What Comes After Snow

Photo by Brian Wallace | Juneau Empire

And here we see what happens when you get lots of snow and then it gets warm and starts to rain. Deep puddles all over town. See the lovely snow? Color by car exhaust.

Water up to your floor boards and ugly snow. What a lovely city we seem to be today.

When I lived in Fairbanks, teaching Montessori,I wrote a song that I taught to my class. I posted it last March, but here it is again.

Springtime in Alaska
I love filthy, dirty snow.
I love to watch it melt and go.
I love icky, cruddy mud;
It's spring!

Snow melts in gray brown rivulets,
Exposing the butts of cigarettes,
Snow goes, here comes all the crud;
It's spring!

Mittens, hats, and scarves come off,
As our winter clothes we doff.
We've been wearing them a while;
It's spring!

Birds are hanging out in pairs,
It's time to go wake up the bears,
Courtship is suddenly in style;
It's spring!

Men of The Sea

The effects of cold weather are just amazing. Look at the ice on this boat. Can you imagine going out on the sea in conditions that would lead to something like this? No, I can't either. The people who do this impress the hell out of me. Just so we can eat cod! Good stuff, cod.

Erik Auger, a crewman aboard the fishing vessel Carlynn, uses a sledgehammer to break ice off the wheel house Monday at Aurora Basin boat harbor. Ice nearly two feet thick built up on the vessel as it fished for gray cod in Frederick Sound after a cold snap hit Southeast Alaska. Today's weather forecast calls for rain and a high temperature.

By Brian Wallace | Juneau Empire
Click to enlarge

And Again, Weather

Here is Harris Harbor, very well snowed in. This picture was taken from the Juneau side, looks southwest to Douglas Island, with Admiralty Island in the far background.

So far this year the total snow fall is average, however we had less than normal through January and the first ten days of February have brought three more inches than the standard for the full month.

Yahoo sever weather alert says,

RISING TEMPERATURES COMBINED WITH RAINFALL ON THE SNOW PACK WILL CAUSE STANDING WATER TO FORM IN LOW LYING AREAS. DRAINAGE IN SOME LOCATIONS WILL BE HAMPERED BY AN ICE LAYER WELL BELOW THE SURFACE. EXPECT SOME LOCAL STREAMS TO BEGIN FLOWING WITH INCREASING WATER LEVELS.

RAINFALL ON SNOW WILL INCREASE THE WEIGHT OF THE SNOW LOAD. PERSONS SHOULD BEGIN TO REMOVE DEEP SNOW LAYERS FROM STRUCTURES WHERE INCREASED LOAD MAY BE A PROBLEM. BOAT OWNERS ARE ADVISED TO CLEAR SNOW FROM DECKS AND ENSURE THAT BILGE PUMPS ARE OPERABLE.
STANDING WATER THAT DEVELOPS ON ROADWAYS MAY ALSO BE A HAZARD. WATER OVER ICE WILL CAUSE SLICK SURFACES. SOME AREAS MAY EXPERIENCE FREEZE-THAW CYCLES WHERE STANDING WATER REFREEZES.

Doesn't that sound exciting? There are plans for my living room roof to be cleared, yet again, tomorrow. That will make three times in two weeks. The rest of my apartment has a pitched roof, but the living room is flat. And we don't really want it to collapse. At least I don't have to have bilge pumps!

By Brian Wallace / Juneau Empire

Fire & Ice

Ice coat: Volunteer Capital City Fire and Rescue firefighter Sam Russell stands covered in ice as he puts out "hot spots" Saturday at Fisherman's Bend.

Test, Alan Suderman, photo Michael Penn / Juneau Empire
Click to enlarge.

I saw this in the paper this morning and it reminded me of my friend Bobby, who retired from the Fairbanks Fire Department as Battalion Chief. When he was with the FFD, they wrote a book called "Fairbanks Through The Smoke." There is one story from the 40s about fighting fires when the temperatures are below zero, and coming home with turnouts so frozen that the firefighters had to chip the ice off themselves and then lay down on the floor and have their wives pull them off of them -- it just wasn't possible to bend enough to do it themselves. It is amazing that people will do something like that. It shows just how incredible human beings can be and elicits my admiration.

