alaska. There are NO volcanos in Alaska." My son just looked down and did not say anything. As an observer in the back, and mother of the poor kid, I did not feel it was appropriate to say anything, so I didn't. I talked to him afterward, though, and felt he had handled it in an okay manner. I gave him some tips on how and what he could have said. There would have been little point in arguing with her and as the teacher, that's disrespectful. He was never going to see her again anyway. It still bothers me though."
Alaska Volcano Observatory
A FRIEND MET ANOTHER VOLCANO DENIER, HERE'S HER STORY: "I will always remember the out-of-state piano teacher my son had when he was learning the Suzuki method at a summer camp on the Alaska Pacific University campus. The young woman who was teaching came from Missouri, and she was well-meaning, but she made a mistake. She had given the students, 9 or 10 years old, a homework assignment to make up a short piano piece based on some aspect of Alaska nature. The next day she asked each of the students to play what they had come up with. My son had created a rather dark and heavy-handed piece to represent the volcanos. I was sitting in the back of the room, so heard her reaction. She said, "That's not what I was looking for. The assignment was to create something about Alaska. There are NO volcanos in Alaska." My son just looked down and did not say anything. As an observer in the back, and mother of the poor kid, I did not feel it was appropriate to say anything, so I didn't. I talked to him afterward, though, and felt he had handled it in an okay manner. I gave him some tips on how and what he could have said. There would have been little point in arguing with her and as the teacher, that's disrespectful. He was never going to see her again anyway. It still bothers me though."
And, speaking of fire...
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| Smokey haze masks the mountain viewed from almost the same spot today. |
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| This is the normal (though spectacular) view of Pioneer Peak from my driveway. |
… we have a few going on here. The Funny River fire on the Kenai Peninsula was almost 63,000 acres (almost 100 square miles) Thursday evening (5/22). That compares with the national news fire near Sedona, Arizona which was about 7 square miles Thursday morning.
We have another fire on the west side of Cook Inlet which today was threatening a major power plant at Beluga. Called the Tyonek fire, that one was 1,800 acres by Thursday evening.
Up north where the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline crosses the Yukon River there's another fire of 450 acres and growing within a mile of the Dalton Highway, the main surface connection between the North Slope oil fields and the rest of Alaska. That one has forced the closure of BLM facilities in the area.
This situation is so fluid I am not going to try to keep up, so for those interested here are some links to official sources for information about the fires.
Alaska Interagency Coordination Center
Alaska Interagency Incident Management Team Facebook page.
Alaska Interagency fire information mapping page
Funny River wildfire community Facebook page
Central Emergency Services
Alaska Wildland Fire Information This is an interagency website developed by federal and state agencies in Alaska to provide timely and accurate fire information for the entire state. The agencies that support this site are the BLM Alaska Fire Service, Alaska Division of Forestry, US Forest Service, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, and Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.
Alaska Division of Forestry Facebook page
US National Weather Service Alaska Facebook page
BLM Alaska Fire Service Facebook page
InciWeb Funny River fire information
To check air quality
PDF: How smoke can affect health
The Alaska Life Facebook page has some good photos and video
Almost all of these pages have photos, maps and situation updates with more current information. Additionally just about every news outlet in the state has stories and photos about the fires. Except for the link specific to Funny River these links should be good in any year.
Labels: alaska, Alaska weather, wildfire
Encounter a bear? Just walk on by
June 6, 2014
A woman suffered severe injuries after a grizzly attacked her while she was running along a trail on the huge military base on the outskirts of Anchorage last week. According to reports she did everything right, following the general advice of remaining calm, looming large and backing away, eventually playing dead if the bear actually attacks and grabs you. None of it worked except that she could have been killed if she had not played dead. The bear eventually left her and she made it to a road where rescue followed.
In the aftermath of the attack, an Anchorage outdoors writer who has almost made a living writing about and postulating about bear attacks, offered a newer method for dealing with a potential bear attack. He does write with some credibility given his experience with the subject and his own encounter when a grizzly grabbed his leg and he fought it off with a handgun.
His suggestion deals mostly with urban bears that are accustomed to people on the various running and bicycling trails around the city. According to his numbers, there are 65 grizzlies and about 250 black bears prowling within city limits.
In the aftermath of the attack, an Anchorage outdoors writer who has almost made a living writing about and postulating about bear attacks, offered a newer method for dealing with a potential bear attack. He does write with some credibility given his experience with the subject and his own encounter when a grizzly grabbed his leg and he fought it off with a handgun.
His suggestion deals mostly with urban bears that are accustomed to people on the various running and bicycling trails around the city. According to his numbers, there are 65 grizzlies and about 250 black bears prowling within city limits.
Labels: alaska, bear attack, bears, Billy Big Mouth Bass., East Pole, grizzly
Ramblings in a mental wilderness
July 21, 2014
A commercial last night showed a broad expanse of snow-covered tundra while the announcer said something like "observe this stretch of tundra and imagine the future. We see a new drill pad with wells pumping ...." I physically shuddered at that thought and turned it off.
Oddly juxtaposed in my mind was a story a friend of mine wrote about finding the skeleton of a missing man in the Alaska wild 30 years ago. His story is added at the bottom here and it was attached as a comment to a news site article that gave some of the history of people who have ventured into the wilderness never to return. That story only guesses at the number who wandered into the wild without telling anybody they were going. As the article says it could be dozens and it could be hundreds. There's a link below to the article.
My mind was kind of racing around and I recalled a stretch of tundra east of the village of Shaktoolik on the Bering Sea coast. It looked very much like the image in the commercial. One day during an Iditarod race I was staring at that white expanse trying to find the words to describe it. Barren tundra had been used to the point of cliché. An elderly man from the village walked up to me and asked what I was doing and I told him I was trying to find the words to describe what I was seeing. All I saw was empty white, but he told me it was actually more swamp than tundra and he started pointing out where the river runs full of salmon in the summer and the slight rises where the arctic hares can be found in winter and another spot where edible birds gathered and about the caribou that occasionally showed up near the mountains on the eastern horizon. The nuances of shadows here and there accented the white and that land slowly came alive for me. He described a world full of life that I could not see, but he drove the word barren out of mind and I thanked him for sharing his knowledge.
Today I wonder in the centuries his people lived there how many of them wandered out into that wilderness and never came back. And then think across Alaska, the Arctic Slope. the Brooks Range of mountains rising from it to the south and the deep forests of the Interior stretching to the sea even farther to the south and opening onto more tundra to the southwest. A large portion of it is bordered by ocean along a coastline longer than the whole rest of the United States put together. There are lots of places to get lost.
White men only started coming to Alaska in the 1700s but archeology tells us the Natives lived here for at least 10.000 years before that. How many of them did the wilderness swallow even though they would have been so much more savvy about survival than those white men who came along later.
Trappers, gold miners, adventurers, how many wandered into the wilderness leaving no trace with only tentative connections to relatives in the Big Outside many of whom never learned what happened to Uncle Jack or a father or a son or a daughter.
Today it's mostly adventurers who take those steps off the roadways and disappear. But now they carry cell phones and GPS emergency locaters and have access to rescue by airplanes and helicopters and boats all over the state. Still now and then someone slips away, like the fellow Joe May and Harry Sutherland found thirty years ago, his bones mixed with those of two grizzlies, telling the story of a horrendous battle that neither bear nor man won. It can still happen today. As a matter of fact two adventurers are missing along the southern coast of Alaska right now.
But that wilderness and the danger it holds won't always be there if the visionaries like those who sponsored that advertisement have their way. Drilling pads and strip mines and roads and dams and all kinds of possible developments have those people lusting after the land to take it over and make it like everywhere else, paying only required lip service to preservation and wilderness. And one day, maybe as soon as my grandson's time people will ask where it went. At times I wonder even now.
Given a choice of a horizon dotted with drilling pads or what at least looks like Arctic wasteland, I'll take the wasteland, the one described by that elder in Shaktoolik that a person can enter and never return from, one that is bustling with life if only we take the time to see it.
Here's how my friend Joe May described his discovery:
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Trapping shelter used by several people over several decades.
Photo is 30-35 years old.
Photo courtesy -- Joe May
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"Thirty years ago, Harry Sutherland and I were prospecting a creek south of the Little Peters Hills. Gathering firewood for our evening camp I came upon bones lightly covered in moss. To kill time until bed time we dug the bones out and reassembled them like Tinker Toys. We ended with two grizzlies and one human. Later, in discussion with Cliff Hudson, the Talkeetna bush pilot, we surmised that we had found Jack Sneider, a trapper who had failed to make a rendezvous with Hudson near there years before. Jack obviously shot the bears but not before they got him. Today, a nearby lake is named for the man. Schneider had no close relatives so we left him where we found him. So...everyone who goes lost up here doesn't always stay that way. I like to think Harry and I gave Sneider a more proper send-off... twenty years after the fact, but better late than never.
"Jack Schneider's bones, those that haven't washed down the creek as a result of our disturbance, lie within a few feet of of the south bank of Bear Creek at the south toe of the Little Peters Hills.
"The photo is of cabin he left from to make the rendezvous with Cliff. The cabin is on the north side of Bear Creek.
"The cabin was originally built by a party of prospectors about 90 years ago. It was used as a line cabin by a former owner of the Fairview Inn (a famous historic bar in Talkeetna) and a trapping partner during the Depression in the 30's. Schneider refurbished and used it as a line cabin in the 50's. George Sanderlin (in the Talkeetna cemetery now) and I put a makeshift roof on it and used it as a trapping shelter in the 70's. Photo is 30/35 years old. I have Schneider’s frying pan around here somewhere … it still smells like fish."
Lost in the woods, a blog post
Labels: adventure, alaska, Alaska life, lost in the woods, wilderness
Just because it happened
July 28, 2014
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| Sunlight hits Pioneer Peak out the front window at about 10:30 p.m. July 27. |
Where in the world is Alaska?
September 12, 2014
For years Alaskans looking at maps of the United States have had to live with the impression that the state is an island in the Pacific Ocean somewhere west of California. It's understandable to a certain extent given that it's probably difficult for cartographers to put The Lower 49 and Alaska in the same frame, given their distance apart and the relative size of each land mass.
Still, over the years now and then Alaskans have chafed at the idea of being relegated to a smaller size and out of place on the Earth's surface. Pollsters and graduate students at times have also discovered that a fairly sizable portion of the population thinks that's the true positioning and when asked where Alaska is, respondents often place it west of California in the Pacific.
The other part of misplacing Alaska is that it is seldom drawn on the same scale as the rest of the country. At one-fifth the size of the contiguous 48 states with a longer shoreline, Alaska would dominate any map of the U.S.
As a result mapmakers continually make it smaller and not even attached to the continent.
Well, recently one cartographer fixed that. The first map shows Alaska attached where it should be – that's Canada in gray to the right – and puts the rest of the states and Hawaii out in the ocean south of us.
Although it's doubtful this particular map design will catch on, Alaskans can smirk a little at this reversal of positions and size emphasis.
Fine with us if they want to put the rest of the United States out on an island somewhere and leave Alaska firmly attached to the North American continent as it should be.
An earthquake and a river of mud
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| Autumn in the Susitna River Valley. From left the higher mountains are Foraker, Hunter and McKinley. |
September 26, 2014
We had quite an earthquake Thursday morning, it measured 6.24 on whatever they are calling the scale these days and was centered not too far from the East Pole.
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| That's the trail. Note the river heading off to the upper right. |
It started as a slow roller but something in that hinted at more and sure enough all of a sudden the house started some serious shaking for a few seconds and I heard things falling in the outer rooms. The whole thing felt like five minutes but was probably maybe 30 seconds. It was enough to clear overstocked shelves in some stores and rattle just about everyone. People all over Alaska felt it, from Fairbanks to Kenai and east into Prince William Sound. It also brought about one of the best descriptions of handling an earthquake I’ve come across. A friend posted this on his facebook page: "This just in – 6.1 earthquakes feel much bigger when you're outside and suddenly surfing a slab of concrete."
Given the location and magnitude of the quake, thoughts of the East Pole came up. Now, a few years ago the cabin survived a 7.9 so well a wine glass I had left upside down in the dish drainer didn't even fall over, so worry is relative. But, today brightened into a beautiful fall day, just perfect for a quick jaunt out there to make sure everything was all right. I had been wanting to go, but weeks of rain and what that rain does to the trail kept me from going. It had been dry for a week, so no excuses today and I loaded up the four-wheeler and off we went.
In some ways I should have stayed home. What was supposed to be a trail, more resembled a long, narrow, muddy lake. If it weren't for the hills it probably could have been done in a boat. Several times water washed up over the front of the machine. It’s one of those place where momentum is your friend; you have to keep it moving or risk sinking into the mud. The problem with that is you can roar through the puddles, but at each end people before you have hit the throttle, spun the wheels and dug a hole making the water deeper and the slope climbing up out of the water steeper. So when you come to the end of a long lake, you have to lay off the throttle so you don't throw yourself off the machine when it hits that steep climb, at the same time maintaining enough momentum to get over the hump. If it were all that straightforward it might not be so bad, but it seems there is always a rut involved that throws the machine sideways in an attempt to buck off the driver just when he is trying to hang on and maintain control. After fourteen miles of that, my shoulders are sore from wrestling with the handlebar.
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| These swans were feeding at roadside paying no attention to gawkers. |
But, determination can get you amazing places and once at the cabin it was satisfying to find no sign there had been any earthquake at all. Even shaky stand-alone picture frames were right where I left them. About all I gained from the trip was a little satisfaction that I had defeated the trail in as bad a condition as I have ever seen it. There was that and then there was my cabin surviving two earthquakes of more that 7 magnitude and one of 6 and still standing after 28 years. Not bad for a total novice building with a hammer in one hand and a carpentry book in the other. I do recall that of 12 pilings holding up the cabin, seven were on solid rock. That might have something to do with it.
