Global Warming

It is pretty warm here in Barrow today. I went running yesterday evening before dinner and expected it to be much cooler. I had to really watch my footing on the snow, Nowhere near as treacherous as the snow covered ice in some locations in Fairbanks but some real soft spots. When I flew in a couple of days ago, I noticed open water not that far offshore. I was told later that it is only about 8 miles out. This morning, I walked to the hardware store and it was almost above freezing. The photo is burning off something at the termination of a natural gas pipeline. I'm not sure why but it was a pretty bright beacon in the evening. I've been able to still get in adequate steps now that the StartWalking program has started up again though I don't think I will be as obsessed as I was in the past. I am still trying to run as much as possible and don't carry the pedometer at those times and just compute equivalent steps from the distance on the Nike+ gadget. Lately, I've been averaging over 150 miles per month on the Nike+ and that is just on "exercise sessions".

Wednesday evening - I'm still in Barrow, at least for a couple more hours, and it really warmed up around here. On Monday, when I arrived, it was still below 0°F and today it actually got above freezing. I walked outside quite a bit today though I haven't run any. I had to go out to the new building a couple of times to check some things out in preparation for the installation of a bunch of equipment here in a couple of weeks. Several friends were heading out with literally a ton of gear to set up a Starband system in a remote location over 90 miles away as well as collect some data collection. No power except for generators, solar panels, wind generators and batteries. They have been packing for days and finally headed out this afternoon. I think they were planning on heading out on Monday morning. This is a picture of the NARL hotel for those who haven't been here before.

Later that evening - Well, now I know why it was so warm today. A snow storm has moved into Barrow and my flight out was canceled after a couple of attempts to land. It is a pretty wet snow so I don't think I'm going to try running again this evening and hopefully, it'll be a nice day tomorrow. The weather forecast is for sunny and cold, or at least colder.