Paper Trained

This morning as I was going down my external stairs on my way out to breakfast, I was watching the lab across the street come outside to do her morning business. There is snow everywhere, some of it quite deep*. The poor dog was trying to find a place where she could squat without sinking up to her waist in cold, white stuff. And she reminded me of a puppy I knew in Fairbanks. She was adopted after the first snow of the fall. At first, of course, she was paper trained. Eventually she was old enough to go outside and it wasn't until spring that anyone realized that she had thought the snow was a big piece of newspaper. It wasn't until there was very little snow left, just a few patches under the birch tree in the back yard, that it became obvious that she thought she had to use the snow. As it melted and she could find less and less space, she became more and more anxious. Finally all of the snow was gone. She crossed her legs valiantly, but eventually she had to squat somewhere. You could see her concern that she was going to get in trouble and her relief when she didn't.

In the fall, when the snow came back, she was so happy. All of her life, I've been told, if there was snow, she would use it.

* The family car in her driveway has snow halfway up the tires and the roof is sporting a 12" blanket of white.

Photo courtesy Classicgiants.com

Winter Continues

I thought you might like an update on our local weather. So, here is something from the Juneau Empire photo by Brian Wallace.

LOCAL Juneau Empire An avalanche slides down Mount Roberts on Wednesday above Thane Road. The state Department of Transportation and Public Facilities fired several avalanche-control shots with a 105-millimeter howitzer at the sites above the road.

And, from Yahoo, a severe weather alert:

POSSIBLE WINTER STORM OVER THE WEEKEND...

A STRONG WINTER STORM IS EXPECTED TO MOVE NORTHEAST INTO THE EASTERN GULF EARLY SATURDAY. THIS STORM WILL LIKELY TO BRING POSSIBLE HEAVY SNOWFALL...ESPECIALLY OVER THE SOUTHERN AND CENTRAL PANHANDLE SATURDAY AND SATURDAY NIGHT. STRONG NORTH TO NORTHEAST WINDS COMBINED WITH BITTER COLD TEMPERATURES MAY PRODUCE WIND CHILLS OF 30 BELOW OR COLDER OVER THE FAR NORTHERN PANHANDLE. TAKU WINDS WILL ALSO LIKELY TO DEVELOP LATE FRIDAY NIGHT AND CONTINUING INTO SATURDAY IN THE DOWNTOWN JUNEAU AND DOUGLAS AREAS.

Clearing the way

A tug boat breaks up and pushes ice Monday in Gastineau Channel near Channel Drive. The crew of the tug cleared the ice for the Northland Services barge service. More cold weather is on the way, with highs in the teens forecasted for today and Thursday.

The thing about this photo is that the Gastineau Channel is sea water. Do you have any idea how cold it has to be for there to be ice floating on top of salt water? The Channel is entered by various creeks and the creek water is freezing on top of the ocean water as it hits.

Do click and enlarge this photo.

Photo: Brian Wallace. Text: Juneau Empire

Local Weather

I thought you might like to see a couple of pictures from Tuesday's newspaper of the local snowfall.


Brian Wallace / Juneau Empire

Larry Buzzell points out the size of the snow berm Monday in front of his Riverside Drive home. Some Riverside Drive residents say they are tired of the city leaving giant berms of snow in the street blocking their driveways.

Brian Wallace / Juneau Empire

Kevin Nye clears snow Monday under the watchful eye of a bronze brown bear sculpture in front of the Macaulay Salmon Hatchery. Juneau received about 7 inches of snow in 24 hours, and a heavy snow warning was issued for Monday night

Strong Winds

I'm going to give you a couple of pictures and some text from yesterday's newspaper this morning. As you can see, we have been having a little wind up here in the frozen north.

Wind and frigid temperatures wreaked havoc on the Alaska Marine Highway System this weekend and toppled more than two dozen 11,000 pound shipping containers at Alaska Marine Lines near downtown.

An avalanche comes down Mount Roberts toward Thane Road at about 8:20 a.m. Monday. The avalanche, reportedly caused by high winds, did not block the road.

Photos: Early morning avalanche
Courtesy of Annette Smith; Winds knock over 11,000-pound shipping containers By Kim Marquis. Text, Juneau Empire

Clear Skies

The sky has been absolutely clear for the last two days. Not a cloud to be seen. Which means that it is what Yahoo weather describes as "bitterly cold". January and February are not months when you really want to see blue skies in this part of the world.

The temperature has been between +5º and 0º F. But the wind has been blowing, with gusts up to 50 mph. Which gives us a wind chill factor of -20º at times. Indeed, bitterly cold.

And, of course, the price of heating fuel has gone up. Mine is included in my rent. There are four apartments in my building, one of which the landlady lives in. So, three paying rentals. The fuel bill has been running $600 a month more than it was last year. And that was before this cold snap. The landlady has raised our rent, but only $50 a month. That doesn't put a dent in the heating bill. So, we are all trying to conserve. Keep the heat low. Wear layers. Yesterday I was wearing a long tee-shirt nightgown under a long flannel nightgown under a terry cloth robe. Sit under a lap blanket, with a heating pad on behind my back. And slipper socks. If I dress like this when it's +20º outdoors, I can save some money. But at these temperatures, the heater was on all day. When I came upstairs, I turned the thermostat down from 65º to 55º. Perhaps it cycled off during the night, but I doubt it.

And, for those of you who have never lived in the cold, this also means that I have to leave the kitchen and the bathroom faucet dripping so the pipes don't freeze. Frozen pipes mean broken pipes (ice expands) and big messes and plumbing bills. Not good.

Click photo to enlarge.

Sushi

Sandy Szwarc, over at Junkfood Science, posted Fishy sushi scares on Friday. In it she discusses the latest fear-du-jour, the "study" by the New York Times on the mercury levels in fish. In a scenario that will surprise no one who reads Sandy's breath of fresh air blog, the story that was published by the Times bears little resemblance to the actual meaning of the results.

In fact, there has never been a case of an American eating so much fish as to be harmful. The only cases in the scientific literature of mercury poisoning from fish and subsequent neurological problems — a fact confirmed by Dr. Thomas Clarkson, a toxicologist at the University of Rochester School of Medicine — were the result of an industrial mercury spill in Minamata Bay, Japan in the 1950s, which resulted in fish with methylmercury levels 40 to 1,000 times higher than the fish Americans, and most people around the globe, eat. These tragic poisonings first pointed out that at extremely high exposures, mercury was a neurotoxin and might affect the developing fetus.

In other words, we don't have to be afraid of eating fish. Glad to hear it. Living in Southeast Alaska, where the regional cuisine is fresh from the sea, I not only enjoy eating salmon, halibut, and crabs of all types, but friends make their living by fishing. I would hate to have to worry the next time I get the urge for Dungeness almost as much as I would hate my friends to have to go out of business. Commercial fishing is one of the most dangerous professions in the world. The reward for risking your life on a continual basis shouldn't be that some study is incorrectly reported so that people are afraid of what you take those chances to bring to their tables.

In her post, Sandy provided a link to Sushi Etiquette

(Fingers)
When you eat by your fingers, pick up a piece of nigiri at the both side with your two fingers, thumb and middle, and simultaneously lift up the far side top to this side by the index finger, and turn it upside down. Then dip the fish side to soy sauce, and next, twist your wrist to turn the fish side up and face to you. Alternatively do as the same way as by chopsticks. To eat, bring the nigiri to your mouth, throw it into your mouth in a way that the fish side touches on your tongue, and this is a recommendable direction in nigiri-eating.

Notice that one is recommended to throw the entire piece of sushi into one's mouth. This is where I have a problem. I don't have a very big mouth. I seek out dentists with small hands. And I have always bitten the sushi in half. Now I discover this is rude.

What to do, what to do. Shall I continue to be rude? Shall I fill my mouth to my eardrums when I eat sushi in a mannerly manner? Should I explain to the waiter that I'm not being rude on purpose and I'm not ignorant, I just can't eat the thing whole? Will it taste as good if my mouth is so full my taste buds are shoved down? I was better off before I knew this little tidbit. When I thought that the only reason the other people in the restaurant were eating their sushi in one bite because they had bigger mouths.

Sushi pictograph and photo, courtesy Sushi Encyclopedism. Crab dkimages.com

Wearing White After Labor Day

I'm certain that your mother told you it isn't proper to wear white after Labor Day. Why has no one told her?

Such a pretty creature. Quiet and alert. She appears very calm here, but if those wonderful ears catch the slightest hint that she isn't safe, she is gone. She knows that she is prey, and she lives her life accordingly. When in danger, run very fast. And not in a straight line.

It's too bad that we don't always have her good sense. Sometimes we train her wisdom out of our daughters. We teach them that if they don't feel safe, they mustn't insult anyone by acting like it.

Well, worrying about someone else's feeling doesn't keep us safe. Being willing to run or scream or fight and be more concerned with our own needs than the possible feelings of a person who we find threatening, does.

So, let's teach our children, daughters and sons alike, to stay safe. To pay attention to their fears and to react quickly. To run and scream loudly if they must. Let's teach them that it is better to be safe than to spare some one's feelings.