So, satisfied with the structure and the five gallons of gas I left for next time, I headed down the hill, checked on a neighbor's cabin and headed back down the trail, faster and more confident, which made it wetter and muddier, another Alaska adventure under my belt.
And, wouldn't you know it, just as I emerged from the woods another earthquake hit, this one in the neighborhood of 4.7. Supposedly these smaller ones are beneficial because they ease pressure before it builds into a bigger one.Oh, no! Swans!
Hip deep in the East Pole mud.
Photo gallery: Summer trail to the East Pole.
OMG it's going to snow in winter: The frenzy before the storm
February 8, 2013
As opposed to the calm of the cliche. Wow. If you watched the news this morning you would have thought the end of the world was approaching. A snowstorm in winter, imagine that!
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| This photo was taken at our house in Valdez, 30 hours into a 36-hour snowfall that eventually totaled 51 inches. My son was about 5 feet tall at a time and when the snow started, there was less than a foot on the ground. It didn't even close the schools. He had just finished shoveling off that porch roof which is why he was warm enough to take off his coat. |
First a qualification. Over the years Alaskans learn not to go all superlative on folks who talk about cold and storms where they live. Of course, Alaskans have weathered worse, but that doesn't really lessen what others are experiencing with their storms Outside.
Instead we listen smugly knowing we could point out colder temperatures, higher winds, deeper snow than anything those folks are complaining about, but we try not to point it out. It doesn't help and the listeners often resent you for saying it. Other places aren't prepared as well, their cities don’t have the equipment to deal with it, and the people themselves spend most of their lives indoors, move in cars, don't much live with the reality of climate affecting their lives and perhaps don't think that much about being prepared for serious weather conditions, at least until the last minute.
All that being a given, good grief. Watching CNN this morning, all they are talking about is this approaching storm BEFORE IT HAPPENS. It has barely started, people, there is other news and frankly it is winter and generally it is probably going to snow at some point. Government officials on TV telling people all the warnings about impending storms, things most people have known for their lifetimes, stock up on food, stay home, the snow is heavy and wet so be careful shoveling (is there ever a snowstorm in the Lower 48 where some poor soul doesn't suffer a heart attack with a shovel in his hand?)
This stuff happens. These shrill warnings by of oh-so-sympathetic talking heads on the 24-hour news cycle, people who probably went to work this morning in designer clothes rather than something unstylish but made for cold weather, have jumped on the approaching storm, reporting news before it happens when it is something people should be and probably are intelligent enough to take it in stride, deal with it and move on without their interference.
This storm is supposed to hit the northeast. You have to wonder if it would get this much coverage if it were to happen, say, in North Dakota where they have real winter weather instead of to the East Coast where all the myopic talking heads broadcast from. Granted potentially it probably affects more people so on that level it is probably more newsworthy, however across the country, no matter how bad this storm becomes, there are millions of people who have already in their lives experienced a lot worse. Ignoring my own advice, I have lived and functioned in temperatures around 45 below zero, snowfalls exceeding four feet in 24 hours, winds that reach hurricane force on the warning scale and we go through it without faux concern from talking beauties on CNN. Also, in Alaska, no matter what I personally might have experienced, someone in Alaska has experienced worse. It is something you learn after a while. So, there East Coast broadcasters, I just went all superlative on your ass.
It has always bothered me when news people become so self-important that they reach a point when they feel they have to advise people rather than simply inform. One of the worst examples I have come across happened a few years ago on a day when I went to work at the newspaper and saw that the big display on the paper's website was about how to shovel snow. One of those things you say way too loud into a silence: "Wow now there's news, teaching Alaskans how to hold a snow shovel." Not only that but it was accompanied by photos of one of those snow shovels with ergonomically perfect handles. I had seen those shovels before, in garbage cans around town after they broke under the loads. The point is that some reporter and probably a couple of editors thought it was important front page news to teach Alaskans how to hold a snow shovel. Good grief.
Anyway, the news today is: It is going to snow in winter. You can tell by all the courageous reporters standing outside with a few flakes flying around them essentially to tell people it is snowing. And, speaking of advice, those reporters are standing out braving the snow and wind, advising people to stay indoors. Why would anyone take advice from someone stupid enough to stand out in the storm he's advising people not to go out into? It's all for the drama after all, isn't it?
Frankly does anybody need to be told by a woman more concerned about her makeup and wardrobe on screen who takes it as her mission to condescendingly advise her apparently totally clueless audience on how to deal with a snowstorm in winter. Please, where is the credibility? Frankly I would guess most of the people they are talking to know perfectly well how to deal with a snowstorm.
Oh, boy there will be special live all-night coverage of the storm beginning at midnight.
And then, there's this from my favorite Tweeter: Bronx Zoo's Cobra @BronxZoosCobra
Anybody hear what the weather's gonna be like this weekend?
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| And, please. Nothing I have said here is in any way meant to minimize the force of the storm or the danger, nor to make fun of the people who are experiencing it. Believe me, we who have been there understand fully and are with you in spirit. |
Real men use yellow machinery
February 10, 2013
When the snow load gets too heavy you have to shovel the roof.
In the post above about the media frenzy of an approaching winter storm, I made a little fun of an Alaska newspaper that thought it was vital to feature a story essentially telling Alaskans how to shovel snow.
Instead of that ridiculous story, the paper could have gone into what Alaskans use and how they use what they have to move snow.
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| Now that's snowblower. Four hundred fifty four cubic inches of Chevrolet power will move a lot of snow. |
Mind you this comes from a person who lived for almost 20 years in the U.S. city that traditionally reports the highest winter snowfall in North America. One year while I was there, Valdez, Alaska, received 47 feet of snow. My dog walked across the snow berm between houses and curled up on the neighbor's roof next to the chimney for the warmth. A friend of mine kept a BB gun close to his front door because with the snow halfway up his picture window, the neighbor's dog kept coming over and lifting his leg on it.
Just 20 miles away is a mountain pass that one year received the deepest snowfall ever recorded, more than 900 inches in one winter.
This snowfall is caused by a unique geography where the high massif of the Chugach Mountains rises immediately from the ocean shoreline. Warm, moist air moving north from the Gulf of Alaska hits those mountains and stalls. The moisture cools rapidly and releases the huge snowfalls in winter. Those huge snowfalls have also formed a landscape littered with glaciers.
Now, given snowfalls as deep as 4 feet in 24 hours, the standard snow shovel is a fairly useless tool. In the video above workers are using a Valdez snow scoop. Those are made by a local sheet metal shop and cost upwards of $100. But, they handle huge amounts of snow. Some places with flat roofs even leave a snowblower up there all winter.
How do they prepare? For one thing, new houses have to be built with roofs able to handle a snow load of 120 pounds per square foot. When subdivisions are laid out they have to leave a certain amount of land vacant for storing snow from street plowing in winter. When you build a house, you put doors and first-floor windows on the gable sides. If you put them under the eaves you have a world of trouble when snow slides off the roof. When I built my house, I placed it on the lot as close to the street as zoning would allow. What this did is leave me the shortest possible driveway to shovel, only about 10 feet longer than a pickup truck. And, speaking of those, you won't see many pickup trucks with snowplows on them because they just aren't strong enough to handle a big snow. Even the folks who plow driveways, use those big Caterpillar front-end loaders. Road graders and front-end loaders are used for the main roads as well.
Yellow machinery! If you don't know what that is, the next time you pass some road construction or excavation work going on, look at the equipment. And awful lot of it will be painted the ubiquitous yellow of the Caterpillar trademark for its heavy machinery. And that earth moving machinery can also move snow. Just to be fair in mentioning yellow machinery, I shouldn't leave out DeWalt power tools, another reliable Alaska favorite, but as far as I know it doesn't move snow. Last summer though, I did observe a guy using a DeWalt sawzall to dig a trench.
As for personal snow removal, besides the Valdez snow scoops, snowblowers work, but you have to buy the big ones, the expensive ones, because the little ones just won't do the job. The only alternative is to have half a dozen children, so you have a ready and replaceable supply of shovelers. Incidentally I know the woman who made the video and she raised three husky sons, but probably won't admit she did it just for the snow shoveling.
Which brings us to the photograph. Now, there is a man's snow blower. Tim the Tool Man would be envious. And, of course, whether on purpose or not, it is painted yellow. According to the fellow who made it, it is powered by a 454-cubic-inch Chevrolet engine. The cooling fan blows from front to back, pushing engine air onto the driver for some warmth. Cooling liquid flows through the handle bar for heating the handler's hands. It is loud enough for neighbors to complain and demands use of ear protection. It also will throw snow into next month. It was not built by an Alaskan, but I would bet someone out there somewhere has built something like it.
And, what it does is bring heavy-duty, yellow, snow-removal equipment to a personal level. The unique ways people find to move snow would have been a much more valuable news story for sure. More power! Always, more power!
An animation showing the 1964 Good Friday earthquake.
Every year when Good Friday comes around, the apprehension level rises a bit. While Christians go to church, others of us check our emergency stashes to make sure we're ready for some sort of disaster. Of course it's a bit of exaggeration, but that apprehension has its roots in reality.
You see, the two biggest disasters in the history of Alaska occurred on Good Fridays. Those would be the largest earthquake ever measured in North America and the Exxon Valdez oil spill, now only the second largest U.S. oil spill after BP outdid us in the Gulf of Mexico a couple of years ago.
Just for background: That earthquake measured 9.2 on the scale and destroyed parts or all of several communities along the southcentral coast of Alaska. The quake and tsunami killed 115 people, some of them as far south as Crescent City, California. A lot has been written about it and there isn't much value in repeating all that here as is the case with Exxon Valdez as well.
But the coincidence of Good Friday disasters may be something to acknowledge.
Now, on another, lighter note, there is the word "tsunami." Years ago I used the term "tidal wave" in a short news item in Alaska magazine. A scientist friend wrote a friendly letter pointing out that seismic sea waves have nothing to do with tides and the proper term is "tsunami." I wrote back (not for publication) that my job as a writer was to translate scientific language to common English to better allow the general public to understand. But, at the same time I did not wish to be deliberately wrong, so in the future I would refer to those waves as "goddam big waves." But the story didn't end there. A few years later I met a woman who spoke fluent Japanese, enough so that she taught English in Japan for a time. I asked her if there was a literal translation for "tsunami." She had to do a bit of research, but in time came up with this answer: "literally translated from the Japanese, tsunami means tidal wave." Oh well.
Anyway, Happy Easter. Let's hope we get there again.
It seems Alaska isn't the only place that has suffered Good Friday disasters. After a couple of comments on my facebook page, I did a search and found several more
1865 Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on Good Friday.
1979 Though it happened March 28, Three-Mile Island nuclear plant meltdown was still considered a potential disaster on Good Friday April 13.
1788 Massive fire destroyed 850 buildings in Spanish colonial New Orleans
1968 Interisland New Zealand ferry Wahine hits reef and sinks, killing 53 people
2011 Tornado leaves 22-mile path of destruction through St. Louis area.
2010 Powerful winter storm hits several North Dakota counties, knocking out 10,000 power poles and hundreds of miles of electrical lines.
Labels: alaska, disaster relief, earthquake, Good Friday, tsunami
Fat rain
May 17, 2913
WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY FOR SNOW REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 7 PM THIIS EVENING TO 1 PM AKDT SATURDAY...
.TODAY...RAIN LIKELY IN THE MORNING...THEN RAIN AND SNOW IN THE
AFTERNOON. NO SNOW ACCUMULATION. HIGHS IN THE LOWER 40S. SOUTHEAST WIND 10 TO 25 MPH BECOMING LIGHT BY LATE MORNING.
.TONIGHT...SNOW. SNOW ACCUMULATION UP TO 2 INCHES EXCEPT 2 TO 4 INCHES NEAR HATCHER PASS. LOWS AROUND 30. LIGHT WINDS.
That's the forecast Southcentral Alaska woke up to this morning. It is MAY 17 for crying out loud and even here this is a late snow.
So of course it was a day errands had to be run, including irony of ironies, collected a snowmachine from the repair shop 20 miles away AND buy materials to put gutters along the eaves. Seems like convoluted connections like that are going to lead to convoluted experiences. The salesman at the hardware store thought it was great fun that I chose to put up gutters on the day we have had the first precipitation in some time.
On the way home the signs hit the windshield. I call it fat rain. As raindrops approach a temperature that would support snow, they hit the windshield and cling to it maintaining their splattter shape for a moment, sort of halfway between rain and snow, wanting to freeze but it is just not quite cold enough yet. So, the Jeep and I fought our way through the fat rain and reached home without encountering any snow.
Two hours later the ground had a good dusting with a healthy snowfall adding to it.
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| Most of these plants are tomatoes, the tall narrow leaves are on plants I grew from bulbs but I forgot what they are. Snow falling outside. |
That would be all right if it weren't for the jungle I am supporting in my south-facing windows. I have tomato plants more than two feet tall, bean plants that will take hours of work to untangle them from each other and one bulb-based flower that has grown as high as the top of the window. Its leaves are in the background to the left of center in the photograph.
It will have to be at least two more weeks before I can plant them outside so more repotting, adjusting, even experimenting to try to save the garden. Today I even cut back one tomato plant to see if it might bush out, and slow down its growth.
Fortunate in one respect, for me anyway. Last week scientists reported for the first time in human history the amount of CO2 in the air had risen past 400 parts per million. Given all the plants in the house, I figure I have an oxygen-rich atmosphere while everyone else is breathing air with a combination of elements changed to their detriment.
