Monthly Archives: November 2019
Bear Beware
Hibernating brown bear
Alaskans have been enjoying the recent snowfall combined with some relatively warm temperatures. Been out skijoring without your bear spray? State biologists are saying Alaskans may want to rethink that.
Due to the warmer than average weather and the availability of food, bears have not gone into hibernation just yet.
Black bears tend to start their winter hiatus in October, while brown bears like to hang around into November as they attempt to pack on every calorie possible.
This year, the bears seem to be not in any rush to turn in. Like always, it’s a good idea to pay attention out there, but don’t forget to keep the cabin site clean of trash. One brown bear in the Anchorage area has taken to raiding garbage cans this month. No one needs that, especially the bear.
Apollo 12: SCE to AUX
Apollo 12 launches into a storm
Astronauts Pete Conrad, Alan Bean and Dick Gordon launched from Kennedy Space Center on this date in 1969 aboard Apollo 12.
The launch occurred as rainy weather enveloped the Cape. 37 seconds after launch, lightning struck the rocket, causing all sorts of haywire across the control panel. At the 52 second mark, a second lightning strike took out the “8-Ball” attitude indicator. Just about every warning light on the control panel was now lit, and the resulting power supply problems caused much of the instrumentation to malfunction.
John Aaron
Back at Mission Control, EECOM flight controller John Aaron, had seen this before in simulations. He calmly suggested a solution to the Flight Director, “Flight, try SCE to Aux”. Even though few knew what Aaron was talking about, the order was sent to Apollo 12, and Bean flipped the SCE switch to Auxiliary setting. Telemetry was immediately restored, and Apollo 12 continued on with its mission.
John Aaron was forever known as that “Steely-eyed missile man” from then on.
Astronaut Alan Bean on the surface of the moon. Photo by Charles “Pete” Conrad
The lunar module, with Conrad and Bean, landed in the area known as the Ocean of Storms on November 19. The landing site was within walking distance of the Surveyor 3 probe, which had landed on the moon in April of 1967. To date, it is the only time mankind has “retrieved” a probe sent to another world.
Solar eclipse from Apollo 12, on its return home to Earth. Photo credit: NASA
The crew of Apollo 12 returned to Earth on 24 November 1969. