North Pole Weather

Sunrise 10:50 am, sunset 3:02 pm for 4 hours 12 minutes of daylight, and gaining about 4 minutes a day. That may not sound like much, but the gain is increasing every day, and over the next week we’ll gain about half an hour. I may even get to see the sun momentarily around noon.

Although December felt warm (no daily averages below 40 below, and only three overnight lows) we were actually about 12 degrees F below normal–average monthly temperature -17.9 degrees F. Four inches of snow for the month. Not much, but the snow stake in my yard is finally measuring a foot of snow depth. About time! We’re approaching the season of frozen buried pipes and wells, and we need that snow for insulation.

January is warm so far, with two of three daily highs above freezing–too warm for interior Alaska in the winter. Definitely too warm to drive, especially since the ice from that November rainstorm is still on many of the roads.

Eleventh Day

On the eleventh day of Christmas my true-love gave to me,
Eleven vents erupting,
Ten glaciers surging,
Nine houses sinking,
Eight cars polluting,
Seven blizzards raging,
Six aurorae swirling,
Five solar flares.
Four chickadees,
Three mammoths,
Two ptarmigan
And a spruce hen in a spruce tree.