Pictures

Yes, I know the photo is on the wrong day! Photos on a Thursday? Why, it's unthinkable!
I actually have photography block. I haven't seen anything and though, `wow, that's pretty` lately, and that's unsurprising. After all, we're in full-on melt-down mode here in Fairbanks. The snow is nasty, mud is getting all over, and ice is building up on any depression or level surface. Add to that the fact that most of westridge on campus is being dug up right now, and you got yourself a pretty ugly place. Luckily, soon it'll be warm enough for foliage to start coming out, and the place will be greener than you can shake a stick at.

How Icy is Fairbanks?

Just how icy is Fairbanks right now? Here's a gem that I found via Alaskan Dave (who is not dead, judging by his twitter account) Down Under: http://yfrog.com/mgyv5pj

Goldstream is better than that. Marginally. Just stay away from Ballaine.

PSA: UAF closed tomorrow, Tuesday.

In case you hadn't noticed, Fairbanks is worse than a skating rink right now. When you add copious rain to freezing ground temperatures, you get sheets of ice and zero traction. I tried to get to work today, before getting as far as halfway through Goldstream and deciding that getting to work wasn't worth dying for. UAF has decided to do what they almost never do, and that's to close down tomorrow due to weather. Here's the email I got.


Nov. 22, 2010

TO:     UAF faculty and staff

FROM: Chancellor Brian Rogers

RE: Campus closed Tuesday, Nov. 23 due to weather hazards

The University of Alaska Fairbanks main campus and all UAF Community and Technical College locations will be closed Tuesday, Nov. 23, due to hazardous weather conditions. All classes are canceled for the day.

The fire and police departments will remain in operation. There will be limited staffing in departments that provide other critical functions, such as Facilities Services and OIT. The Student Recreation Center, residence halls and food service for on-campus residents will remain open as well. Please visit uafalert.alaska.edu for more information regarding specific hours.

Employees should check with their supervisors to determine which leave options are available to them. Administrative leave is not an option on Nov. 23.  Supervisors should remain flexible during these unusual circumstances and consider whether employee attendance is necessary to perform critical or essential functions. The following options are available during the emergency closure:

• If employees can travel from home to work safely and have access to their workspace, they can work a normal day.
• Employees can take annual leave for all or part of the day.
• Employees may work all or part of the day from home if workload and department needs allow this option. Supervisor approval is required.
• With supervisor approval, employees who do not have adequate leave, may stay home and use flex time to make up some or all of their missed hours.
• Employees who do not have adequate leave may stay home on Nov. 23 and work on Friday, Nov. 26 to make up missed time. Friday, Nov. 26 is a regularly scheduled campus holiday closure.
• Employees may elect to take leave without pay.

Please call your HR consultant at 474-7700 if you have questions about how to handle leave time during this emergency closure; HR will be checking phone messages during the closure.

We will be evaluating weather conditions throughout the day on Tuesday to determine whether additional closures are necessary. Our top concern is the safety of our students and employees.

Please check uafalert.alaska.edu or call 474-7UAF(7823) for the most current information about closures and class cancellations.

Massive duststorms... in Alaska?

When you think of a massive dust storm, if you're like me, you probably don't think about South-East Alaska. I'm more likely to think of Saudi Arabia or Kuwait than Alaska's Banana Belt. And yet, there it is:

That's a photo from NASA. So, what on earth are those massive plumes streaming off the coast from? Give it a guess, and then check out Phil Plait's answer. :) NASA does an awful lot of Earth observing, and generates a whole bunch of critical data. That's not bad for an agency who's entire budget costs us much less than one percent of the federal budget.

New Freds West

I swung by Fred's West this morning to grab some gas and odds and ends I needed, and finally saw what all the construction was about - two massive foyers on the north and east side, for containing shopping carts. I'm not sure what the heck they're supposed to accomplish, aside from looking very impressive.

And then it occured to me... Freds is now heating a massive, two story, glass lined foyer that's constantly opening and closing as people enter and leave the store. Is it just me, or is this a massively bad idea? The energy required to keep that volume of air toasty warm must be staggering. The surface area to volume ratio has got to be massive, especially with their tall, pointy roof. It's a grotesque waste of heating and perhaps the single worst design you could have for anywhere in Alaska, never mind Interior Alaska.

