By Carol Walker
On Saturday, our last day with our son and family in Alaska, I saw via e-mail the request to meet at the Alpine Inn on Sunday to help with clean-up after the big storm last weekend. I am sure that the downpour changed plans for many people last weekend; that’s just how it is with weather. But I knew that after the word went out, people would come together to clean up the debris; that’s just how it is in Hill City. Driving home yesterday, radio news confirmed that by the end of the day, the town looked like nothing had happened. Good work, Hill City.
I remember how storm Atlas of 2013 left a path of destruction, and particularly ranchers experienced the loss of their livelihood because of rain and heavy wet snow. People all across the country pulled together to help them financially and physically for months after the storm. We all were impacted by the power of that weather event.
“In Alaska weather affects everything,” my daughter-in-law said. While there we had some picture postcard days, where T-shirts were in order, but many days the weather was cool, cloudy and rainy. It did change our plans somewhat, but I will have to say it didn’t keep the guys from a day of halibut fishing or a multiple day project of spreading topsoil in the yard and putting up fence posts around the perimeter. It didn’t keep me from the joy of holding a new grandbaby and going on hikes and other adventures with an active two-year old.
Winter made the news in Anchorage this year, not for inclement weather, but for the lack of it. At Anchorage Airport Only 20.7 inches fell through the end of March, a deficit of more than four feet from normal season snowfall totals.
Alaska climatologist Brian Brettschneider said, “This may be the first season on record without a single four-inch snowfall in Anchorage.”
Alyeska Ski Resort, south of Anchorage, had a slow season due to lack of adequate snow. This is a place that in 1998 had 283 inches of snow (almost 24 feet) just during the month of December, and during Christmas week that year, Alyeska reported 100 inches of snow in a seven-day period.
The Iditarod, that has a ceremonial start in Anchorage, continued the tradition, but this year, the re-start was moved to Fairbanks, where there was more snow. The Tour of Anchorage ski jaunt from east to west Anchorage on March 8 became a foot race and a beach party.
Alaska has a reputation of snow in the same way Florida is associated with sunshine. The amount of snow affects people. An extra measure of bleakness is added to the already dark winter when there is little snow, and I was told that there is less light when the ground is not dressed in winter white.
The opposite is true at this time of the year when there is plenty of daylight. People stay up late, visit with neighbors, work in their yard, camp, fish and hike. They store up the sunlight in themselves for the winter months when only a few hours of light causes people to bring out “happy lights” as part of winter therapy.
In addition to the impact of snow, and light, periodic earthquakes in Alaska can be a little unsettling for one who has never experienced it before. People talk about the big one that occurred on March 27, 1964, estimated at 9.2 on the Richter Scale. Because of the seismic shift, the town of Girdwood, south of Anchorage, was moved 2.5 miles up the valley.
In this world of technological advances, we have more accurate forecasts to prepare us for the weather that is to come, but there is little we can do to change it. “Have you ever given orders to the morning or shown the dawn its place...Have you entered the storehouses of the snow…Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain…Who can tip over the water jars of heavens when the dust becomes hard and the clods of earth stick together?” We can control many things in our world, but the weather is still in the hands of One much more powerful than we are.