Ravens "Singing in the Rain"

Bob Armstrong, the Juneau photographer who took this picture, has this to say about it:

Studies indicate that ravens in Alaska have at least 30 different kinds of calls. I came across these two ravens near the State Office Building in downtown Juneau. They were so busy "talking" to each other that they ignored my presence.

Click to enlarge

The Spice Of Life

Juneau has very scarce parking downtown, and for ten years I had a job that required me to do home visits three days a week. The office I worked out of, where I hung out the other two days of the week, was three blocks from my apartment. The solution was to deal with Rent-A-Wreck on a weekly basis. This was an ideal solution in many ways. I had the car when I needed it and could run errands to the cleaners or grocery store after work on those days. If anything went wrong, Rent-A-Wreck met me where I was with a replacement car. They worried about getting studded tires on before the first snow and off before the legal date. They delivered the car to my office parking lot one afternoon and picked it up from in front of my apartment on the appropriate morning.

The only problem was that I never knew what the layout of controls was going to be from week to week. There was the steering wheel that was so positioned that I could not see* the headlight control. The cup holder that sat (attached) on the floor and would have been perfect for an orangutan. The ignition switch on the left hand side of the steering column. The rear window defroster control disguised as a lighter**.

None of these things would have been a problem (well, that cup holder would have) if a person owned the car and so knew about them. But, driving a different car every week -- it was always such a crap shoot! I always started with a five minute hunt for various controls before I even turned the key. It is singularly amazing the variety of placements and shapes that the same basic controls can take. Occasionally I would have to call the owner and ask where something was. The only thing that didn't give me trouble was the hand brake -- as cold as it gets here, the hand brake can freeze and require heating to undo it. So, we just crimp wheels on the hills and trust the earth to stay flatish on the flat.

* I am short. The wheel was low. My line of sight was directly on the curve.
**The list used to be much longer, but time has dulled it and these are the only ones I can recall off-hand.

Logo courtesy Vancouver Island Travel.

Well, It Got Warmer

You would not believe what is falling out of the sky! SNAIN! Huge globs of wet, wet, wet snow falling very fast because it is very heavy. Yahoo weather says it is 37º and light rain. I believe the temperature. According to Everything 2

Snain is partially (though not fully) melted snow that will most frequently fall when the air temperature is between about 0.5 and 3.5 Celsius (33 - 38 degrees Fahrenheit) .

It is an interesting phenomenon to watch, but I can tell you it is no fun to walk in.

P.S. Bitty and Julie have each tagged me for a meme, and I will do them this week.

Photo courtesy Belski's Blog

Changing More Than The Name

Wikipedia has this to say about the naming of Eskimo peoples.

In Canada and Greenland the term Eskimo has fallen out of favor, is considered pejorative, and has been generally replaced by the term Inuit. However, while Inuit does correctly describe all of the Eskimo peoples in Canada and Greenland, that is not true in Alaska and Siberia. In Alaska the term Eskimo is commonly used, because it includes both Yupik* (sic) and Inupiat, while Inuit is not accepted as a collective term or even specifically used for Inupiat (which technically is Inuit). To date, no universally acceptable replacement term for Eskimo, inclusive of all Inuit andYupik people, has achieved acceptance across the geographical area inhabited by the Inuit and Yupik peoples.

Tonight I saw a public service announcement in which a young Yup'ik girl states that her Yup'ik heritage includes strength and the courage of her convictions (true) and that this heritage gives her the strength to hold with her traditional values. And then she said, "Sex can wait."

Now, I have no problem with sex can wait. I think it should wait a lot longer than it does for too many young girls. And I have no problem with a campaign to encourage young Yup'ik girls to wait. But I do have a problem with not being honest. And the thing is that waiting is not part of the Yup'ik tradition. I remember that when I was in Fairbanks in the late 60s there was concern about Yup'ik teens being sent out to boarding school** in the southwest, among tribes where the teens did wait. And the problem, I was told. with that was that the living conditions in their tradtitional bush villages were so harsh that a man could not afford to marry a woman who couldn't have children.*** And so, I was told, Yup'ik girls couldn't get married unless they were pregnant. And the Yup'ik girls were not waiting at boarding school, and so the students from other tribes were calling them pejorative names and treating them poorly.

So, if pregnancy is required, how do you get there if you wait? And isn't it a little dishonest to sell young Yup'ik teens on the idea of waiting by claiming it is part of a tradition that it absolutely couldn't be part of?

* Yup'ik is the correct spelling, which I now know thanks to ykalaska.
** Pretty much all Native American kids were sent to boarding school during those days.
*** As with many traditional societies, social security was descendants to take care of you in your old age. If a woman couldn't have children, or if a couple couldn't have children together, they would be less secure.