Fred's:

Winterize yourself

It's starting to get cold over here, although we haven't really plumbed the sub-zero °Fs yet. But with the days getting shorter, and the temperature going down, winter is definitely here for the season. This much really hit me Saturday when I woke up after sleeping for nearly 12 hours. Don't bother me, I'm hibernating! In that vein, I want to share this surprisingly accurate list of ways to winterize yourself from lifehacker. Just like you winterize your truck, and pull your boat out for the season, you should take good care of yourself, too!

My two cents would be "don't feel the need to hold onto your really warm gear until later." Lots of people are walking around campus in light jackets like they're in denial, and they're clearly shivering. Well that's silly! Just put on your warm stuff when you feel cold. Don't over dress or you'll get hot, but it's the opposite that's the bigger problem.

Also, "Get out an do something!" So many new students here hole up for the coldest months, which is precisely when they should be getting out and being active. Being active helps with the mood, and you also get more sun exposure. Keeping the indoors brightly lit helps too.

This one will be counter intuitive, but "turn down your thermostat." If you keep your home slightly cool, your body will better acclimate to the cold. There's good science to back this up, too. I see tiny cabins with massive woodstoves, and I have to shake my head. Some of them get so hot, you'd think we were in the jungle!

What are your tips for staying winterized?

Think it's dry now?

I tried to post this a few weeks ago, but Blogger wouldn't let me. So I'm going to give it another try.

It seems the very low snow condtions, coupled with the warm weather predicted for the year, the CPC is forecasting a hydrological drought in much of Interior Alaska. I can attest to the fact that the upper Chena is very low, since even my kayak had problems with the shallow water last weekend.

Three things

Three ways the LHC could destroy the world, ranked by how silly they are.
I believe that I don't need to add anything there. :)


In other news, Clean Up Day is May 8. To be honest, at the rate snow is melting I think we'll be in garbage wonderland far before then. My neighbour's roof is nearly snowless already, and the road leading to my home is nothing but slush. Given how warm it's been, and how little snow we got to begin with, I think mudseason is here to stay for a bit.

Finally, an observation: I tried to teach a student that things aren't black and white in wildlife management, the other day, but I absolutely failed.

:ducks the rotten fruit:

Happy April foolish day!

Just stating the obvious

I picked this up from the National Weather Service:

Statement as of 7:22 PM AKDT on March 15, 2010

... A colder and drier than average start to March at Fairbanks...

During the first two weeks of March the average temperature at the
Fairbanks International Airport was 3.5 degrees... which was 2.3
degrees below average. The month started mild with well above
average temperatures on the 3rd through the 6th... including a high
of 40 on the 3rd. It turned much colder during the second week of
March... with a low of 26 below on the 13th.

So far this March a total of 1.6 inches of snow has
fallen... which is 1.4 inches below average. For the season only
24.8 inches of snow has been observed... which is 38.3 inches
below average. The snowfall total for the winter season ranks as
the least amount of snow since the winter of 1952-1953.

For the next several days temperatures are expected to moderate...
with above average temperatures expected Thursday through Sunday.
Little or no precipitation is expected through next weekend. The
average high this time of year at Fairbanks is 25 and the average
low is 3 below.

Yea. 38.4 inches below normal. I'll believe that. Riding over tussocks, you nearly fall apart from the horrible vibrations. It's not to say we can't have a late spring sudden snowstorm, but it'd take 3ft of snow to put us back near the black, and that's a lot of snow, even in Valdez. And we didn't really have any -40, aside from a day or two of it. Not that I'm complaining, it's just odd...

Why is this year so warm and dry? I thought the PDO was going cold... which could explain the dry, if it weren't for the "Warm" part of that sentence. I'm not a meteorologist, but I'm curious why the climate was like it was. And, is this what the Arctic is going to look like in the future with Climate Change. If so, it can keep it!

Short post!

Qanirtuq maani Fairbanks-aami! It's snowing here in Fairbanks! And not just Ingrini. Who would have thought, snow in SquareFranks??? ;)

Rain!

I don't remember the last time I've seen people this happy to see rain. Last night, some rain clouds rolled in and put down about a quarter of an inch of the wet stuff onto our badly dried home. Given in the last month, we had rain that was measured in the hundredths of inches, this is a significant amount. Hopefully, it'll allow the firefighters to make headway at our billion and a half fires (well, it seems like there's that many), or at least work on the Hardluck Creek fire.