Labels: Alaska garden, Alaska weather, Alaska winter, pollution, Spring
There are rescues and then there are RESCUES
August 17, 2013
Try to imagine this: a helicopter being guided through a mountain pass in the dark and fog that has already prevented others by a C-130 aircraft dropping flares along the way. With the crew wearing night-vision equipment, locating and picking up a man severely injured in a bear attack and again being guided through the pass by flares dropped from the fixed-wing aircraft. Then refueling in mid-air before making it to an airport which was closed by the weather and flying to an alternate site. All of this, in the dark in clouds and fog with a ceiling sometimes as low as 400 feet after two other attempts at the rescue had turned back because of the weather.
Here's the story the way the military tells it.
The Anchorage Daily News version.
Here's the story the way the military tells it.
The Anchorage Daily News version.
Labels: airplane, bear attack, rescue
Would you say the blush is off the rose?
September 23, 2013
So ....
So ....
Snowfall in late May.
June and July, close to warmest on record, several daily records broken
August, sun then rain, but no termination dust.
September:
Wednesday 9/18, the lightest dusting of snow high on Pioneer Peak.
Friday 9/20 Snow down to the 4,000-foot level
Monday 9/23 Snowing at ground level. (97 feet elevation)
Interpretation: First, termination dust about a month later than usual.
Only three months all year with no snow, giving credibility to the old phrase "we have nine months of winter and three months of damn late in the fall."
I'm just sayin'
Labels: Alaska weather, fall, Termination dust
Repairing nature
October 20, 2013
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| Overview shows the area affected. Note the trees leaning toward the river. |
Last summer I put up a few posts about flooding along the Matanuska River and bank erosion that took out one outbuilding and a guest cabin and leaving the main cabin precipitously hanging over the water. An owner hauled another cabin off before the river took it. A number of large trees along the bank also succumbed to the undercutting.
Well, this summer the state went to work. Excavators dug up most of the ground between the river bank and a bike trail that runs past the property. Then truckers hauled in rip-rap (huge rocks) and filled in the open trench which was then covered with topsoil and seeded.
Just last week workers demolished the main house which was still hanging over the river at an odd angle, and hauled the residue away.
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| Muddy area is where the house was removed recently. |
These pictures show the result of the work. The one at the top is an overview of most of the property affected. The muddy spot in the smaller picture is where the house stood, well, leaned, until last week.
Just an addendum. The family that had been living in the house had no insurance and didn't have the money to save it so they had to abandon it. Then they lost most of their belongings when a fire burned the apartment where they were living last winter.
"Squalls out on the Bering, big storm coming in soon" -- apologies to Jimmy Buffett.
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| This is the storm before it came across southern Alaska. |
That's a picture of it before it hit here.
And boy, did it come in.
Overnight Sunday-Monday the power went out between midnight and 1 a.m. and wasn't restored until 5 the next afternoon.
Gusts hit this house louder than any I have heard in my life, and if you read this blog you know I have been in storms at sea and out in the weather. The house seemed to handle it fine, the trees outside didn't do as well.
Over by the woodpile in the morning it looked like a war zone. Three big spruce came down, one hitting the firewood pile, another landing on the snowmachine trailer. Fortunately there was no real damage but a lot of work cleaning up. In the little triangle of wood lot out front two more spruce came down and in the driveway the shattered top of a rotten cottonwood just missed the Jeep.
The mountainside above Anchorage experienced gusts to 106 mph. Even the local paper here doesn't mention wind speeds. A search for weather history on the National Weather Service site says there is no data for this zip code. Some days it's great to be off the map, on others, not so much.
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Tree on the left is on the trailer, at
right, the woodpile. A third is down in the central background. |
Once the damage had been assessed, the cleanup began. Pretty obvious, after all that stacking of firewood, I now have that much or more to go through.
But as always in Alaska, before you can do something, you have to do something else. Since the last trip to the East Pole I have been meaning to buy a new chain for the saw. The old one broke out there. Well, as per usual, had to go get a chain for the saw before I could even begin cutting.
Once that was accomplished I went after the first tree, the one on the trailer. Went to the far end first and cut the top off. Then back to the front of the trailer to remove that section of trunk. When I cut through that one, the weight of the roots and the attached dirt and rocks countered the weight of the remaining trunk and it suddenly swung upright. That's the way it still stands, more on that in a bit.
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| Another view of the main damage. |
Tuesday I went after the tree that fell on the wood pile. This was a little trickier. The top was hung up in another tall tree. I went to the end of the woodpile and cut the trunk there. Fortunately after a bit of pinching that almost caught the bar. the two separated, the upper section moved a little in the tree and then stuck again and a long, heavy piece remained on the wood pile. I managed to get that cut from the stump and then pulled it off to the ground. And then began the chore of restacking all the wood.
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The tree in the foreground is the third one. That's the
one on the trailer behind it.
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| Top of the cottonwood that came down. |
Next day after a trip with Walter to the vet, I went to buck up what I had cut but the brand new chain blade wouldn't even make sawdust. (A well-sharpened saw is supposed to make small chips.) It was then I remembered cutting through a nail somewhere on that first tree, which couldn't have been good for it, and then there was cutting the root out and the rocks around it. That's probably a ruined blade. It was the same as a knife that wouldn't cut butter. So, rather than quit, I went after the top of the second tree still hung up in the trees. I got a rope around the trunk near the ground and attached it to a come-along attached to another tree. When I cranked on it it moved and fell a little way through the tree. It came down enough so I can reach far along it and cut out another section that should let the rest of it fall. That was enough of that for the time being.
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This the hookup for the first stump, note it is vertical now.
I mean, what could go wrong here? I might be needingsome yellow machinery for this one. |
I took Walter for a long walk and on the way back we cut through the woods on the front of the lot. That's where I found two more fallen trees, both angled and hung up at the top in other trees. Those are going to be tough. One didn't break fully off the stump and the other is still attached to a pretty big root ball. They are far in the future. We continued our walk out to the power right of way behind the house. That's where I found a tree had fallen across the feeder line to this house and the neighbor's. No way I was touching that. I called the utility and they came today and took care of it.
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| Hookup for the second. |
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| And, success. |
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| These are the two in the front yard. |
So right now we are not even finished with the part where all the wood is reachable for cutting. When it's all done, I should have again as much firewood as I have now, even if it is the faster burning spruce. Right now it is all so green it wouldn't burn well at least until next winter.
Thinking maybe next summer I will fill the four-wheeler trailer and haul some over to the Jim Creek Recreational Area parking lot and sell it for outrageous prices to the weekenders.
Hoping I can at least get it all cleaned up before the next storm comes through.
2012
One amazing moon
January 29, 2012Driving the old road home tonight, almost totally focused on the sides watching for moose, but with one eye on the little digital thermometer in the car, not particularly happy with it dropping about a degree per mile. The little photo shows the final talley, 29 below in the driveway. But before that.
Crossing the river, off to the south an unusual color. Not quite the last sliver of the moon just above the southwest horizon and bright flaming orange. Not the light orange of a cantaloupe moon, this was the orange that would do a Syracuse cheerleader proud. And, around the edges bright, fire engine red. Just amazing colors. Something you stare at until you are sure you are driving off the road. But I didn't The little camera in the phone wouldn't get it, but it was good enough so show one degree short of 30 below which it probably is by the time I am writing this.
We are well into the third full week of temperatures below zero and this is the coldest yet. Don't you just love global warming? Hey, I am convinced by the science that says it is happening but there are days that defy that belief. But then try to tell that to folks in Fairbanks where it is 50 below zero tonight.
This was sent to me last night by a friend. It is by that world famous poet Anonymous.
WINTER POEM
It's winter time in Alaska and the gentle breezes blow
Seventy miles an hour at thirty-five below.
Oh, how I love Alaska when the snow's up to your butt --
You take a breath of winter and your nose gets frozen shut.
Yes, the weather here is wonderful so I guess I'll hang around.
I could never leave Alaska. I'm frozen to the ground !
Iditarod, the next generation
March 13, 2012
Dallas Seavey at the age of 25 is about to become the youngest winner of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. That is pretty cool, but even more so is the fact that he is a third-generation Iditarod musher and both his father and grandfather are also in the race. HIs grandfather Dan came in third in the very first race in 1973 and his father Mitch won the race in 2004. They say the best and worst day in a youngster's life is when he beats his father at something. This will be Dallas' day. Mitch, his father, is in seventh place going into Nome in this race. What also sets this race apart is after almost three decades of dominance by a one musher or another, there is only one former winner besides his father in the top 18 and each of them has only won the race once. Among those 18, five are sons of current or former Iditarod racers.
Race results are here.
Race results are here.
How about blooming Hot Shots for a sign of spring?
April 6, 2012
We are quite a way from green day still, but little signs of spring are showing up around this country, one of which appeared today,
Wildfires are a big part of summer in Alaska, with years when more than a million acres burn. As a result fighting them is a full-time, if seasonal, job for a number of people.
In addition to fighting fires in Alaska, Hot Shot crews from here often are called to battle blazes in the Lower 48 states. There's a major state base for the crews near the airport I pass on the way into town.
Today in the field within that fenced-in compound a small group of people in yellow hard hats were receiving training from an instructor. (You are welcome, by the way. Notice the refusal to make the obvious metaphor about yellow flowers brightening a dull tan field.) A Hot Shot crew in training certainly means preparing for summer if not a natural sign of spring. It at least hints at the coming season.
They are recruiting now, too. Think you have what it takes to join the Alaska Fire Service Hot Shot crews? Take a look here.
The photo is of a wildfire taken off the state of Alaska's main fire web site.
And, if you are really interested, here are Alaska fire statistics dating back to the 1990 season.
As the old song goes: "it's coming by gum, you can feel it come..."
Just for some perspective
Green day 2012
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| When life gives you bigger piles of brush, build yourself a bigger trailer. |
May 12, 2012
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| A bigger pile of brush. |
It came and went without comment Saturday, (May 12). I noticed it while driving to Anchorage but neglected to mention it given everything else that was going on. The green hue showed in the canopy pretty much on schedule despite the warmer than usual April we had. Then we had a couple of cold, rainy weeks so that may have slowed it down some. then the sun came out, and the green burst out of the buds. Already the birch leaves are the size of a squirrel's ear which according to our favorite garden columnist means it is safe to plant outdoors. I've had a few pea plants out there but I am going to give the rest of the plants another day or two of hardening before putting them in the ground, though, just to be safe.
Meanwhile this is the most free time I have ever had since I moved here and I have been cleaning years and years of leaves and brush out of the woods, moving in segments away from the house and making the place look like somebody lives here who cares about it at least a little. Both the owner and I like the wild look, and I am not going to take out any of the wild rose bushes.
As noted in the pictures, the piles keep getting bigger and bigger which meant some adjustments to the four-wheeler trailer. That was the project today. Now I can haul bigger and bigger piles of brush and leaves. Such small pleasures.
On the road yesterday after another go round at refinishing a room in my daughter’s new house I am pretty sure I saw the old Canada goose I called Fred when I was commuting. At any rate two geese were standing just a few yards off the road right where I used to see him and once saw him with a mate and some little ones. If that was indeed Fred, she would have been the same female too, most likely, as they mate for life. They could have been protecting a nest in the weeds. Some day when I have the time and inclination I might go try to photograph them, I hope, before the brush gets any higher and thicker and I can't see them any more. Nice to find some constants in the world. No swans showed up again on the pond this year.
So now with the birch leaves the size of a squirrel's ear, this gardening is about to become serious again.
200,000 miles on a dog sled
May 26, 2012
Try to imagine this in today's world of space travel, fast cars, airplanes, trains, even round-the-world boats. I spent the afternoon yesterday with a man who by our rough estimate has gone in the neighborhood of 200,000 miles driving dog teams. That's eight times around the world at the equator. Those miles include 20 Iditarods, seven Yukon Quests, several races in the range of 300 miles and thousands upon thousands of miles training as many as three teams a day. And then there was the one trip to the 8,500-foot level on Mount McKinley.
I met Sonny Lindner during the 1979 Iditarod. He was quiet, focused, and didn't talk much, but had a winning smile and a good sense of humor. It was after the race when my book came out that we became more like friends. I remember a day we were driving around Anchorage and had stopped for gas. A fellow came up to him hat in hand and asked Sonny if he would autograph the hat. Understand that a guy like Sonny is Alaska's version of a sports star akin to NBA, MLB and NFL stars elsewhere.
After Sonny had signed the hat, the fellow asked him how he could get started in dog mushing and Sonny looked at me and said, "well the first thing is, you should read his book." That answered one question. As a writer you always wonder how the people you write about feel they were portrayed. Enough of that.
In 1983, I was invited to Sonny's home town to participate in a fundraiser for his and another musher's racing efforts that year. I was asked to bring something that could be auctioned off to help that process. I found a photo I had made of Sonny during one race, had it printed at 11 by 14 size and mounted and took that along. At the auction, one fellow paid $75 or $100 for it. Surprised I asked him why he would pay that much for a picture of Sonny and the guy said he hadn't bought the picture for Sonny, he bought it because one of his own dogs was visible in the team.
During that party, Sonny invited me to go along on a trip to train dogs in the Alaska Range for a week. I worried about my job for all of five seconds and off we went. Next day we drove to Paxson where the Denali Highway meets the Richardson. We stayed in a lodge there and ran his team a couple of times a day, Sonny in front with half the team and me following with the other half.
All the other dog teams I had ever driven were made up of the last five dogs in the lot, the ragtag ones that usually were left behind if something serious was involved. This led to several adventures, as many off the trail as on while an inexperienced musher tried to impose his will on less than perfectly trained sled dogs.
