North Pole Weather 11/19/12

The sun won’t rise until 9:42 this morning, and after a mere 5 hours 47 minutes will set at 3:30 this afternoon. It now gets only about 5 ½° above the horizon at its highest, which makes driving a real problem, especially driving south. The trees casting their shadows on the roof of my favorite restaurant at noon are a considerable distance to the south.

We’ve had a few flakes of snow this past week, but no measurable accumulation. It’s getting pretty cold, though, with daily highs often below 0°F at the Fairbanks airport, and colder where I am. With clear skies, the nights are fairly consistently below -20°F—a little cold for aurora watching. Wind, which is unusual up here when it’s cold. is making it feel even colder. At least the forecast doesn’t look like 40 below for Thanksgiving, which has happened in the past.

Afternoon update: it’s crystal clear, temperature around zero, and a brisk wind blowing. I just heard on the radio that it could reach 40 below tonight in low-lying areas, and since I live in a frost hollow, that could mean here, especially if the wind drops. Thank goodness my house is well insulated!

#Writemotivation: I’ve done most of the first-round edits on Rescue Operation. I might do a couple more bits from Zhaim’s POV, but I think I’ll have it ready for the serious edits by the middle of the week.

North Pole Weather 11/5/12

Sunrise this morning will be at 8:54 am – still well after I get up – and the sun will set at 4:14 this evening. (Which means I have to arrange transportation to my OLLI classes with Van Tran, since I cannot drive home in the dark.) We’ll have just 7 hours 19 minutes of alleged daylight, but this time of year the sun never gets much more than 9° above the horizon.

Time for SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) to kick in. (Personally, I think SAD’s an urge to hibernation triggered by the long nights, and makes perfectly good sense.) I use full-spectrum bulbs in most of my lights, especially the plant lights, which seems to help. Having something growing and blooming also gets me through the winter.

The weather remains cold, with nights below 0°F and days above. Some snow showers, but no heavy accumulation. I’ll check the snow stake as soon as it’s light enough; when it got too dark to see last night it was at 5″.

It’s a check-in month for #writemotivation, and I’m going to try to get at least the first round of edits for Rescue Operation back to my editor this month. She wants more of a story arc, and I realized that keeping the reader in the dark about Zhaim’s machinations behind the scenes isn’t working, even though the POV characters are in the dark. So I have to let readers know what’s going on behind Roi’s back. This will involve:

Rearranging some chapters. (done)

Write several bits from Zhaim’s POV. (2 written so far, 3 to go)

Rewrite several pieces to give more showing, less telling. (Started.)

Put in Jacyn’s POV and actually show the hijacking, instead of letting him tell Tod. (Decided where to put it, but not written yet.)

More of the grief over two former characters’ deaths, even after 50 years. (Thought about.)

The way I have it split up for writing purposes, there are 63 chapters of widely varying lengths.  I’m working on Ch 21, which is a reasonable progression toward my goal.

This is the first volume of a trilogy, so there are definitely some loose ends!

North Pole Weather 10/29/12

Sunrise today will be at 9:31 this morning, and sunset at 5:37 this evening for a nominal day length of 8 hours 6 minutes. That’s 6 minutes 44 second less than yesterday. Since I can’t drive in the dark, and daylight savings ends next Sunday, I am severely limited on where I can go and need to schedule things like doctor visits carefully. In fact I’ll probably have to take Van Tran (the local handicapped transit system) for OLLI classes next week.

White ice on pavement. The stop sign is the one I skidded through last week. Saturday (when the picture was taken) I started braking early enough to stop — just.

Last week started mostly clear and cold (nights near 0°F.) It hasn’t warmed up much, but for the last few days it’s been cloudy with very little change in snow cover: no snowfall, no melt. The sun is rapidly approaching 10° above the horizon at noon, and it won’t be long before it is completely hidden behind the trees south of my house, even at its highest. I can still see it when I go to town, but it is so low that driving into the sun is a daylong problem.

Roads with lots of fast-moving traffic get blown clear as the snow falls or plowed, but the secondary and slower roads are all white ice. This isn’t too bad at low temperatures, but I’ve been surprised a time or two by just how slick they are in the 20’s and above. Especially paved roads: the gravel roads actually have an advantage when everything’s covered with white ice.

Update mid-morning: now that it’s light out, I can see that we did have a little snow last night, and it’s still snowing. (VERY lightly; I couldn’t be sure through the window screens.) Also, I just signed up for #Writemotivation for November. I’m not getting in NaNoWrite, but I need to get cracking on the edits for Rescue Operation.

North Pole Weather, 10/22/12

The sun rose this morning at 9:08 am, and will set at 6:01 this evening for eight hours fifty-three minutes of daylight: 6 minutes and 43 seconds less than yesterday. Looks like we have the start of our winter snow cover, with temperatures generally in the 20’s for the daily high and near 0°F overnight. So far, the snow is barely deep enough to cover the grass.

Roads in town have enough packed snow to be slick—I went through one stop sign where I fully intended to stop. No traffic, luckily, and I was a little more cautious from them on. Even anti-lock brakes will skid on the kind of roads we have right now. One thing rarely mentioned: road markings painted on the roads and parking lot lanes are completely covered by white ice. Lane markings for turn-only lanes or pedestrian crossings are invisible.

The sun is now quite low in the sky, as you can see from the series below. The photo at the top was sunrise yesterday; the three at the bottom are around 11 am, 2 pm (solar noon) and sunset.

8:10 am update: we have now had our first official subzero (F) temperature of the season. My thermometer reads -6°F. The sky is barely starting to lighten.

North Pole Weather 10/15/12

The sun will rise today at 8:46 in the morning, and set at 6:26 this evening for a bit more than 9 hours 40 minutes of daylight – 6 minutes and 42 seconds less than yesterday. The sun at noon is only a little more than 16° above the horizon, and a few days ago I noticed that a pickup driving west near solar noon had a pool of sunlight under it — the shadow of the base of the truck was on the north side of the truck.  Daytime high temperatures are sometimes below freezing, and a dusting of snow that fell Saturday night was still on the ground Sunday evening. I can’t be sure until it gets light enough to see, but today’s forecast suggests enough snow depth to measure. The snow itself will help keep temperatures down by reflecting sunlight back to space, so unless we have a really warm spell, which is not even hinted at in the forecasts, this snow will still be on the ground in April.

At the time I took this picture, snow had been falling for about 3 hours. Maybe if it keeps up overnight it will reflect enough sunlight to stop daytime warming. Not that I’m looking forward to that!

At least the maple is now snug in a 7’ tall cage, which I hope will discourage the moose. The snow stake is up, and I’ll be interested to see how much snow falls today and tomorrow. The dirt roads are already pretty solid. The road in front of my house might as well be concrete, though a concrete road that rough would be badly in need of maintenance.

P.S: As of 9 am, we sill have only yesterday’s dusting of snow. The current forecast calls for snow starting around noon and highs in the 20’s for the rest of the week, though.

Update at 3 pm: it is snowing, but it’s the kind of extremely fine snow, falling vertically, that takes forever to amount to more than a trace.

8 pm: we have roughly an inch on the ground, though the snow has never let up. It’s just very fine, sparse, flakes.

North Pole Weather 10/8/12

I got up in the dark this morning – the sun won’t rise until 8:24, and will set at 6:51 this evening. That gives us 10 hours 27 minutes of daylight – we’re losing about 6 minutes a day. The sun at its highest is less that 20° above the horizon, and the sun glint off the wet highway almost blinded me when I forgot my sunglasses Saturday. (It was raining when I left the house.)

Leaves piled on the flower bed. The green is chives, and they still tasted fine for Sunday lunch.

I suppose we’re ready for some rain. We had about half our normal precipitation in September, though the temperature was close to normal. (No real surprise, clear nights are colder than cloudy ones.) The first few days of October were pretty nice, too – above 60°F on the 4^th, and I managed quite a bit of cleaning up the perennial beds and raking leaves over them. The last few days, though, it’s been raining. At least it’s not snowing yet; at this time of year any snow is likely to stay until April. But the forecast high temperatures are barely above freezing.

Aside from the chives and mint, the garden’s pretty well done for the season. Most of the garden equipment is in the shed, and the fence around the Amur maple is now up over 7’ in height. I just hope it keeps the moose out!

Sky Photo

I was going to skip today, but I finally got my iPhone and my iMac talking to each other and managed to download some photos. Yesterday the sky was spectacular and I didn’t have my camera with me. I can’t see the screen of my iPhone in bright light (same is true of my camera) so this was basically point it at the right part of the sky and guess where the trigger (also on screen) was.

The sky was unusual in that there was a retreating  edge of cloud to the north, which I couldn’t quite figure out. The evening weather show made it clear: there was a strong spiral low in the Gulf of Alaska to the south, and the blue sky was a clear air sector between two cloud bands. The spiral was turning in such a direction that the clear band moved over us from south to north. The photo was taken looking east, and the clouds thickened to opacity just to the left of the photo.

Clouds looking east, Fairbanks 9/26/12. The feathery stuff is cirrus, blending into altostratus farther to the left.

North Pole Weather, 9/17/12

The sun rose at 7:21 this morning, and will set at 8:08 in the evening for 12 hours 46 minutes and 42 seconds of daylight. The equinox is approaching fast – next Saturday, to be exact. Because sunrise and sunset are defined by the upper edge of the sun, not the center, being on the horizon, it’ll be a couple more days – a week from today, in fact –before the day is really 12 hours long. Meanwhile the trees are getting yellower, the dead leaves are almost hiding the grass, and the squash and beans have had it – frost just about every night last week. The sun’s now 27° above the horizon at noon.