And it wasn't a moment too soon. Yesterday night was, bar none, the worst smoke of any night. Visibility was as low as 25 yards in places, and became just unbearable. The air quality in places was Hazardous, or 6 on a 6 point scale. From the borourgh's website, Hazardous air quality is "Heath warnings of emergency conditions. The entire population is more likely to be effected. Everyone should avoid any outdoor exertion; people with respiratory or heart disease, the elderly and children should remain indoors."

Now I've breathed air worse than Mexico city's air (which is really, really bad; it's known internationally for being some of the worst air anywhere), and I'm convinced, up down left and right, that yesterday evening topped even that.

Special happenings.

Something special happened in Fairbanks, yesterday. I'm not talking about the stepping down of you-know-who (I attended that!). I'm not talking about my Blog's Anniversary, either. Or the wildfires that decided to shower us with ash, and cause my airways to constrict (Thanks fires!).

No, yesterday, the sun set!

"What?" You say. "It does that daily!" Well, it might go down, but it doesn't set. Civil Twilight is defined as the time when the sun goes 6 degrees below the horizion, something It hasn't done for a few months now. This (somewhat arbitrary) benchmark denotes when it gets truly dark outside, as opposed to just dusky or dawn...y. If you were up last night, you would have needed to turn on a light, or just stumbled around in the dark, because we had 47 minutes of the first Night we've had since the sun went up in mid-may.

Never ending heat...

Texans, cover your eyes, I'm about to whine about how hot it is.

GAWD. I'm not built for this sort of weather. Give me highs of 60°F and I'm happy as... I don't know. Something very happy. Maybe as happy as a dog that you let eat off the plate. Okay, nothing is quite that happy. I'm dreaming about going to St. Marys and hiding there until this heat wave in the interior is gone. I've even looked up ticket prices. My office is in the low 30°Cs, which is something absurdly hot in °F. And the smoke has everyone in Fairbanks talking like they've been smoking two packs a day since they were 10 years old.

I open up the newspaper for the morning, and I find this:

“It’s a hot July pattern with no end in sight — good fire-growing weather.”

Temperatures might dip into the mid- to high 70s going into the weekend, but will rise again into the 80s by next week.

I wonder if I could get my medical insurance to cover airfare... call it preventative care. I know there's a spare room with my name on it, and it'd be nice to go back...

I know I'm not the only person feeling this way. There was a fox who was already hiding from the sun looking beat just about 10 minutes ago. I got a picture of it , but not a very good one - it noticed I was watching, and moved to hide behind my boat and a stack of scrapwood. In fact, it's mostly a picture of scrapwood with its tail sticking out. But it looks miserable too.

Everyone is saying `well, in three months it'll be snowing again...` As if that's a bad thing? I like winter. And you can't cool off by putting on an extra sweater.

Things that stink

Well, I'm back from my trip. I didn't go to fish camp for a single very good motor related reason. I did go fishing in other places, but zero fish were caught. In the process, I went to must about the whole road system, and did some thing I'm not inclined to document in my blog.

It was a heck of a crazy time.

Apparently I wasn't the only one having a crazy time. What's all this noise about Palin resigning? Frankly, "I don't want to be a lame duck" is the lamest excuse I've heard since Ted Haggard announced he had prayed his way to being completely heterosexual in just over a week. Someone (and I forget who) compared Sarah Palin to a bad girlfriend (no, not that type!) where at first they seem great, but over time you realize the date is actually pretty unhinged. I think that's a pretty good metaphore.

I like Sean Parnell. I hope he doesn't do the same thing to me. Sadly, there's no going back to pretending like Alaska is part of Canada to Europeans. That time is gone.

Right now, there are a number of wild fires going in the interior, and the smoke has been killer. Denail park is shrouded in haze, some places thick enough that you couldn't see more than a mile ahead of you. I came up the Parks highway from Cantwell's direction, we only used the A/C in bursts because the sickly yellow smoke burned your eyes and made your lungs want to claw their way out of your chest. Addationally, the roads were thick with RV, all driven by out of state idiots who

1. Don't know how to drive on our roads.
2. Don't know how to drive an RV.
3. Don't know the rule that if you hold up more than 3 cars on our highway, you have to pull over and let them pass.

Really, I forgot how much I hate tourists.

The smoke got especially bad halfway between Nenana and Fairbanks. The sky was a sick yellow, and from Nenana to West Fairbanks there was really light ash fall. At first I thought it was the occasional fluries, but it's been dang hot recently. The sun came out when I stopped to re-fuel at Skinny Dick's Halfway House, but it was so smoggy that you could look directly at it with no problems. I snapped a quick picture:
I look forward to this blowing over, so the sky clears up. The smoke makes breathing tricky, and the medicine I've taken for it makes me loopy.