A trained team of an Iditarod contender is a different story altogether. As we ran up into the mountains, nobody tried to jump off the trail, nobody attacked his teammate; all they did was paddle along, at a pace of about 10 or 11 miles per hour. Only the quiet shush of the sled runners, the breathing of the dogs and the slight crunch of the snow under their paws disturbed what otherwise was that perfect wilderness silence, and in that moment I finally realized what running dogs was all about.
During our conversation yesterday, we looked over some photos from the race and there was a whole page of northern lights images. He looked at them, a couple in particular where the lights shined red and orange in addition to the usual green and yellow. He said it was like that on the Yukon River during the Yukon Quest race this year and that he had strained his neck looking at the sky for so long as that perfectly trained team pulled him along on the river ice.
The more you hear, the more you learn, the easier it is to understand why someone might want to go 200,000 miles behind dog teams.
Culture clash in bear country
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| This is probably the best book about living alone in the woods. |
Watching "Alone in the Wilderness" on public TV tonight there was film of Dick Proenneke crawling into an empty bear den in the spring. It reminded me of another time when a fellow named Jimmy Huntington described in his book "On the Edge of Nowhere" how he did that once and three bears came out of it. He dispatched them all.
And that reminded me of a day during the Exxon Valdez oil spill when I was required to take an eight-hour training course, mostly on health and safety before we could go to work. In the course of the day a cute little industrial hygienist from California gave a talk on bear safety. Now what this little sweetie from warm country knew about bear safety we had to question, but she soldiered on. At one point she held up a can of bear spray and that brought a few snickers in the audience. She stopped and said, "no, really, it works." That brought more snickers of disagreement.
"OK," she challenged, "has anybody here ever encountered a bear?"
A few of us raised our hands tentatively, not really wanting to join the argument.
But a young fellow from a Yukon River village took up the challenge and answered her question.
"I was going through some thick brush," he said, "and came to this little clearing. Just as I did, a bear came out of the brush on the other side of the clearing."
"What did it do?" she asked.
"It charged me," he said.
Now she was showing some realistic amazement. "What did you do?"
After all, the fact that he was in the class was irrefutable proof he had survived the encounter.
He paused for just a moment, looked around at his buddies, all of whom had probably had a similar experience, and said very calmly, "I shot the son of a bitch."
She looked dumbfounded, had no response, put her can of bear mace away and went on to another subject without mentioning bears again.
There is one other sort of corollary to the story. Later in the oil spill when most work was being done on beaches, the industry hired bear guards. Many of them were not Alaskans or outdoors people in general and inexperienced around bears except what training they received before they were posted. One problem was they were not allowed to carry guns. One day one of the guards with his can of bear repellant saw a bear about a quarter of a mile off. Apparently thinking bear repellant worked the same way insect repellant worked, he sprayed himself thoroughly with the stuff. This immediately incapacitated him and he had to be medevaced to a hospital. This sounds like one of those wilderness style urban legends, but almost a year later I was able to confirm the story with a nurse at the hospital where he was treated. People who have heard the story mostly allow as how it was probably fortunate this guy was not given a gun to deal with bears. Who knows what he would have shot?
All right, who pissed off Mother Nature?
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| Flood waters from the Matanuska River approach the Old Glenn Highway at about Mile 15, June 23, 2012. |
June 19, 2012
UPDATE: As if all that below wasn't enough, now we have flooding from both the rivers I live between. No danger here, but just the same. Is this the beginning of the down slope from solstice to solstice that's supposed to end Dec. 12?
EARLIER POST:
Holy mackerel! So the farmers and I were lamenting the cold May and early June. Then the sun came out and all hell broke loose.
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| A group of climbers moves up to left of the avalanche chute. Where Japanese climbers died. (National Park Service photo) |
Holy mackerel! So the farmers and I were lamenting the cold May and early June. Then the sun came out and all hell broke loose.
First, Thursday an avalanche on Mount McKinley killed four Japanese climbers.
Then the night before last we had thunder and lightening in the area, a rare occurrence in Southcentral Alaska. I may have witnessed maybe half a dozen such storms in the last 40 years here.
Right after that the forest fires started up. One 30 miles south of Fairbanks may force the state to close the main highway between Anchorage and Fairbanks. All told there are 221 wildfires burning across the state right now. Here is an interactive map that shows them. You can click on the 32 fires located on the map to obtain more details.
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| Cleveland ash cloud visible in the distance. (Alaska Volcano Observatory / U.S. Geological Survey webcam) |
I am a little worried for a friend of mine who will travel between Denali Park and Fairbanks tomorrow. She is on one of those tours where everything is scheduled to the minute and has to get to Fairbanks to ride the riverboat and then fly home. If the highway remains closed it could alter those plans some. Welcome to Alaska.
But, back to nature. After all that, today a volcano erupted. It was Cleveland Volcano pretty far out of the way in the Aleutian Islands, but enough of an ash cloud can disrupt air travel. Go here for more details.
Late in the evening the Alaska Volcano Observatory reported the ash cloud had reached an altitude of 35,000 feet.
Was it something we said?
Wild roses attempt to take over neighborhood
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| This field is about 30 feet wide and goes 100 feet back into the forest. |
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| This one must be 8 feet tall. |
Showdown at High Latitude
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| Blue areas are off limits, yellow will be open to leasing. Apparently because just a few Eskimos, walrus and seals live there, the Arctic Ocean is fine for drilling. That was the same kind of thinking that led to the name "Seward's Icebox" when Alaska was first purchased. (Map from gCaptain website) |
June 29, 2012
Forces are gathering for what could be an epic collision in the Arctic. So many forces are moving at once it can only be a matter of time before an explosion.
It began earlier this spring when NOAA reported ice in the Bering Sea was thicker and farther south than average. As a result of this ice, Shell Oil Co., delayed its assault on the Chukchi Sea for a few weeks. Then a week or so ago NOAA reported Arctic sea ice had shrunk to the lowest June extent ever. This is huge for the polar bear population because it means they have to swim farther and farther between ice floes in order to hunt.
On top of the ice news, Shell's two drill rigs that had been outfitted in Seattle left there early this week, heading north to begin exploratory drilling off the coast of Arctic Alaska.
While they were under way, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior announced the government was going to open "targeted oil leasing" offshore in the Arctic Ocean across the entire north coast of Alaska. In the process the secretary said he saw no indication there could be an oil spill in that area.
Today Alaska media reported the Greenpeace ship Esperanza had docked in Kodiak on its own way north to watch Shell operations and to do some baseline study of the Arctic environment. The crew was checking in with the Coast Guard at Kodiak apparently discussing their plans for their Arctic voyage.
Baseline studies are important. In another place where an oil spill could never happen, Alaska's Prince William Sound, when a spill did happen, there was very little in the way of baseline data available to document what had been there before the oil covered everything. If you can't prove what was there, you can't prove what was lost.
There was no Arctic pack ice to deal with in Prince William Sound, a condition that is probably the most dangerous contingency in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. As far as I know, no oil rig has ever had to withstand the forces of millions of tons of pack ice moving and pressing against it. What could possibly go wrong in that scenario?
The Secretary of the Interior's affirmations are in no way reassuring and oil industry assurances are laughable. After all, even after the lessons of Exxon Valdez, when another spill that could never happen occurred from a well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, the contingency plan approved by the secretary's department for the area and the response showed nothing had been applied from lessons learned in the Alaska spill. In fact the Gulf of Mexico contingency plan would work better in the Arctic with its guidance on how to deal with walruses and seals. What is in Shell's contingency plan for the Arctic, one has to wonder -- how to deal with Niger River crocodiles? What is known is that both the earlier spills took huge amounts of equipment shipped in over long distances from far-away sources. Just reaching a spill in the Arctic in winter should be a cause for concern, let alone what effect a cleanup effort could possibly have in pack ice.
I have more than 15 years of experience in oil spill response including some training in the Arctic environment at Prudhoe Bay and given that, judging by the equipment observed in the Gulf spill, not much has been improved in the way of equipment or technique since before Exxon Valdez, it seems implausible that anyone can mount an effective response to a spill in the Arctic, particularly in winter. Recalling the thousands of boats that worked on the Exxon spill, it is difficult to imagine Shell's small fleet of supposed response vessels can have any effect at all.
With ice pushing from one direction, Shell and the rest of the oil industry pushing from another with government help, climate change altering expectations, Greenpeace sniping from the sidelines, Alaska Eskimos concerned about subsistence wildlife and facing an oil company well- known for overrunning native population concerns in Africa, even the most massive blowout protector ever conceived is not going to contain all these pressures.
XTRATUFs downgraded to moderately tufs
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| Boxes of XTRATUF on a shelf at Redden in Cordova, Alaska, where the store manager says she has had many complaints since manufacturers moved plant to China in late 2011. Diane Jeantet/The Cordova Times |
A couple of years ago when I went sailing in the North Pacific on the brigantine Kai Sei, I had to buy a pair of XTRATUF boots because both pairs I owned were at the East Pole and I didn't have time to race in there and get them. I thought that might have been a frivolous purchase, but today I am so glad I did.
For those who don't know about them, they are the boot of choice for most Alaska fisherman, for one reason because they actually are extra tough. Go to any port on the Alaska coast and you will see probably one out of every two people wearing the ubiquitous brown boots with the yellowish bulbous toe. They are so common in rainy Southeastern Alaska, they are called Ketchikan sneakers.
The two pairs I have at the cabin date back to the 80s. Granted I didn't give them the workout most fishermen do, but how many articles of clothing from the 80s does anyone still have and use?
The reason for happiness about the purchase is that last year the company moved its manufacturing to China and most boots purchased since Christmas last year were made there. Already only halfway through the fishing season, owners of the new boots are complaining and trying to return them because it turns out the Chinese versions are just not as tough. This isn't just abut shipping jobs overseas, it is also about ruining one of the few products at least Alaskans regard almost with reverence.
This is a betrayal of the worst order. There are a few things people should know not to mess with where Alaskans are involved. If the quality of Carhartt work clothing deteriorates, I would expect open revolution. XTRATUF boots fall into that same category. Nobody wants a split rubber boot on the wet, slippery deck of a salmon seiner in Prince William Sound or in the icy freezing water on the deck of a crab boat in the Bering Sea, or when slogging along a muddy trail to the East Pole either.
Those boots I bought a couple of years ago and barely used are among the last manufactured in the USA. So now I have three functional pairs and those should last the rest of my life. Unless .....
Hey, I suddenly have a valuable commodity, I could sell one pair.
Can you see the Craigslist ad? USA made XTRATUFS: Like new. Size 11. Only worn on one three-week voyage in the Pacific. $540,000 OBO.
Old gray water, keep on rolling, Matanuska moon gonna shine its ever-loving light on me
August 16, 2012
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| July 23, 2012 |
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| August 15, 2012 |
Here's one of those "what's-different-in-the-pictures" puzzles. The one on the left was taken July 23, the one on the right August 15. What's going on is s Alaska's Matanuska River has been running high all summer due to the melt off from the heavy snow last winter and a pretty rainy July. Along about 15-20 miles of it from Sutton north of Palmer to a few miles south of Palmer it has been eroding the bank at a pretty fast pace.
At least one home has been threatened near Sutton; the owner has been in the news several times trying to save as much as he can.
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| August 31 |
This place is south of Palmer between town and where I live. I was driving by July 23 when I saw emergency vehicles and a group of people putting sandbags in the yard to protect the buildings. Later the owner put in rock rip-rap apparently hoping to make the protection more permanent. Unfortunately you can't stop the river undercutting the bank without a major operation. The owner discovered there was a problem this morning when he saw that his septic tank was missing. Good grief, were there no warnings or attempts to save things before that? Septic tanks are not light, it took some time for that thing to get flushed out.
Of course the house is tipping, but look at all the forest that had already disappeared. I am hoping the fuel tank was taken out of there before it could go too. That's a 300-gallon tank and if it was full of fuel oil what a mess it would make of a salmon stream.
One thing, you have to give credit to Alaska builders. That building has to be hell for stout, hanging over a cliff like that without breaking up. How many times have we seen on the news houses caught in landslides and breaking apart. Given how strong it looks, a friend and I were wondering why someone isn't trying to save it. There could be way, we were thinking huge straps like on marine travel lifts and pulled by a sizeable bulldozer, but there may be other ways too. I will keep an eye on it and update if anything new happens.
A BIT OF AN UPDATE: The fuel tank was found on a gravel bar in the river. The young couple who own the house haven't the money for any kind of recovery of the building. Insurance won't pay until it is damaged. No help from government. Some worry that if it remains intact when it falls into the river, there are two road bridges and a railroad bridge downstream that it could damage. There should be some Alaska type of help for them but it doesn't look like that's going to happen.
An update: You know you're going to miss me when I'm gone
September 1, 2012
Well, to begin with that house finally slid into the river, but judging by this picture that's not going to be the end of the story. The river has now eroded enough of the bank to threaten the main house on the property and another small building. That house has been abandoned. The river also is now threatening several other houses downstream. Meanwhile the first building is lodged tightly against a gravel bar downstream with just the roof showing, All told, the river took more than 100 yards of ground on this particular property and given the amount of rain we've had in the past couple of weeks it isn't going to let up any time soon. The water isn't that far from the highway (that's the bike path right next to the highway in the foreground), though the highway is raised and perhaps better protected.
Here's the story in the local paper with some additional photographs.
Here is a Facebook page of a neighbor downstream whose property also is threatened.
Previous post
Here's the story in the local paper with some additional photographs.
Here is a Facebook page of a neighbor downstream whose property also is threatened.
Previous post
'Squalls out on the (ocean), Big storm's coming soon.'
