Still Dark and Dreary

I think this was a not too subtle reminder that I still live in Alaska. Needless to say, I didn't ride to work that day (Monday) though I did consider riding in to take a picture by the temperature sign. But the weather has been rapidly improving and I rode in to town last night for a meeting. Actually, the meeting was only ½ a mile away but that meant I had to go at least 10 to sort of warm up the engine. I don't think an air cooled engine cares for these really cold temperatures. I can smell a lot of partially burned fuel in the exhaust. And after 10 miles at -18°F, the heads were warm but still cool enough to put your bare hands on. This morning, it has warmed up considerably so it was a relatively pleasant ride in.

Monday Morning Fog

With the cold weather on Monday, we had a temperature inversion and the resulting ice fog. Ice fog is a particularly unhealthy version where water freezes around particles of ash or soot mostly from burning solid fuel (wood or coal). Once you breath in the fog, the particles are trapped. There is a lot of push to limit burning wood and coal but there is a lot of resistance to new government regs around here. Plus, almost all of our electricity is from coal power plants. On strong inversion days, you can see the exhaust from the power plants, wood stoves and boilers heading down to the ground instead of rising up as you would expect.

Wednesday Dawn

There was a little bit of color on the horizon this morning on my way back from the cafe across the street. It's still almost two hours before sunrise but you may get an idea how long our dawn and dusks are due to the shallow angle the sun takes. These days sunrise and sunset both occur in the southern sky.

Another shot of the southern horizon showing the actual sunrise Officially, it's at 10:55am but here it is ten minutes later. But at least we still have sunrise. Barrow's next sunrise isn't until around January 20^th.