Russell W. Porter
"Eskimo Girl" Umanak, Greenland, 1896, Watercolor

Warm and Cozy

This photo of Juneau, taken by Elise Tomlinson from Douglas Island, is a good winter view. From the sky, I'm thinking it was taken during the day, with a lot of cloud cover, but from the lights in the city, obviously not at high noon. The mercury has been rising, clouds have come in, and we have snow. The temperature was 28º today and expected to be in the mid-30s tomorrow. Tomorrow we expect rain, and most of the snow at my elevation* will wash away. Meanwhile, it feels really nice to not have to wear as many layers, to go barefoot indoors, and to have my bedroom window open a couple of inches again.

* My apartment is as high as the lights go up the side of Mount Roberts.

Photo courtesy Elise Tomlinson

A Weather Note

I couldn't get the graphic with the weather report to copy, since it isn't the correct format, but I got this map of our current situation. Anyway, the temperature is 3º, with blue sky and wind. Yahoo weather says it is "very cold" -- I agree. When the wind blows and there is a wind chill factor it will feel even colder. It's so cold that I put on slippers when I got up this morning instead of running around bare foot. In 2005, the last time we had one of these severe (for Juneau, not for Alaska) cold snaps, I couldn't sleep for cold feet and Richard gave me a pair of his thick white socks to wear to bed and these slippers. I have an electric blanket now, so I don't need the sleeping socks, but the slippers are wonderful!

Brrrr!!! It's Cold Outside!

So, it is cold outside. We have had three days of sunshine in a row, and the lack of clouds has allowed all of the heat to bleed back out into space and, day by day, the temperature has dropped. It is currently 8º Fahrenheit out there. With winds gusting up to 45 mph, with the occasional 60 mph, the wind chill factor is -35º.

Cold. Darned cold. Here in Juneau winter averages in the low 30s, so this is very cold. And it is very cold early, since we get our coldest in mid to late January. The weather has done this only three years since I've been here. January of 2005. And one year in the mid-90s. None of us really have clothes for it, since this isn't interior Alaska. Nor are our homes really insulated for it. But, we can layer and sit under blankets and be quite cozy.

Sunday I didn't get dressed, but I did put a t-shirt nightgown on under my flannel nightie and terry robe. And sat under a blanket. And drank hot ginger tea instead of ice water.

I love the sound of the wind and the blue, blue sky is a cheerful sight. But even my feet felt cold when I stepped out to get the newspaper. Brrr.

Snow Miser courtesy Rankin Bass Studios.

Would You Ever?

*
Notes from the Grand Jury box. Oh, how I wish I could tell you the details of the cases we heard today. I can't. But I can tell you that it was surreal. That something as serious as crime could be so blinking slapstick! Some of it is that most people who break the law do it in fairly stupid ways. Some of it is that this is such a small, isolated community that people don't normally have to be concerned about harm from their neighbors, and so even when committing crimes, they don't think of having to hide what they are doing. Some of it is that -- I'm not sure. You tell me.

If you had been arrested for a crime in a fairly public place and charged and were now out on bail awaiting trial, if you had done all that, would you then go and commit the same crime in the same place in front of the same people who watched you be arrested last time?

How about stealing an object over 40 feet long that can only fit outdoors from a spot where it is seen daily by the families that live in six houses (and thus will be missed very quickly indeed) and taking it less than ten miles and plunking it down in full view of thousands of people? How about in full view of the State Office Building, where most people in the area work? How about when the police came to arrest you a mere three hours after you took it, would you then claim that you had owned it for several years? Would you do that if it was one of under a hundred that looked like that in the world? If it were the only one of that model in the state? This one was so bizarre -- it was recovered before the owner realized that it hadn't drifted off, but had been stolen, and two of the grand jury members had witnessed the arrest (the plunked down spot was sooo very public) and had to excuse themselves from listening to the case.

What if the police came to your door because several of your neighbors had called about the sounds that were being produced inside and you were totally unbruised although your shirt had been torn and there was a person with a bruised face and what one of the police describes as "standard choking bruises" and scratches on the neck and a four year old was crying and telling the police, "A hurt B." Would you then try to convince the police that B had beaten you?

And if you got through airport security in one city with contraband, would you then deplane for a cigarette during a layover with the contraband on your person and risk being caught when you tried to re-board?

Nope, I didn't think so. Me neither.

* Hermes, the god of theives, who obviously hasn't been very helpful in Juneau. Or Hoonah. Or Anchorage.