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| Dark purple is storm warnings, light purple gale warnings, and behind those, two low pressure centers heading this way. FYI gale warnings mean winds 34-47 knots, storm warnings are 48-63 knots. After that it's a hurricane. |
September 3, 2012
There's a huge storm coming in from the west according to the Weather Service. Here's the warning in our little area:
...STRONG WIND THROUGH THIS MORNING THROUGH THE KNIK RIVER VALLEY...
...STRONG WIND TUESDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH LATE TUESDAY NIGHT THROUGH THE KNIK RIVER VALLEY...
The forecast even warns people with high sail areas on their vehicles, like RVs and tractor trailers to stay off the road Tuesday and Wednesday.
The local media is calling this just a continuation of the heavy weather Alaska has experienced for most of the year, but it isn't really. As the autumnal equinox approaches it has been historically stormy on the oceans around the state.
Seeing the first of it on the chart over the Bering Sea brought up a flood of memories, not of storms I have experienced, but of listening to the single sideband radio while those folks on boats experienced extreme weather out on that water.
There was a night of several calls while I was crossing the Gulf of Alaska in the early 90s with reports of outrageously high waves and boats being battered and trying for shelter. Once there was a mayday and constant communication with potential Coast Guard rescuers before a nearby crab vessel retrieved all aboard the foundering boat. Reports came across of waves breaking out all the wheelhouse windows, swamping the work deck, filling the lazarette and once a simple cry for help. And there were some that were serious but sounded actually funny.
One captain reporting to the Coast Guard said he was locked in the wheelhouse and the engineer had locked himself in the engine room while angry crew members were running around on deck with knives.
Another one touched the heart. We were tied up at Namu, British Columbia, on a Thanksgiving night waiting out a storm and trying to cook a turkey. Out on the ocean a tug captain talked with his son ashore and listened while the boy described everything they had eaten for dinner that day. It was warming, yet sad and spoke to the loneliness and sacrifice of the mariner.
But, it's most often about the storms.
Well, the wind is blowin' harder now
Fifty knots of there abouts,
There's white caps on the ocean.
And I'm watching for water spouts
It's time to close the shutters
It's time to go inside.
Lyrics from "Trying to reason with hurricane season" -- Jimmy Buffett
This one sounds like it will be more than the usual around here. Those folks who have been watching the Matanuska River eat their land away and take their buildings may be in for a new onslaught.
Aftermath
At least in places the storm lived up to its billing. I am not one to raise an alarm unless I can see the potential is real and with two lows gathering and heading east, it looked real. The photo to the right was one from a member of the NOAA mesonet in Anchorage. The National Weather Service lost power early and was unable to record much over the evening and night. While it is not an official reading, the Weather Service had enough faith in it to post it on Facebook: a gust of 131 miles per hour. There were several other reports of gusts of more than 100 mph from spots on the hillside above the east side of Anchorage. Thousands in Anchorage were without power late into Wednesday. It was out about six hours here and I slept through it, so no big problem.
Around here it didn't look like there was much damage. There certainly was a lot of wind but nothing over 50 I don't think. (Hint hint: birthday and Christmas are coming and I would LOVE one of those weather stations like the guy who took that reading has). Even the last lily of the year survived the wind. That's it in the small picture. A few branches fell into the driveway but none of the big trees. I drove around the neighborhood and into town and saw where large branches had fallen across the roads and were cleared away by highway crews. By the time I went by, one crew was clearing a branch out of the water where the salmon are spawning. Off the highway a ways a few larger trees had broken and their tops fell to the forest floor. Did they make a noise?
I checked on the disappearing land along the river and another building has gone. No one was around so I took a walk down toward the water. Didn't stand too close to the bank though. The river remained high probably fed by heavy rains last night and appeared to be cutting into the bank still. The shed that was off to the left of the main house wasn't there any more. Worse, by guesstimate the river was within 20 feet of the main house. The photos show the situation as of today.
All in all it could have been a lot worse. I didn't drive to the west over toward Wasilla where winds usually are stronger and more sustained so not sure what happened there. I do know after wind storms like this the trees over that way are usually sporting new clothing in the form of plastic grocery bags. (No lecture, just sayin')
Here's a NOAA collection of photos of damage in Anchorage.
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| The last lily survives the wind. |
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| Shed has gone |
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| See dust blowing off a gravel bar? River 20 feet from house. |
All in all it could have been a lot worse. I didn't drive to the west over toward Wasilla where winds usually are stronger and more sustained so not sure what happened there. I do know after wind storms like this the trees over that way are usually sporting new clothing in the form of plastic grocery bags. (No lecture, just sayin')
Here's a NOAA collection of photos of damage in Anchorage.
Fall storms and winter warnings
The wind let up and the sky cleared revealing a bright moon. Mist covered the dawn and when it lifted look what the storm had left on the mountain. Then today, for the first time this fall, the temperature dropped below freezing. And it looks like there is some heavy lifting in the forecast.
Fall weather: The gift that keeps on giving
Huge cottonwood went down between houses. Difficult to get the whole thing in the picture. Stump is visible to right and the tree extends off to the left. The visible trunk ought to give a reference point to the size of the tree. The first of the branches with leaves are at left.
First I need to figure out how to get that spruce on the ground
and then it becomes firewood. The downed cottonwood is between the camera
and that house.
September 21, 2012
OK, so I went to sea for a while, writing in the process of storms at sea, the equinox, Alaska and oceans. So what showed up? Calm water, no wind and only a bit of rain. Hardly what's to be expected this time of year in Southeastern Alaska. But, while I was lolling away on a sailboat to the south, three more storms ripped through Southcentral, knocking down more trees, and raising rivers to dangerous flood levels. As a matter of fact I read on line a news story that said, firefighters who were clearing blown trees from roads said they had seen several 50-foot cottonwood trees blown down in my neighborhood. Unable to raise an alarm with anybody who might check the house, I raced home the following morning because there are several of those 50 foot cottonwoods in the yard, not to mention those dead spruce and a few more live ones in the 80-foot range. Lots of branches down and one smaller spruce that got hung up in an alder on the way down. In the neighbor's yard one huge cottonwood had fallen between our two houses, fortunately missing both. There are trees down in other yards in the neighborhood as well.
Meanwhile elsewhere, flooding is rampant across this valley and three dikes are threatened with authorities now encouraging folks in Talkeetna (the closest town to the East Pole) to evacuate. Flooding won't bother the cabin there as it stands on a hillside probably 300 feet above the river.
Several other streams in the Matanuska and Susitna valleys have overflowed and people have evacuated ahead of floods all across all three of the valleys here. I live in the Knik River Valley which so far seems all right although that river is high, too. Water has surrounded that house where the guest house fell into the river a few weeks ago. Here's a gallery of photos from that experience.
Today we had sun and calm but already in late afternoon it has started raining in Anchorage and the forecast is for at least two more storms to hit through here in the next 10 days. Yippee! I talked to a woman while I was taking pictures today who said she has lived here for 42 years and never seen anything like it. I believe her. We'll just have to hunker down and see what the new storms throw at us.
Just wondering has anyone read John Steinbeck's "Tortilla Flat?" Am I going to have to find a chair leg and go out back to do battle? It didn't turn out so well in that book. And, along that same line: If an insurance company refuses to pay for damages caused by an "act of God," shouldn't it then have to prove the existence of God? But if there isn't one, who killed Danny? Maybe there is no need for a chair leg, except to go after the insurance people.
Flooding at Talkeetna near the East Pole
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| Huge cottonwood went down between houses. Difficult to get the whole thing in the picture. Stump is visible to right and the tree extends off to the left. The visible trunk ought to give a reference point to the size of the tree. The first of the branches with leaves are at left. |
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| First I need to figure out how to get that spruce on the ground and then it becomes firewood. The downed cottonwood is between the camera and that house. |
Meanwhile elsewhere, flooding is rampant across this valley and three dikes are threatened with authorities now encouraging folks in Talkeetna (the closest town to the East Pole) to evacuate. Flooding won't bother the cabin there as it stands on a hillside probably 300 feet above the river.
Several other streams in the Matanuska and Susitna valleys have overflowed and people have evacuated ahead of floods all across all three of the valleys here. I live in the Knik River Valley which so far seems all right although that river is high, too. Water has surrounded that house where the guest house fell into the river a few weeks ago. Here's a gallery of photos from that experience.
Today we had sun and calm but already in late afternoon it has started raining in Anchorage and the forecast is for at least two more storms to hit through here in the next 10 days. Yippee! I talked to a woman while I was taking pictures today who said she has lived here for 42 years and never seen anything like it. I believe her. We'll just have to hunker down and see what the new storms throw at us.
Just wondering has anyone read John Steinbeck's "Tortilla Flat?" Am I going to have to find a chair leg and go out back to do battle? It didn't turn out so well in that book. And, along that same line: If an insurance company refuses to pay for damages caused by an "act of God," shouldn't it then have to prove the existence of God? But if there isn't one, who killed Danny? Maybe there is no need for a chair leg, except to go after the insurance people.
Flooding at Talkeetna near the East Pole
Two rivers run through it
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| Since mid-July the Matanuska River has been eating away at this property. Sept. 21 it had filled the yard all the way around the house. You can see the water level in the line along the lower wall. Then the water receded and took most of the bank with it. When this all started that house was reported to be about 100 yards from the river. |
Took some flooding in the past few days, some of it almost threatening my home. The Knik River, about a mile or so away decided to fill its banks to overflowing. It's all in this photo gallery.
Across the great divide (a divide anyway)
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| Between Miles 13 and 14 of the Old Glenn Highway lies the divide separating the Matanuska and Knik valleys. It has been more defined at times but in the same place on other days. |
December 22, 2012
Several posts on this blog mention that at times the temperature here at the house will be 10 to 20 degrees colder than in town just 10 miles away and today was no exception. Fifteen below at the house, just about zero in town. The geography of that circumstance has slowly been revealing itself over the years and today a distinct border was blatantly obvious.
But first a bit of geography. That geography of the Matanuska-Sustina Borough is first defined by two valleys, the Matanuska River Valley and the Susitna River Valley. It has always been an irritation that people and most of the area media refer to it as the Mat-Su Valley or just "The Valley."
Having lived in the Upper Susitna Valley (that's where the East Pole is) where the residents take the distinction seriously, I have always tried to use "valleys" or the specific valley. Since moving here, I have discovered there is a third valley, the Knik River Valley. Each of these has distinct weather patterns. Most often, it will be coldest in the Knik Valley but with little snow and even less wind. To the west, the Matanuska Valley, in the middle, suffers hellacious wind storms and receives very little snow.
What there is usually blows away in the next wind blasts. To the west and north, the Susitna Valley often is warmer and it receives more snow. No mountain ranges define the distinctions between the valleys at their lower ends and most of them are on relatively the same plane. They are more defined by drainages.
For instance you would have to work at it to define the divide between the Matanuska Valley and the Knik Valley. I doubt there is 20 feet difference in elevation along the road between the two. Still whatever that difference is, it creates different weather patterns.
All that is to get to the discovery recently of the actual dividing line, a line made subtlely obvious as seen in the attached photograph which I took today. Note to the right of center (east) the hoar frost in the trees. And then the left (west) while there is some snow on the branches there is little or no hoar frost.
Hoarfrost A deposit of interlocking ice crystals (hoar crystals) formed by direct sublimation on objects, usually those of small diameter freely exposed to the air, such as tree branches, plant stems and leaf edges, wires, poles, etc., which surface is sufficiently cooled, mostly by nocturnal radiation, to cause the direct sublimation of the water vapor contained in the ambient air.
At the divide, at least two elements could create the phenomenon of the diffence on each side of the line. One is that it is colder to the east, which is the Knik Valley, and that most likely creates conditions more conducive to the formation of hoar frost. The other is that it is windier to the west in the Matanuska Valley and what hoar frost does develop is whipped off the trees.
Why bother with all this. Curiosity. Fascination. Perhaps a need to understand. What's next? Explore and find one spot with the calm of the Knik Valley the warmth of the Matanuska (when the wind isn't blowing) and the snow of the Susitna. Perfection.
Winter blahs
January 6, 2011
On a hillside steep enough it would take reaching from tree to tree to climb, a moose stands nibbling at twigs, very visible backed by what snow the wind and rain left behind. This is the same hillside where a year ago in the dark, a moose seemed to drop out of the sky into the headlights after it careened down the steep mountainside.
That wind and rain left very little snow except in the shadows. Some people in Alaska last week experienced a 100-degree temperature change. Minus 50 at Christmas to plus 50 at New Year’s. Much more than a person should have to bear. Here it went from 20 below to 45 above in the same time frame and it looks like that brown dead period in the fall or the days before Green Day in the spring.
The avalanche danger was so high the field testers who check that sort of thing didn’t dare go into the mountains because the warming made the snow pack dangerously unstable.
Life in limbo caught between seasons except we are supposed to be in the middle of winter. But, after the solstice the days supposedly are getting brighter though we haven’t seen the sun in a while.
That wind and rain left very little snow except in the shadows. Some people in Alaska last week experienced a 100-degree temperature change. Minus 50 at Christmas to plus 50 at New Year’s. Much more than a person should have to bear. Here it went from 20 below to 45 above in the same time frame and it looks like that brown dead period in the fall or the days before Green Day in the spring.
The avalanche danger was so high the field testers who check that sort of thing didn’t dare go into the mountains because the warming made the snow pack dangerously unstable.
Life in limbo caught between seasons except we are supposed to be in the middle of winter. But, after the solstice the days supposedly are getting brighter though we haven’t seen the sun in a while.
They can't take Serenity
January, 14, 2011
At 15 degrees Fahrenheit, a fifty mile an hour wind hits you like cold steel pellets. It gives meaning to wind chill, much more so than the weak stuff those weather folks on TV try to scare us with using wind chill to inflate the numbers so the temperature sounds more severe than it really is. Hunched against it in the Walmart parking lot I didn’t even see my prescription go flying out of my cart and never missed that little bag until I got home 20 miles away. Fortunately Walmart called, it seems one good citizen found it and returned it to the pharmacy counter. Thank you to an unknown but great Alaskan.