Grey, Grey, Stay a day...

Some people are bemoaning the grey and rain, but I'm preversely pleased it's dampened up a bit. For one, it'll help with the fires. For another, 30C is just too hot for us in the interior! Okay, so it's too hot for me... It looks like it'll all clear up on Sunday, which I hope is enough for them to get a handle on the McGrath Fire.

Sadly, the rain has meant I can't apply a 3rd coat of varnish to the boat. That might seem an excessive amount of marine varnish, but for plywood, it's really a minimum. I'm looking at 3 coats of varnish, and one coat of over-sealant for the whole boat. Next one, I think I might go with bentwood to avoid plywood. Plywood is convenient for shaping, and doesn't need steamed to shape, but if there's a weak point in all of this, it's got to be the plywood crosspars. If I did bentwood cedar, then I wouldn't really need to do more than a single rubdown with linseed oil. And even that might be over-kill.

I've got the amiq coming to me in the mail, plus some some sealant. I won't get to sew it on until after I get all the chines lashed in good, which will come after I've got all the wood sealed. Ended up costing me quite a bit, but less than if I got it from Fairbanks.

Now that we've had breakup... greenup!

It's green up! I hope you haven't blinked, or else you'll miss it. Green up `offically` started on Tuesday, when the first aspen leaves started to slowly push their way out. They're still tiny, though. Maybe because this year I'm counting the number of days it takes for them to leaf out, but it feels greenup is taking longer...

Spring Civil Engineering

I might have invited disaster on us all, because I finally got around to packing away all my winter gear. If the temperature suddenly plunges to -40°, I will gladly hand myself over to the angry mob.

After yesterday morning, though, it definitely felt like spring was in full force. Snow was melting so fast that while I was poking around for gear that I might have lost in the snow (like my axe, which I forgot to paint orange...), I heard what sounded like a large stream. I went on over to investigate, and it was a stream, going into the pond. There hadn't been a little river there before!

Also, it's the time of civil engineering projects around the home. I needed to grain the small ocean building around my house, before it got deep enough to flood me, so I dug a few slit trenches to drain everything off. (Edit to add: pretty much all the runoff from the hills flows directly to me. And I'm in a wetlands to begin with. Thus the water.) Everything's frozen this morning, but it looks like before it froze, I got it to a mere half a foot at its deepest. The trench also filled in with gravel and silt, so if we have much more melt off, I'll need to go re-dig it. Someplaces don't need shovels, but they need backloaders...

It's also to that time of year you're required to take your studs off, and that's exactly why this post isn't longer or more interesting. I've got an early appointment at the shop to swap my winter tires for my summer. I know most people put this off until after the deadline to switch, but I don't want to risk the fine...

Pictures from around the home

The little critters are out in force. The geese are returning, the sun is out, and everything's turning to mud and slush. And these little guys are poking their heads up
I love how unwary spruce grouse are. Sadly, season for them ended March 31st.
These guys are out in number, too. They start to look dirty this time of year - like they've been lightly dusted with grey. You could reach out and grab them, there's so many around. But by now, they're becoming wormy, and not really good to eat.


Here's the pond behind (technically in front) of my home. I haven't seen any geese yet, but it's a little too early for them to want to try places like my little old pond. I'll have to go to "my lakes," which are away from my home a bit. The weather is too good. I feel like we're being set up for something nasty.

Conference wrapup and the warming world!

Well, the conference is winding down, and some people have left already. Finally, I'm back in my office, wondering what on earth I researched before all this started! Mostly, I'm researching where I left my mug, so I can make some tea.

It's actually good to see our work in some larger context. I had to laugh at the number of times someone came up to me and said `someone should fund that work!` Well, yeah, I think so too. Can you spare a brother a dime? But clearly, we're narrowing in on something managers across the state desperately want.

Somewhere, in the last week, it's passed some magic threshold where the snow gets filthy (so dirty!) and I start wearing shortsleeve shirts. In the grand scheme of things, breakup isn't that far off!

Timelapse Volcano

Here's a really neat, quick link: A timelapse recording of Mt. Redoubt exploding.
If you're so interested, the photographer has a blog with a bunch of other neat pictures.