Wednesday, March 14, 2007

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.

4 comments:

Ginger said...

This comment is brought to from the South. Everything is turning green. The Bradford Pear trees are turning from Snow White to bright green. Redbuds are starting to bloom. Daffodills and Hyacinths are in bloom. The temp is reaching 70 or higher everyday. In 3 months it will be miserably hot here and I might wish I was there.

Maya's Granny said...

This comment is brought to you from the North. Sounds pretty, but already as hot as I like it. I would enjoy it now, but in 3 months, we'll have almost 20 hours of daylight, and hot will be high 60s or low 70s -- human beings thrive here, even if we don't grow pears. We do get lots of flowers. Just not yet.

Betty said...

This comment is from the South, too. I can't even imagine that much snow in one winter. But, I sure wouldn't mind living somewhere that doesn't get so blazing hot and humid.

Anonymous said...

Wish you would send some of that precipitation down our way. We've had 3 inches of rain all year in SoCal.

Hmmmppph. Hoarding all that moisture up there!