It has been that way around here. Fifteen and blowing 50 in the Governor Interrupted's town, but 5 below and calm here at the house. The other night it was 7 when I left work, 31 where I turned onto the blue highway, 28 when I crossed the river but two miles farther on at the house, 5, stinking 5 degrees and just 10 miles away, 31. How deep is my hole.
It has all driven me to this: wood stove going and almost 90 in the house, starting Firefly at the beginning: take my love, take my land. take me where I cannot stand, I don’t care, I’m still free, they can’t take the sky from me ....
It has been that way around here. Fifteen and blowing 50 in the Governor Interrupted's town, but 5 below and calm here at the house. The other night it was 7 when I left work, 31 where I turned onto the blue highway, 28 when I crossed the river but two miles farther on at the house, 5, stinking 5 degrees and just 10 miles away, 31. How deep is my hole.
It has all driven me to this: wood stove going and almost 90 in the house, starting Firefly at the beginning: take my love, take my land. take me where I cannot stand, I don’t care, I’m still free, they can’t take the sky from me ....
Alaska on a clear day
February 11,2011The photo was taken from the NASA Aqua satellite Jan. 12. It shows a snow covered Southwest Alaska and the southern Bering Sea. For location, Anchorage is a bit above center vertically on the right side of the image. The Alaska Peninsula angles down to the lower left.
Here is what NASA had to say about it:
"From an altitude of 438 miles, the biting cold and snowy hassle of winter melts away and is replaced by minimalist beauty. The clouds that normally shroud much of the Arctic cleared on January 12, 2011, to unveil a snow-bound Alaska. The scene was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite.
"On the ground, snow is an equalizer: It covers everything uniformly in a blanket of white. But from space, snow is a revealer. Subtle variations in color and texture highlight Alaska’s rugged topography and primary ecosystems.
"Inland, the vast boreal forest is dark, colored by evergreen trees that shed snow from their tall, conical forms. The treeless tundra, on the other hand, is bright white. The low shrubs and mosses on the tundra—along the coast and above the tree line in the mountains—do not break through the snow, so the landscape is an unrelieved white except for the slender rivers winding across the landscape.
"Winter white extends to the ocean. Land-bound ice swells the coast, temporarily claiming the ocean for the land. The shadow of the summer coastline, where land meets sea ice, traces a faint outline—a hint of gray—between stark white sea ice and equally white coastal tundra. A brown and green channel of semi-open water separates the continent from the ice-choked Bering Sea. Moving away from land, ice creeps across the open sea in wisps and curls that resemble foamy froth.
"Beyond the clutches of ice, the Bering Sea shows signs of turbulence and the dark waters swirl with vibrant green. Such color often points to phytoplankton, but this burst of color could also be sediment brought to the surface by powerful waves spawned by winter storms."
I saw the light, no more darkness, no more night
March 10, 2011
Drove home under northern lights last night, getting better and better is i passed out from under the canopy of light over the city. Along the blue highway in several places people had stopped and were out of their vehicles looking at the sky. Just a slice of perfectly colored cantaloupe moon low in the southwestern sky under the green and yellow rays of the aurora.
Green Day !
May 13, 2011OK not so breaking. Just that I wasn't paying much attention and I looked up and there was a green hue to everything. Means i can get these petunias out of the house before they take over. Anyway finally here. On top of it all there is a beautiful just about full moon tonight, probably the last one we'll see until September. Oh, the picture? Peas. Have you ever had split pea soup made from fresh, sweet peas? Reminds me of one of those one-upmanship conversations I had with a woman many years ago. She finally quit when I told her I split my own peas.
Labels: Alaska garden, Green Day, humor
Olfactory surprise
May 15, 2011
According to the directions that came with the fancy disposable greenhouse I bought by accident, once the plants have good leaves you cut back the weaker ones in each little cell. This is the one I put the peas in. So, I did that today and it was a bit of a surprise when after i had cut a few I caught the very distinct scent of fresh peas. Anyone who has ever shucked peas or had some garden fresh knows that scent, it is unmistakable. Maybe that is a good sign that in time there may be whole peas. At least it confirms the seeds I bought really are for peas. Now those plants can join the petunias outside during the day for the hardening process.
On other notes: A Canada goose was strolling along the main highway not far from where Fred used to hang out. Maybe he's back. Overhead Arctic terns were hovering on the Knik River tidal marshes. They may be mating or may be past it. Without a longer observation it's difficult to tell. They have such an interesting way of courting. Female will stand on a high spot, a piling or in this case electrical wires. Males come to her and hover in front of her the way terns can, flapping their wings rapidly. In their beaks they hold small fish in offering. I have seen a female actually refuse this offering by lifting her beak and turning to the side in a rejection that can only be called haughty. One time and too many beers ago we sat on the bow of the boat scoring the dives the terns made into the harbor for prey, giving them points from 1 to 10 the way an Olympic diving judge might. The Russian judge always low-balled them.
The pond is totally free of ice now and still no swans on it. It would seem the ones that fellow shot last summer belonged on this pond. What a despicable act.
The porcupine blossoming hasn't happened yet, and for some reason the moon didn't show last night on the whole drive home despite a clear sky with daylight and rose-colored horizon well after midnight. But, on the way to work today a porcupine beside the road.
And one more thing. Just to shatter the pastoral atmosphere. This started today, too. I love the sound of a high-rpm drag car running the quarter mile on a Sunday afternoon.
On other notes: A Canada goose was strolling along the main highway not far from where Fred used to hang out. Maybe he's back. Overhead Arctic terns were hovering on the Knik River tidal marshes. They may be mating or may be past it. Without a longer observation it's difficult to tell. They have such an interesting way of courting. Female will stand on a high spot, a piling or in this case electrical wires. Males come to her and hover in front of her the way terns can, flapping their wings rapidly. In their beaks they hold small fish in offering. I have seen a female actually refuse this offering by lifting her beak and turning to the side in a rejection that can only be called haughty. One time and too many beers ago we sat on the bow of the boat scoring the dives the terns made into the harbor for prey, giving them points from 1 to 10 the way an Olympic diving judge might. The Russian judge always low-balled them.
The pond is totally free of ice now and still no swans on it. It would seem the ones that fellow shot last summer belonged on this pond. What a despicable act.
The porcupine blossoming hasn't happened yet, and for some reason the moon didn't show last night on the whole drive home despite a clear sky with daylight and rose-colored horizon well after midnight. But, on the way to work today a porcupine beside the road.
And one more thing. Just to shatter the pastoral atmosphere. This started today, too. I love the sound of a high-rpm drag car running the quarter mile on a Sunday afternoon.
Labels: Alaska birds, Alaska garden, Canada geese, Fred, swans
May 22, 2011
As a writer one thing you strive for is originality. It vital to develop new concepts, new situations, new insights different from anything that’s been written before. A friend once said we are all experts at something, in particular we are experts at being ourselves and that alone can lead to those creative insightful truths, That has never been enough. Over the years occasionally I have said or written something I was sure had never been said or written before. Example, I was staying with a friend and for some reason had liberated this huge kettle barbecue I owned from storage and put it on his deck. A volcano erupted somewhere south of us and eventually dusted the whole area including leaving a layer of that fine gray ash on my red barbecue. I remember looking out the window and telling my friend “I should probably go out there and clean the volcano dust off my barbecue.” At that moment I figured most likely no one else had ever said that.
Of other things that seemed original at the time, I have found, while I at least thought I came up with them on my own, it turns out someone else had the idea and sadly often expressed it better than I did. We are always encouraged to read other writers and learn from them. I think I wrote in a previous posting about Shakespeare. As I worked my way through that writer it seemed he had already said everything and what was left for us was only to put things in a modern context. Still, as the Eschatological Laundry List down the side column says, you are bound to keep trying anyway.
One of the terms I had thought was original was Green Day. I mean to my mind it is only a concept: Who actually believes everything turns green on the same day? Apparently EVERY SCIENTIST IN ALASKA. That fellow Ned Rozell who writes the science column I have mentioned before wrote about “Greening up” yesterday and pointed out that scientific observers had kept track of that single date for years. Well it turns out more like naturalists do, but the only thing that matters is I didn’t originate this idea. Here’s a quote from the column testifying to that fact.
“Ted Fathauer, who has recorded green-up at his home on Chena Ridge since 1986, ... declared May 17, as the day ‘leaf buds in birch and aspen open just enough to produce a faint, but distinct green flush through the forest canopy.’”
Here I recorded it as May 13, but that fits, in that we are about four days farther south than Fairbanks, even though it tends to get warmer there in the summer.
So, another expectation of originality shattered. First Shakespeare and now Ned Rozell. I don’t intend to read about barbecues or volcanoes anytime soon so I can at least cling to that one.
The full Rozell column is worth reading, so here it is.
Of other things that seemed original at the time, I have found, while I at least thought I came up with them on my own, it turns out someone else had the idea and sadly often expressed it better than I did. We are always encouraged to read other writers and learn from them. I think I wrote in a previous posting about Shakespeare. As I worked my way through that writer it seemed he had already said everything and what was left for us was only to put things in a modern context. Still, as the Eschatological Laundry List down the side column says, you are bound to keep trying anyway.
One of the terms I had thought was original was Green Day. I mean to my mind it is only a concept: Who actually believes everything turns green on the same day? Apparently EVERY SCIENTIST IN ALASKA. That fellow Ned Rozell who writes the science column I have mentioned before wrote about “Greening up” yesterday and pointed out that scientific observers had kept track of that single date for years. Well it turns out more like naturalists do, but the only thing that matters is I didn’t originate this idea. Here’s a quote from the column testifying to that fact.
“Ted Fathauer, who has recorded green-up at his home on Chena Ridge since 1986, ... declared May 17, as the day ‘leaf buds in birch and aspen open just enough to produce a faint, but distinct green flush through the forest canopy.’”
Here I recorded it as May 13, but that fits, in that we are about four days farther south than Fairbanks, even though it tends to get warmer there in the summer.
So, another expectation of originality shattered. First Shakespeare and now Ned Rozell. I don’t intend to read about barbecues or volcanoes anytime soon so I can at least cling to that one.
The full Rozell column is worth reading, so here it is.
If a politician says the earth is flat …
June 6, 2011
Haven’t done an absurdity roundup in a while so here goes.
The first one is a little complicated, so bear with me for a while, it does get absurd, I promise.
There is a population of beluga whales in Cook Inlet. They are the small, white, toothed whales. In the past few years the Inlet group has been discovered to be a genetically distinct population different enough from other belugas so as to be treated almost as a different species. In the ‘70s there were as many as 1,500 in the Inlet, but now they are down to fewer than 300 animals. Hunting was stopped in the ‘90s but the whales have shown no sign of recovery.
Because of the decline and lack of recovery and allowed by the distinct population discovery, the federal government has attempted to have portions of the Inlet designated as critical habitat. From what I understand that doesn’t remove the areas from commercial uses but it does add more steps to the process in order to try to help the whales.
At any rate the wonderful state government of Alaska and the congressional delegation decided on their own without the benefit of any scientific input that the Cook Inlet belugas were a) not threatened but indeed a healthy population saying the scientists had counted wrong and b) are not a distinct population but are just like belugas everywhere. This is now state policy, which is where the absurdity comes in.
Through the National Marine Fisheries Service a federal board was established to study the beluga situation and come up with a solution. Under that board was a scientific panel. That panel included two state of Alaska biologists. The past tense is correct in this instance because they are no longer on the panel.
It seems an executive order defining state policy says scientists doing work outside their state jobs as in participating in studies of beluga whales by the federal government have to adhere strictly to state policy and not to the scientific fact of a specific situation.
When the board discovered our biologists were required to represent state policy rather than the science of the matter, the two were removed. So, now it seems Alaska biologists take their research results from what politicians say is right, not something based in scientific integrity. And, Alaskans have removed themselves from the table and the table loses valuable insight from people who work with the whales. Driving home last night I couldn't help thinking about the belugas swimming around in the Inlet less than a mile to my left, oblivious to what humans are doing because of them.
It is also state policy that Arctic ice is not melting and therefore polar bears are not endangered either. Of course, this has nothing to do with the assault on the Arctic Ocean by oil companies, who can now operate because the ice is melting.
Now, if an Alaska politician says the earth is flat....? Don’t laugh there are tea baggers who probably think it is and some of them are in Congress.
Which brings up tea baggers. By now anyone who cares knows the Governor Interrupted made another Palinism the other day flubbing the facts around the famous ride of Paul Revere. Later she even argued on television she was correct despite tons of evidence to the contrary. That’s to be expected; how dare anyone tell Palinzilla she is wrong. However today comes a new absurdity. It seems her believers (yeah. lord) have attacked the Wikipedia entry about Paul Revere attempting to change it to the Sarah’s version of history. This takes revisionist history to exciting new levels. She actually said he rode to warn the British that Americans had guns and were going to defend Second Amendment rights. Among other things there was no Second amendment as the Constitution had not been written at the time, let alone amended. Wikipedia has never been something to trust totally in research but now with tea baggers rewriting American history it is even more suspect.
This last one is so bad, I kind of hesitate to put in a column of things I am making fun of, but something needs to be said.
A high school cheerleader in Texas was raped by a star on the school’s basketball team. Eventually he was convicted of a lesser assault charge, but it being Texas and it was basketball season he never went to prison for it.
