Letter F: Fairbanks Weather

I know, I usually title this segment North Pole weather, since I live in North Pole, Alaska. But North Pole is a suburb of Fairbanks, less than half an hour’s drive away, and to be honest (being lazy) the sunrise and sunset times I give are from a website, and are for Fairbanks. To be precise, they are for the intersection of Airport Road and Cushman Street, about halfway between my home and the airport where the official weather forecast is valid. I could calculate the times of sunrise and sunset myself. In fact, I once devised an Excel spreadsheet that made that calculation for any latitude and longitude. But it was on a ZIP disk, and the disk failed. Anyway, the times from the website are accurate to within a few seconds — more accurate than the assumption that the refraction of the sun’s rays is always the same.

Moose tracks in my front yard

With that confession out of the way, sunrise this morning will be at 6:45, and the sun will set 14 hours 19 minutes later at 9:03 this evening. This is actually the last night we will have astronomical night; it will not get darker than astronomical twilight (sun between 12° and 18° below the horizon) again until late summer. We’re still gaining 6 minutes 47 seconds a day, and the sun at noon is now over 32° above the horizon. Weather? Still around freezing in the daytime and near zero at night. Not much snow has melted, except where the snow was cleared artificially and dark surfaces are warming in the sun. The back yard still has 22″ and light snow began Sunday. The moose are out; I’ve seen tracks in my yard. Needless to say there are no flowers outdoors yet!

P.S. 8 am: It snowed 2″ overnight and it’s still snowing — a fine, light snow that piles up very slowly, but the snow stake in my yard is back up to 2′. According to the radio, the first geese arrived last Friday, but Creamers’ Field is a waterfowl refuge and they generally plow part of the field so the birds have a place to land and feed. I’ll look later today.

The Transit of Venus

The reflector I used to see Venus was the large tube at the far right. The tan circle with the orange tube just to its left is the one that produced the shadow image shown below.

Tuesday was the last opportunity I’ll ever have to see the transit of Venus with my own eyes, and Alaska is one of the places where it was (theoretically) visible from beginning to end. Local astronomers with properly shielded telescopes were set up by the Noel Wein Library in Fairbanks, so since the sun was actually shining around 2, I took off to see the fun.

I said theoretically because while the sun was up for the duration of the transit, and the transit was visible (unlike a solar eclipse) from anywhere that the sun was visible, it’s been cloudy most afternoons. I set out with more hope than expectation, as towering clouds were visible in all directions. (It had hailed the day before.)

Sunlight came and went.

I’m not going to repeat in detail the reason why transits of Venus are rare—the Wikipedia article I’ve linked to does a good job of that. Basically, the orbit of Venus is inclined to the orbit of Earth by 3.4°, which means that Venus appears actually to cross the sun only when both planets are very near the line of nodes, the line defined by the crossing of the two orbits, at the time Venus comes closest to Earth. Last Tuesday was the last time this century that this will occur.

Shadow image of the sum. Venus is the small dot at the lower right. (Click on any photo to enlarge.)

By the time I made it to the library, the lawn sprinkled with telescopes was sunlit – most of the time. Clouds were scudding back and forth over the sun, and a thunderhead was towering to the east and headed our way. (Yes, thunderstorms often move from east to west up here.) I got a look at the sun through a properly filtered reflector during a break in the clouds, and later managed a photograph of a setup where a small telescope was focused on a mirror that produced an image on a white card. Literally minutes later the sun was covered with dark clouds.

This was taken minutes after the shadow image. Note there are no shadows–the viewing was over for the moment.

I’m glad I had a chance to see this. I’m not a big observer of astronomical events, but I got to watch the total solar eclipse in 1963, any number of lunar eclipses, the partial eclipse last month (via a pinhole camera) and now the Venus transit of 2012. Wish I could find my solar eclipse photo – it was spectacular.

The Fairbanks Ice Park

The Ice Park isn’t just an open-air winter museum, or the site of the World Ice Art Championships. It’s a playground for children. This year it was at a brand-new site and the volunteers didn’t have time to get everything in place, but there were still giant slides, a maze, and an ice rink for kids of all ages. The past week was a school holiday, and plastic sleds were all over the place.

The ice rink is a little unusual — the sides as well as the skating surface are made of ice.

Slides range in size from little, fancifully carved ones for the smallest kids

To moderately long, which some of the older kids try to ride down standing up

To downright huge, with long runout spaces at the ends. These are generally used by sledders.

I decided not to try the maze — wasn’t sure I could stay upright. But I could see it would be confusing.

There were even a few purely decorative carvings in the children’s area

Though most seemed designed to be ridden, at least.

We’ve had good weather for the ice park this year. A couple of days the highs got up to 25°F, but for the most part the highs have been in the teens above, and the overnight lows have been in the teens below. Usually there is some daytime thawing by now, but we haven’t had enough to affect the sculptures. At least the ice hasn’t deteriorated nearly as much as it had by March 26 last year, but of course the last third of March is yet to go. Just hope we don’t set any new records in late March – it can go down to forty below!

World Ice Art Chapionships Multi-block 2

Here are the sixth through the tenth placings in the 2012 World Ice Art Championships, along with a few shots of the general layout of the competition site.

Sixth place went to “Geoflames,” sculpted by a USA team.

Seventh place was “Playin’ in the Garden,” again by a team from the USA. This one had a “viewing window” (actually three atop each other) to indicate the best place to see the sculpture. This photo was taken through that window, also carved from ice.

Eighth place went to “The Super Raven Guide.” The two carvers were from Russia, and it took me a while to see the raven’s head. I was trying to make it an aurora, and it may have been intended to evoke one. Most of the sculptures were done by teams of four. This and the fourth place “The Land Calls” a couple of days ago were carved by 2-person teams.