The forecast looks warmer, with lows mostly around 40. The cold I brought back from the Anchorage conference is almost gone, so I’ll try to get the beets harvested next week. Theoretically, I should cut the perennials back to about 6” and get ready to have leaves blown into the flower beds. Not to mention clearing the raised beds. Maybe. If I have time. If the weather cooperates. If the wind dies down! We don’t normally have much wind, but it’s a good thing I had the plastic covers clipped to the hoops, or they’d be in the trees!

Sunday our local paper, the Fairbanks News-Miner, reviewed my second book, Tourist Trap. I met Libbie Martin in Anchorage last week, and she told me the review was coming out, but this was the first time I’d seen it. Have a look at the News-Miner, and see what she said about the book.

North Pole Weather 8/27/12

The sun rose this morning at 6:18 and will set this evening at 9:25 for 15 hours 7 minutes of daylight. Nautical twilight now starts before midnight, though astronomical twilight lasts all night—the sun never gets more than 18° below the horizon. And it’s not even getting to 35° above the horizon at noon.

The Dry Creek Fire, as visible about 5 miles from where I live.

Actually, astronomical night hasn’t meant much the last few days. August is finally acting like a Fairbanks August should. I really shouldn’t have been blogging about how dry it’s been—we were up to .53” rain for the month by Saturday night, and over half of that fell Friday and Saturday. Saturday was alternating sunshine and showers. Sunday was solid, steady rain, for a daily total of .82″, the most we’ve had in a single day for over two years. No flood worries; it was too dry to start with. The forecast for today is more of the same, but it’s still smoky, too.

Leaves are beginning to litter the lawn. I don’t need to worry about frost as long as it stays cloudy, but I’d better get the plastic out for the raised beds at the first sign the clouds will clear. We have cold air aloft, and while official low forecasts are still in the 40’s or possibly high 30’s, a radiation frost is certainly possible.

One branch on this tricolor geranium has reverted to normal zonal color, and needs to be pruned out. Otherwise, being more vigorous, it will take over.

The garden is still producing more zucchini than I can eat, though the beans have slowed down. Beets and chard are still producing, though beets will store. Looks like I’ll have quite a few to store this year.

I need to prune the potted plants (above) that I plan to bring indoors for the winter, and decide if I want to dig up one or two of the prettiest begonias. They will winter in the plant room, and even continue blooming for a while. I did cut out a branch of one of the colored-leaf geraniums that reverted to green—need to check the other two for reversions.

My blogging schedule will be a little erratic the next few weeks. I’ve joined GUTGAA (gearing up to get an agent) which will take some blog spots in September, and I’m going to the Alaska Writers Guild conference in Anchorage the second weekend in September. I’ll try to write a blog post about that, but I’m not sure I’ll have internet access during the meeting. I forgot to ask if the hotel has Wi-Fi.

P.S. at 5 pm. We have gusty wind, 55° F and the clouds are breaking up. I’ve put the plastic on the raised beds.

North Pole Weather 8/20/12

Sunrise this morning was at 5:56 and the sun will set at 9:50 for 15 hours 55 minutes of daylight. It is now getting quite dark at night, though we still do not have astronomical night. It won’t be long, though. Already the first leaves are turning, and it gets above 70°F only on the warmest days.

August is usually our rainiest month, but not this year. We’ve only had a quarter inch so far, and the rainiest day, Thursday, had only .12 inch. July was a little drier than average, but not to the same extent as August so far. I’ve been watering the lawn and garden – I have a well, so most of the water goes right back to the well. We even have smoke in the air — apparently there is a small forest fire, lit by lightning last spring and smoldering since,  that has flared up not that far from Fairbanks. Our fire season is normally in spring!

The zucchini is happy, and I took half a dozen to the food bank last week and still have all I can eat. I finally got caught up with the beans, and need to pick the snow peas. The beets are thriving in the holes in the cement blocks that make up the raised beds, and I’m having a beet and its greens for supper almost every night.

The beet on the right was pulled for Saturday’s supper–they were crowding each other.

Flowers? The perennials are about through for the season and setting seed. I still have some columbine blooming, and some annuals, but the annuals I planted around the raised beds have mostly been shaded out by the vegetables. For a change the lobelia have just about taken over the planter boxes with the begonias. Usually I’m lucky if one or two survive.

I’m starting to watch the weather pretty closely for frost warnings. Not right away – the extended forecast has lows in the 40’s. But August has certainly been known to produce frosts in the past, and I want to be prepared to drape plastic over the hoops on the raised beds if needed. I should get another two to three weeks of growing season, even if the trees are starting to show yellow branches, and the first fallen leaves are littering the lawn.