Back at school the victim refused to participate in a cheer that specifically named her assailant. She was actually supposed to yell in support of “Rakheem” every time he went to shoot a foul shot. Given his history it can be expected he was fouled a lot. When she refused she was kicked off the cheerleading team. Not only that she was advised not to eat in the cafeteria, not participate in other school activities and to avoid the prom. This is the victim we are talking about.
Her parents sued the school district. They lost and now are obliged to pay the district $35,000 in court costs.
A reminder again that this is the victim of a rape. That goes beyond absurdity.
Could a fiction writer in his wildest imagination make any of this up? It all kind of makes me want to fly out of here and join the flash mob on Wall Street tonight.
Why do I feel like an endangered species with only a politician between me and extinction?
The first one is a little complicated, so bear with me for a while, it does get absurd, I promise.
There is a population of beluga whales in Cook Inlet. They are the small, white, toothed whales. In the past few years the Inlet group has been discovered to be a genetically distinct population different enough from other belugas so as to be treated almost as a different species. In the ‘70s there were as many as 1,500 in the Inlet, but now they are down to fewer than 300 animals. Hunting was stopped in the ‘90s but the whales have shown no sign of recovery.
Because of the decline and lack of recovery and allowed by the distinct population discovery, the federal government has attempted to have portions of the Inlet designated as critical habitat. From what I understand that doesn’t remove the areas from commercial uses but it does add more steps to the process in order to try to help the whales.
At any rate the wonderful state government of Alaska and the congressional delegation decided on their own without the benefit of any scientific input that the Cook Inlet belugas were a) not threatened but indeed a healthy population saying the scientists had counted wrong and b) are not a distinct population but are just like belugas everywhere. This is now state policy, which is where the absurdity comes in.
Through the National Marine Fisheries Service a federal board was established to study the beluga situation and come up with a solution. Under that board was a scientific panel. That panel included two state of Alaska biologists. The past tense is correct in this instance because they are no longer on the panel.
It seems an executive order defining state policy says scientists doing work outside their state jobs as in participating in studies of beluga whales by the federal government have to adhere strictly to state policy and not to the scientific fact of a specific situation.
When the board discovered our biologists were required to represent state policy rather than the science of the matter, the two were removed. So, now it seems Alaska biologists take their research results from what politicians say is right, not something based in scientific integrity. And, Alaskans have removed themselves from the table and the table loses valuable insight from people who work with the whales. Driving home last night I couldn't help thinking about the belugas swimming around in the Inlet less than a mile to my left, oblivious to what humans are doing because of them.
It is also state policy that Arctic ice is not melting and therefore polar bears are not endangered either. Of course, this has nothing to do with the assault on the Arctic Ocean by oil companies, who can now operate because the ice is melting.
Now, if an Alaska politician says the earth is flat....? Don’t laugh there are tea baggers who probably think it is and some of them are in Congress.
Which brings up tea baggers. By now anyone who cares knows the Governor Interrupted made another Palinism the other day flubbing the facts around the famous ride of Paul Revere. Later she even argued on television she was correct despite tons of evidence to the contrary. That’s to be expected; how dare anyone tell Palinzilla she is wrong. However today comes a new absurdity. It seems her believers (yeah. lord) have attacked the Wikipedia entry about Paul Revere attempting to change it to the Sarah’s version of history. This takes revisionist history to exciting new levels. She actually said he rode to warn the British that Americans had guns and were going to defend Second Amendment rights. Among other things there was no Second amendment as the Constitution had not been written at the time, let alone amended. Wikipedia has never been something to trust totally in research but now with tea baggers rewriting American history it is even more suspect.
This last one is so bad, I kind of hesitate to put in a column of things I am making fun of, but something needs to be said.
A high school cheerleader in Texas was raped by a star on the school’s basketball team. Eventually he was convicted of a lesser assault charge, but it being Texas and it was basketball season he never went to prison for it.
Back at school the victim refused to participate in a cheer that specifically named her assailant. She was actually supposed to yell in support of “Rakheem” every time he went to shoot a foul shot. Given his history it can be expected he was fouled a lot. When she refused she was kicked off the cheerleading team. Not only that she was advised not to eat in the cafeteria, not participate in other school activities and to avoid the prom. This is the victim we are talking about.
Her parents sued the school district. They lost and now are obliged to pay the district $35,000 in court costs.
A reminder again that this is the victim of a rape. That goes beyond absurdity.
Could a fiction writer in his wildest imagination make any of this up? It all kind of makes me want to fly out of here and join the flash mob on Wall Street tonight.
Why do I feel like an endangered species with only a politician between me and extinction?
"…a hard rain's a gonna fall…"
July 19, 2011
Finally a little excitement lit up the drive home, literally, after what seems like weeks of mindless commuting. Along the blue highway under a seriously dark cloud with thick foliage leaning in to form the sides of a forbidding tunnel, a flash of lightening, horizontal all the way across the night sky as far as I could see in either direction. Bright and so close, I am sure I heard a little electronic crackling inside the car. Mind you, lightning around here is rare. In more than 35 years I might have seen lightning five or six times. Shortly after that blast the rain began falling harder than I have seen it since I have lived in this area. As I approached the bridge there was another flash, this one round and bright like the sun. I listened for thunder but didn't hear anything. The rain still fell thick as I left the car and walked to the door. Just as I put the key in the lock another flash, this one muffled and reflected as I never saw the actual lightning. Then a thunder clap so close and so loud and so sharp I almost jumped off the porch. I watched at the window for a while but the rain soon let up and no more flashes in the sky either.
Other things have been going on, and they will show up in time, but in light of the previous post, they seem trivial to me at this point.
" … so, where have you been my blue-eyed son …"
August
 |
Another year when my
son was 10 or 11 and he led
the Valdez Fishing Derby
for about half an hour
one day with a 12-pound fish.
|
August 30, 2011
Some fishing stories came up tonight. It all started with a picture of a grizzly bear with a Pixie lure hooked in its nose. The jokes and puns flew around, a few of which ended up in the paper and online. Something about an adolescent showing off his nose piercing and another about being a teen being hooked on something and also the allure of a fishing tackle box. So it goes.
There are some things you can count on in August around here: huge cabbages and huge pumpkins for a couple. We had a picture tonight of a pumpkin expected to weigh close to 1,800 pounds when it's weighed at the fair Wednesday. And another thing you can take to the bank is silver salmon in Port Valdez. I made my living for a while trolling for them and on a few occasions actually went after them for fun. I had some success chartering, lots of limits and a few derby winners.
One I remember most and the one I told tonight involved getting hooked with a lure. I was fishing with my nephew and we managed to hook a pink salmon using a lure that had two hooks in line. When I went to grab the fish, the back hook which was loose got me right through that flap of skin between the thumb and forefinger, all the way through.
So there I was with a three or four pound fish jumping and twisting, flapping and flopping and fighting against a hook through my hand. Unused to this sort of thing my nephew wasn't sure what to do until after several shouts and curses, I finally got him to hand me the dikes. Still fighting the fish I finally got the dikes on the shank side of the hook and cut it. The fish when flopping into the bottom of the skiff we were fishing from and I pulled the hook end out the other way. You have to be thankful for the antiseptic qualities of salt water. I dunked my hand and swished it around until I couldn't stand the cold any more and pulled it out. The bleeding had stopped and that was all there was to that. When we got home I put a Band-Aid on it and it healed very nicely. And for once I was glad we had caught a pink salmon. If that had been a 15-pound silver I might have been in a whole lot worse shape.
A pink wasn't all we caught that day. I think we sent about 90 pounds of silver salmon meat back to his family the next day.
Just one more reason I have never cared for fishing much.
Due to extreme weather, the extreme weather drill is cancelled
November 8, 2011
This has to be one of the great TV announcements of all time. "Due to extreme weather expected across most of western Alaska, the Alaska Broadcasters Association Emergency Alert Systems test scheduled for tomorrow has been cancelled."
It sounds funny but probably not a good idea to hold a drill when the real thing is about to happen. A storm involving two huge low pressure systems is bearing down on Alaska's west coast with hurricane force winds predicted all the way from the Aleutian Islands north into the Chukchi Sea at Point Lay. In addition to those souls still at sea this storm is threatening beach erosion, flooding, blizzards and pack ice forced on shore or at least one or the other of those over almost a thousand miles of shoreline
As of noon today Nome already was feeling the winds and noticing some rise in water level. That is supposed to intensify overnight into a storm the weather service says could be the worst on record.
Here's a link to running updates about the storm.
It sounds funny but probably not a good idea to hold a drill when the real thing is about to happen. A storm involving two huge low pressure systems is bearing down on Alaska's west coast with hurricane force winds predicted all the way from the Aleutian Islands north into the Chukchi Sea at Point Lay. In addition to those souls still at sea this storm is threatening beach erosion, flooding, blizzards and pack ice forced on shore or at least one or the other of those over almost a thousand miles of shoreline
As of noon today Nome already was feeling the winds and noticing some rise in water level. That is supposed to intensify overnight into a storm the weather service says could be the worst on record.
Here's a link to running updates about the storm.
Once in a Blue Moon
January 1, 2010
Or maybe twice considering there will be another one this month. Anyway this was New Year's Eve 2009 and New Year's Day 2010.
Slideshow: The first blue moon.
Two months, two blue moons...
January 29, 2010... and this is the second one in January. It is only proof an attempt at a photo was made. Had to deal with a neighbor's dog barking and snarling at me in my own yard (lucky I had a camera instead of a gun) and a camera that is just too automatic for its own good, a new and unfamiliar tripod and a lens that just isn't long enough. But, this is the blue moon the second month in a row we have had one (although December and January shared the same full moon Dec. 31 and Jan. 1). So all excuses given, an A for effort???
Here's how a professional shot the moon (so to speak) and some more information
Winter's kiss
February 9, 2010
Most often January is the coldest month. It seems for two or three weeks in January the temperatures go to the deepest all winter often down into the minus 30s. This winter not so much but we had a touch of it. At the same time the skies are clear and the sun shines brightly but there is no warmth in it. You look at the clear sky and the bright sun and have to wonder why there is no warmth from all that gaseous fire. Folks in McGrath had a term for it: When I was there one winter during this period they looked at the sky and called it "severe clear." Then as the days grow longer moving into February it changes. Right now we already have 8 hours and 22 minutes of daylight. At this point the sun hits the house but it rises and sets twice. Morning sun comes through the trees but then it goes behind the mountain only to rise sideways again in the afternoon. And, as all this happens there is one day in February different from the others. One day outdoors or maybe driving, at a pause you feel the first touch of warmth on some bit of exposed skin. I have most often felt it on my cheek. It tells you there indeed is warmth in that sun and that little warm kiss tells you there is an end to winter and all that's needed is patience. It is like that first little kiss of blossoming love. It holds that much promise. Today was that day. On the way to work with the sun shining through the side window of the car, it touched my cheek and I felt its warmth, felt that winter kiss and it puts a little spring in the step with all the promise it holds. This is something I have never mentioned to anyone before but I was describing it to a couple of people at work and one fellow said, "yes, I felt it too. I was out blowing snow off the driveway and had to make a phone call and when I stopped I felt it." It's nice to have confirmation. So, there it is. Maybe it should be expressed in a poem but that form escapes me these days. Having felt it was enough.
You have to love Alaskans even when you disagree with them
February 14, 2010
Last week when "snowmagedden" just about paralyzed the East Coast and most of Washington, D.C., despite the government being mostly closed, both Alaska senators made it to work. And, that's not the best part. When they got there one of them found five people from Nome already waiting in the office for a meeting. You can take the girl out of Alaska, but you can't take Alaska out of the girl.
On a more somber note, yesterday I noticed the spring frosting. That is when the days are warm enough to soften the top layer of the snow. Then it freezes overnight and that crust looks all shiny like a glazed donut. The problem is those conditions create avalanches and today two people and maybe a third were killed in avalanches. One of them was the president of Conoco Phillips Alaska.
It reminded my of the time I watched my son head off into the mountains on his brand new snowmachine a few years ago. His buddy had a full backpack and at first I wondered what for since they were only going to be gone for an hour or so. Then it hit me. When they came back we headed straight to the sporting goods store and I spent about $600 on gear for him: a locater beacon, a breakdown shovel with snow probe in the handle, small first aid kit, a folding saw, space blanket, super flashlight, a signal mirror and some other things. I felt a whole lot better next time he went off by himself.
To give you an idea what he might have had to deal with. One time the road out of Valdez was closed by an avalanche in Thompson Pass, the area in the U.S. that usually reports the heaviest snowfall for a year. Record is more than 900 inches. It's a popular place to ride snowmachines and my son and his friends went there often. Ok, so when they said on the radio that a one-way lane had been cleared through it, I headed out. When I got to the one lane through the avalanche chute, I reset my odometer. All of this snow was higher than a pickup and when I came out of it I had gone 4.7 miles. That avalanche was almost five miles wide by the time it got down to the road. I am not easily impressed but, oh boy, I was that day. Difficult to get your head around the power let loose there.
I go through a small avalanche area on the drive to and from work, and believe me I drove through it just as fast as I dared tonight.