Ninth place and Artist Choice was “Spring.” I’ve used this one before, but it’s worth using again. The artists on this one were from China.

Tenth Place and Governor’s Award was “Olde #7 On The Bridge To Nowhere.” The artists were from the USA.

The ice as cut from the pond has a layer of cloudy ice  near the surface, where snow and ice intermingle. Although most sculptors cut this off, it can be used with interesting effect, as on this pedestal.

Finally a wider view of part of the competition area. Snow is being blown off  “Mother” in this picture. I’ll have at least one more blog on the kids’ area of the ice park by daylight, and I might get to see it at night, lit up, next week. If I do, I’ll get some pictures. The sculptures are incredible bathed in colored lights in the dark. If you’d like to see a particular piece under the colored lights, leave a comment. No promises, but I’ll try.

Multi-Block Ice Sculpture 1

My internet access is via a phone line (DSL) so I am well aware that pages with lots of photos tend to load slowly. This is one reason I’ve broken the World Ice Art Championships into several blogs. (The other is that the awards for Tourist Trap are keeping me pretty busy marketing, and several short blogs are easier than one long one.) Beside, who wants to look at that many photos at once?

First place in the multi-block competition was “Prickly Reception,” by a team from Japan. Don’t ask me how they managed the porcupine. I did find out how they achieved the leopard’s frosty spots: shave out the ice, saving the shavings. Then pack the shavings back into the hollows and heat.

Second place was entitled “Rebirth of Elements.” Three of the carvers were from Russia; the fourth was from Monaco.

Third place went to “Tiger Marriage Desire.” One of the carvers was from the USA, and the other three were from China.

Fourth Place was “The Land Calls.” Both sculptors were from Russia.

Fifth Place (and one of my favorites) was “The Gallery.” One of the carvers was from the Phillipines; the other 3 were from the USA.

One question I’ve had was answered yesterday. We’ve had over a foot of snow since the carving started — why don’t the sculptures all have snow caps? The answer? Leaf blowers!

A Circus Horse with no Circus

Gus

Back in 1955, a circus came to town.

Nothing unusual about that—except that the town was Fairbanks, Alaska. Alaska was not even a state yet, and the circus thought they would make expenses by playing to the towns along the Alaska Highway. Since the Alaska Highway was still basically a dirt road when I first drove it fifteen years later, and the towns were pretty small and far apart, they arrived in Fairbanks practically broke.

And then it rained.

Eventually they had to sell the animals to give the performers the money to get back to the States. Among those sold was a liberty act of six palomino horses.

I don’t know what happened to all the horses—the initial sale was well before I came to Alaska, and I looked up the details in the local paper. I’ve heard some died in the frigid winter of 1961-62, with ten consecutive days of daily maximum temperatures well below – 40° F. But I did come to know two: Gus and Shorty. Gus, in fact, became the first horse I ever owned.

I met Gus in the mid-60’s, as a rental horse at a riding stable. I saw him bluff a 6-foot G.I. into thinking he was more horse than the guy was ready to handle, but he never gave me any real trouble. Maybe he appreciated the fact that I was (relatively) lightweight and knew a little of how to ride. In fact I was helping out at the stable by that point, though I was also working on my Master’s thesis.

I did not, however, go along on the fall guided hunting trips—and Gus came back from one of those with a horrendous saddle sore in the middle of his back. It appeared to heal over the winter, but when the weather moderated, it was apparent he had a permanent lump on his back. He could still be ridden bareback, or with a special pad under his saddle cut out to assure no pressure on the scar, but as a livery horse, he was through. I was just finishing my M.S. and starting my Ph.D., and figured the stipend I was getting could be stretched to cover Gus’s board, so I became the owner of one palomino ex-circus horse in the spring of 1967.

I don’t know how old Gus was at the time. As a trained circus horse he was probably between six and twelve years old in 1955, which would have made him between eighteen and twenty-four when he became mine—but at that time, I did not know his history or how long he’d been in Fairbanks. I rode him sidesaddle in the Golden Days parade that year, and discovered that he’d been the parade marshal’s  horse at one time—certainly he never twitched an ear at the general excitement of the parade. Later I hitched him to a cart and drove him—and that, too, he simply rolled his eyes and accepted.

In fact he was pretty unflappable, for a horse. He was also exceptionally intelligent, and quite willing to use that intelligence to get out of any work he could. He could only be caught with food, for instance. (He was always greedy, possibly a holdover from that cold winter.) A bit of grass was no good—it took a bucket of feed. He’d leaned from one previous owner that if he charged a person trying to catch him, the person would give up. He tried that on me once—and got his face slapped with a bridle. He never tried it on me again, but he’d do it if someone he thought he could bluff tried to catch him. While most of the horses at the boarding stable where I kept him could be led with a bit of binder twine around their necks, Gus needed a halter—he knew if a person was really in control or not. And though he never charged me after that once, he was a genius at positioning himself so that the only way to get to him was to go right behind another horse—preferably one that kicked.

With time I added a younger horse to my string, and Gus was semi-retired. His neck began to show wrinkles when he turned his head, and one day I found him working at a mouthful of grass and finally letting it fall from his mouth. Tooth floating time? The vet tried, but Gus had simply run out of tooth length. Not that it affected him all that much—the stable relied on a complete pelleted feed, and he’d take a mouthful, dunk it in his water bucket, mouth it until it became mushy, and swallow it. His water buckets were invariably a mess, but Gus stayed in good condition.

He died in 1982, almost certainly in his 30’s and possibly pushing 40. He taught me a lot about horses, some of which I have used in my novels. And he was a part of Fairbanks history, coming into the state before statehood, seeing the changes that took place during the pipeline years, and closing his eyes on an Alaska people born when he was would never have recognized.