Reported in Sumday's Alaska Ear (Anchorag Daily News rumor sheet / society pages or whatever ( Read more... )

The cold spell has been broken!!!  The outer bands of a low pressure system spanned across our sky this afternoon, moving north into the persistent, cold, high.  The temperatures are coming up - it is -3.4F, about 15F warmer than yesterday.  The forecast is for continued normalization, so we should be in the 10s to 20s by tomorrow or Monday ( Read more... )

It is still cold.  Oddly, it doesn't seem that cold anymore.  People are now dying in house fires more often than is the norm (locally).  It is slick about, which is odd given the chillosity of the outdoor environment at this time.

...and in Alaska, the cold continues.  Yesterday, my short little driving trips to and from work caught up with me.  Ye olde battery couldn't make ye olde engine, frozen in oil, rotate.  This morning, my backup temp probeat the house, which reads 5-8 dF warmer than the primary gauge due to thermal interference from the house, was at -20.5F, ( Read more... )

I was clearing the gazebo trail of snow this evening, so I could check on the gazebo and make sure no one's moved in.  The weather continues cold and calm.  For whatever reason, AIA is routing departing air traffic to the east and then north, so the jets are passing directly over our house ( Read more... )

Last night was a cold one, but tragically, I do not know how cold.  It turns out my weather station only goes to -21.8F.  This is the 'low' that I blogged in February 2008, and can again blog today.  This time, I realized the limitation, and fired up the backup system (yes, there is a backup system.  Sad, but true) to capture the low temperature ( Read more... )

It is still cold here.  This morning, it was -19F, but it is finally warming up.  It is already -18.2F!  The NWS is predicting -30F for the east side of town tonight ( Read more... )

This, http://www.adn.com/kenai/story/624378.html, is awesome.

I am disapointed that they concluded that just because the fires weren't visible from space (rather, no humans in space would be able to see the fires), the idea wasn't worth doing.  Where's that Alaska initiative?  Make bigger fires!  Move them farther south (can you say symbolic ( Read more... )

Our first real cold snap of the season appears to be upon us.  We awoke to -11 this morning, and the sun managed to kick it up to a high of about -5 by the end of the daylight hours.  So far this evening, we are at -12F, and droping about 2F/hr.  Should see a low tonight of maybe -20F?  pretty cold in my wimpy estimation.

So I finally dug up the potted gladioluous this evening.  The cool summer appears to have caused some 25+% mortality in my adult corms.  That, or the months of neglect in not digging them up at the end of the growing season ( Read more... )