Labels: Alaska winter, avalanche, climate, snowmachines, son, winter
Waiting for Green Day
April 12, 2010
No, not the rock group, or Godot for that matter. The deciduous tress are skeletal now. Wind and winter have taken away the last leaves clinging to their branches and they are bare brown awaiting warmth and moisture. It goes on like this for about a month and then one day you look up and it’s all green. It really seems to happen in just one day. Just for proof, the picture of the twigs is how it looks today. When green day happens (could be a month) I will go back to the same spot and take another to show what it looks like. It might be a while. There was new snow quite a way down the mountain yesterday.
look what I noticed on it yesterday. It may be the portent of good things to come, although on the negative side of things I noticed while clearing the garden a moose had nibbled down my lilac. I don't recall ever seeing tracks around it, although those tracks I followed a few weeks ago may have gone to it and I didn't notice. I only followed them in the other direction. So I actually may have a photograph of the culprit. Now, how do you tell one moose from another. Lineup? We shall see how that turns out.Green Day, plus two or three
May 10, 2010
So, after more careful watching than ever before, it happened on a day I didn't drive the road, or two days after either. So, here's a picture from two days late. Unfortunately my continual choice of doing things on the shaded north sides of mountains messed me up again and that spot I chose to illustrate green day is about the last along the road to turn. If you look closely there are buds on the twigs. More green farther down the road. Last Wednesday when I went to work all those trees were still brown. Saturday green. Some spring events are still to come, though. For one, the bloom of porcupines has yet to occur, haven't seen a one. Second, while the pond is now open, no sign of swans yet either. But, I did see that Canada goose Fred standing by the roadside Saturday. He has a bright yellow tagging marker around his neck now. It would be interesting to learn where he obtained his fancy new neckwear. So spring is progressing but not quite there yet and I am now the proud owner of a $7 "nearly wild" rose bush that I put out during the day and bring in every night until it's safe to plant for good. The strawberry plant from last year has growth coming from one of its stringers and the lilac is showing new growth despite providing a meal for a moose. This weekend will bring the trip to the greenhouse to fill out the garden. I expect to be housebound and have wealth of free time next week and then go at it full tilt. And when I put the rose bush out this morning -- two robins.
Labels: Alaska birds, Alaska garden, Canada geese, climate, Fred, Green Day
One more sign
May 17, 2010
Saw the first porcupine of the season on the way home last night, so the bloom is in progress. Only one more sign to go and everything will be in place, but I am a little worried about that one. The swans have not showed up on their pond yet and it has been ice free for about two weeks now. That in itself is not so worrying, but there is another factor. While there was still ice on the pond where I have seen them every year, on another lake near here (for geography's sake, my swan pond is about 8 miles west of here and this lake is a couple of miles to the east) some idiot with nothing better to do with his high-powered rifle shot two swans. A couple of canoeists found them floating on the water. It is pretty easy to imagine my swans not being able to land yet on the pond to fly on to that other lake and meet that violent end. A serious hunt is on for the shooter (a state trooper was quoted as saying we take our swans seriously here) but there is probably little chance the culprit will be caught and strung up until his neck is proportionately as long as a swan's. So it goes.
Meanwhile my son is racing north from college at a rate of almost $200 a day. At that spending speed for what it is going to cost me, he and the truck could have flown north. These kids today.
Cheating death
May 19, 2010
A few minutes ago I made a post on facebook that might have sounded a little more dramatic than what was intended, at least it could be interpreted that way by folks who don't know me all that well. What I wrote was "it appears i have cheated death one more time," and referred to a bit of oral surgery yesterday. No big deal just a bit of exaggeration over the fact that I survived it.
So, here is the background. When I drove tour boats every day, when I returned to the harbor and the boat had been tied to the dock and I finally turned off the engines, I would turn to the people who were left in the wheelhouse, and say "Well, cheated death one more time." That usually got a laugh, and it was said with a smile and good humor. But underneath the surface was a sort of spiritual acknowledgement that we had returned safely from the sea, survived what dangers are out there had been delivered from whatever and by whatever forces are out there, the weather, the waves the unseen dangers, and by whatever power a person happens to believe in, an angel, a god, nature, your own skill... All of it is acknowledged in the phrase, Cheated death one more time.
A young fellow who crewed on that boat, also named Tim, picked up on that phrase. He joined the Army and the vessel service, I'm not sure what it's called, and told me as a helmsman on his first return from a voyage, to Panama, once the ship was docked he said "Cheated death one more time." For his quip he said he was almost laughed out of the wheelhouse. Today he is a chief warrant officer in that same service just returned from Haiti.
As if to drive the point home, this story popped up on the Daily news website today. A friend's boat went down. I first met the captain, Tom Sr., in the early 80s when he would put his bowpicking gillnetter into the water at Whittier to fish Prince William Sound. It had a catchy name. From his home in Kenai he had to take the boat on trailers to where he wanted to launch. It was bigger than the usual trailered boat so he was forced to put on one of those signs. That was until, he simply named the boat "WIDE LOAD."
Years after that I met his daughter and we worked at the same organization for several years. When I first read that article I stopped on the boat name and thought that sounded familiar. Then I got to the names of the crew, and a cold chill ran through my body. They were saved. But that chill, knowing what they must have gone through lingers.
If you take the time to read the news article, read down through the comments too. I am guessing there will be several thanking the Coast Guard. The number of rescues the Coast Guard makes in Alaska waters and in what outrageous weather is simply amazing. A couple of weeks ago another boat went down not too far from where the Cape Spencer did today. Within 10 minutes of hearing the Mayday, the Coast Guard had a Jayhawk helicopter and C-130 rescue aircraft in the air. The C-130 was on scene within about an hour and was able to drop a raft to the crew. When the helicopter arrived a rescue swimmer helped the crew who were in cold northern ocean water and all but one were saved. I am betting the same thing happened with Tom Tomrdle today. Go see the movie "The Guardian" sometime. It is much closer to the truth than you would believe.
At any rate, that is what "cheated death one more time" is all about. And today the crew of the Cape Spencer cheated death one more time. And, for that I am very relieved and happy.
So, here is the background. When I drove tour boats every day, when I returned to the harbor and the boat had been tied to the dock and I finally turned off the engines, I would turn to the people who were left in the wheelhouse, and say "Well, cheated death one more time." That usually got a laugh, and it was said with a smile and good humor. But underneath the surface was a sort of spiritual acknowledgement that we had returned safely from the sea, survived what dangers are out there had been delivered from whatever and by whatever forces are out there, the weather, the waves the unseen dangers, and by whatever power a person happens to believe in, an angel, a god, nature, your own skill... All of it is acknowledged in the phrase, Cheated death one more time.
A young fellow who crewed on that boat, also named Tim, picked up on that phrase. He joined the Army and the vessel service, I'm not sure what it's called, and told me as a helmsman on his first return from a voyage, to Panama, once the ship was docked he said "Cheated death one more time." For his quip he said he was almost laughed out of the wheelhouse. Today he is a chief warrant officer in that same service just returned from Haiti.
As if to drive the point home, this story popped up on the Daily news website today. A friend's boat went down. I first met the captain, Tom Sr., in the early 80s when he would put his bowpicking gillnetter into the water at Whittier to fish Prince William Sound. It had a catchy name. From his home in Kenai he had to take the boat on trailers to where he wanted to launch. It was bigger than the usual trailered boat so he was forced to put on one of those signs. That was until, he simply named the boat "WIDE LOAD."
Years after that I met his daughter and we worked at the same organization for several years. When I first read that article I stopped on the boat name and thought that sounded familiar. Then I got to the names of the crew, and a cold chill ran through my body. They were saved. But that chill, knowing what they must have gone through lingers.
If you take the time to read the news article, read down through the comments too. I am guessing there will be several thanking the Coast Guard. The number of rescues the Coast Guard makes in Alaska waters and in what outrageous weather is simply amazing. A couple of weeks ago another boat went down not too far from where the Cape Spencer did today. Within 10 minutes of hearing the Mayday, the Coast Guard had a Jayhawk helicopter and C-130 rescue aircraft in the air. The C-130 was on scene within about an hour and was able to drop a raft to the crew. When the helicopter arrived a rescue swimmer helped the crew who were in cold northern ocean water and all but one were saved. I am betting the same thing happened with Tom Tomrdle today. Go see the movie "The Guardian" sometime. It is much closer to the truth than you would believe.
At any rate, that is what "cheated death one more time" is all about. And today the crew of the Cape Spencer cheated death one more time. And, for that I am very relieved and happy.
Sightings, swan murderers and solitude
May 25, 2010
There’s lots of traffic on the commute these days, but never as much as when I used to drive it early in the mornings. I saw the first moose in a while last night and at least one porcupine every night. Lots of birds flitting around, even saw an owl one night that I almost hit. A fox scampered across the road one night in that gait they have that is deceptively fast because they stay low and look like they are slinking with very little up and down motion. The one glaring exception is swans. No swans on the pond yet and it’s getting late now. I still wonder if the ones shot a week or so ago aren’t the ones that usually hang out on the pond I pass.
That criminal has been caught. Like the trooper said, we take our swans seriously. Someone had taken a picture around the lake where they were found and either accidentally or on purpose managed to photograph the license plate of the suspect’s car. Turns out he was a soldier on one of the bases here. He was arrested and two firearms confiscated. You just don’t mess with swans in Alaska. But, none of this is going to put two white birds on the pond I pass this year. I feel that loss and I expect others who pass the place do, too.
Another resident of the commute has been spotted as well. Though I often look, I haven’t seen the Solitary Man since that encounter in the movie theater parking lot a while back. But, a friend on a birthday picnic saw him the other day. Here in her words:
“Your solitary man was there too, just sitting with his gear at an isolated table. During the time we were there, he used the restroom, washed his hands in the river, and eventually gathered up his bed roll and other things. He walked under the bridge of northbound traffic, and climbed the hill to the area between the two highways - just like you said. The guy who is the park supervisor came around wanting money for the park use (yes, he was the real guy, not a sneaky panhandler), and he was collecting $5 for each car. He looked at the solitary man and ignored him. I am sure he has seen him often. As soon as Tess saw him, she said, ‘hey that guy was here when we were here last year.’ Interesting.”
Reassuring to know there is some constant in the world and that this fellow lives pretty much on his own and under the radar. But, curiouser and curiouser …
And there was a moon, an almost full moon, probably the last one we'll see until September or so,
'And the sign flashed out its warning'
July 24, 2010
Last winter a pretty healthy storm hit the East Coast. It was the one that shut down Washington, D.C., for a day or so, the one where both Alaska senators made it to work despite the snow and one of them found a delegation from Nome waiting in the office. It was referred to as the storm of the century, pretty presumptuous considering the century was only nine years old and still had Katrina in it. The storm provided the opportunity for every global warming doubter to come out of the woodwork and claim it was all a scam and the proof was in the snow. Even the Governor Interrupted chimed in calling global warming "snake oil science." It was one of those comments that caused the complaint about embarrassing Alaskans blog a while ago.
So, last night a story came across about the triple digit heat wave in the Lower 48 and what people are doing to endure it. One fellow who lives in the watermelon capital of the country said he was even worried about his famous fruit which apparently thrives in the heat. Toward the end of the story, a person from the National Weather Service said June was the warmest month on record since records have been kept and July was shaping up for the same sort of record. In fact, that person said 2010 could be the warmest year in the history of record keeping.
Knowing a little about climate, and meteorology and weather, I am sure this is not the total indication of global warming any more than snowmagedden last February was an indication that global warming is not happening. But, how does the saying go? This silence was deafening.
Not one of those global warming doubters heard from. They will show up shortly though, saying this is only a blip in a natural cycle, which it probably is, and the indication of nothing, even though the blip in the cycle last winter was absolute proof the earth is not warming.
It is kind of a cool, wet summer in Alaska. So, maybe 100-degree temperatures are indicative of nothing as the warming is not universal. Have to wonder what the increased power use to run all those air conditioners is doing for the amount of CO2 in the air and the whole trend of warming. Junk science. But at least it silenced the wackos for a while.
"Hello darkness, my old friend. I've come to talk with you again …"
Labels: climate, climate change, music, weather
Nature continues to amaze
October 12, 2010
Some new natural wonders, or at least things I have not seen before. The other night I hit what I am pretty sure was a muskrat on the road. The next day driving to work I saw several others in the same area dead in the road. It was like a whole migration wiped out overnight. Then I got to wondering what caused so many on the road at one time. Two causes come to mind. One is that the river was very high from all the rain this summer and thinking perhaps their bank dens were flooded and forced them out. The only other thing I could think of was maybe it was this summer's litter chased out to fend for themselves. At any rate it was a strange occurrence. Perhaps if my imagination were working better these days, there was a grand adventure in progress with the muskrat army on its way to Redwall to help the defenders defeat the weasels and foxes.
Then last night I noticed an organization of stars I have never seen before. It was four stars in almost a vertical line rising from close to the eastern horizon. At first I thought it was lights on some kind of tower, but they seemed to rise higher than any tower around here. They were there all the way home, but at home I couldn't see them with all the trees around. No easy answer in my iPad star finder either. And a bigger question, things don't change that much in the sky, how come I never noticed this before? And, again, with some imagination applied, could this vertical line be illuminating the stairway to heaven? Can you hear Led Zeppelin in the background?
Lost and found my Saving Grace
October 22, 2010
Stairway to heaven is still there and I am wondering how it squares with a belief like “swear there ain’t no heaven and pray there ain’t no hell.” Let it ride for another one time around the block, two times around the clock, three times to cross the road, hey hey. Winter still threatens but bright blue skies seen through the skeletal limbs of birch and cottonwood preclude the onset of snow, though it looks deeper higher in the mountains. The eagle has returned to the huge dead cottonwood on the river bank, watching, ever watching. In the yard leaves need raking, that tree is only half bucked up waiting for a chainsaw repair, but there is no rush, plenty of firewood remains from the last delivery, and is now dry enough to make good heat. The road to work is still visible in daylight though the sun is low enough in the sky at that time of day it necessitates the use of sunglasses as the drive is mostly straight at it. Overall, it is a world of waiting for something, anticipating with no clue as to what is over that horizon and not all that sure about wanting to find out. Aimless wandering back and forth with the edge of the flat world out there somewhere and not at all interested in going over, when the stairway seems a much more enticing option. And, Danny in Tortilla Flat out there in back with his chair leg screaming, “Bring it, Lord.”
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