Tuesday, November 23, 2010

By noon the second day


By noon the second day... or how did Sonja cross the road?

=== === ===


By noon the second day of the subtropical wet mass hitting the subarctic, road conditions of side roads have worsened a bit, though my understanding is that main roads are being maintained with sand and gravel and are somewhat passable. Here we are walking up and crossing the street after a brief visit to our neighbors on a side road. There was no way to walk directly on the road.

Interestingly, one of our neighbors did pass us in his truck as we were walking up. In his old 70's truck, he did not seem to have much problem, even without chains. I don't intend to try it until I have to.

On the radio they announced the schools are closed again tomorrow, so that means a full week of no school for us. Good decision from the school district administrators.

Outside, it is still just drizzling, so overall it's not bad to be outside. But the above-freezing temperatures make everything super-wet. Since walking on the street itself is impossible (one just falls down, and the pants get a layer of water from the water on top of the ice), we walk through the snow, which makes for wet boots. And any fall into the snow means some more water for the snowpants to absorb. Jackets just get a doze of the drizzle from the constant drizzle. We have never been so wet after spending such a short time outside. One hour outside meant pretty much soaked everything. I even broke out my extratuffs (rubber boots). This is no weather for the mukluks I normally wear all winter long.

So now we will just continue to work on the snowmen. The one I build yesterday afternoon collapsed overnight, the small one that Sonja build survived. I need to practice :).

Monday, November 22, 2010

By noon the first day

By noon the first day of the subtropical moisture system making its way into the subarctic, our local road looked like this. But that was noon, and it continued to drizzle continuously the entire day and night (at least so far), so it will be interesting to see how things look tomorrow. No school tomorrow either, due to the rain, so we will continue to practice that thing so rare in Fairbanks - making a snowman.

Taking the dogs for a walk, it feels, except for the darkness, like April. Everything is melting. Slush underneath the snow. Not what we bargained for in November. Especially since we finally got some decent snow this past weekend, making it look like the winter won't be so bad afterall.

More snowmen tomorrow.... if the snow lasts :)

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Natural light


Here is our house in the bright sunlight (reflected off the full moon), around 10:30pm tonight. Temperature just around freezing. Freezing rain predicted tomorrow. So probably no moonlight tomorrow.

Spectacular sunset Friday

Friday evening we had a spectacular pink sunset. Denali was throwing a
shadow into it (bottom left).

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Tanana 2

A bit further on the floodplain, a whole bunch of driftwood.

Walk by the Tanana river

The dogs and I took a walk by the Tanana river by the airport. This
section of the floodplain riverbank has been actively eroding over the
last however many years. Another thing to note is that this main
channel of the river has just small but hardly any big ice pancakes on it. Late freezeup.