The Weather Report: Broken Record

It just piles up and piles up. The city is plowing almost every day and on the few days when they aren't plowing, they are loading snow into dump trucks and hauling it either to the channel or the deep woods, depending on which is closer. I've lost count of the number of times my exterior stairs have been shoveled this year, I'm just really glad that my landlady takes care of it. Last week she had two young women out shoveling the snow off my living room roof. There are ice cycles hanging off most roofs. Then we get a warmish day, and it begins to melt, and if it is on a pitched roof, it can come down all at once like an avalanche. Too much of a good thing.

We are well on our way to breaking the record for snowfall this winter. At this point, we have already had the fourth highest, at 177 inches (223 at Eagle Crest, our local ski area). If it continues as it has been doing, we could easily get above the 194 inches of the current record. That's Alaska for you -- every year that I lived in Fairbanks was the record for something. Most snow. Earliest snowfall. Most windy days. Latest breakup. Something. It isn't that consistently record breaking in Juneau, but it is always something to talk about.

And we are currently experiencing 11 1/2 hours of sunlight a day. I have turned off the porch light for the season. Since my newspaper is delivered (carried by hand up the stairs and placed in the box) before I get up, when I turn it on in the fall I just leave it on. When I leave in the morning, I am going to need it on when I return. Once I turn it off, it is off until fall.

In A Nutshell follows.