North Pole Weather, 7/1/13

The sun rose this morning at 3:12, and will set 21 hours and 24 minutes later tomorrow morning at 12:36. The days are now shortening by about 4 minutes a day, though it still doesn’t get dark. Or very cold, either, though it does usually get down to around 60°F at night.

The warm nights are a bit worrisome not only because it is hard to cool down the house at night but because some diseases cannot mature in mosquitoes subject to low overnight temperatures. Usually ours are low enough that mosquitoes are pests rather than transmitters of disease, but that’s not been the case this June.

It’s been dry, too. We’ve had a mere .43 inch of precipitation, less than a third of normal. (Surprise—this is a desert climate in terms of mean annual precipitation.) Fire danger is high to extreme, and temperatures have actually been lowered somewhat (and breathing made more difficult) by smoke.

The food garden this year consists of 4 zucchini plants (3 of which have already set female flowers in the heat) and two raised beds of herbs: mints, thymes, rosemaries, basil, lavenders, and a few extras like oregano and parsley. Chives are perennial and in bloom. The white iris, the dwarf delphinium and the roses are almost through for the year, but the daylilies have started to bloom and the tall columbines and the delphinium are in bud.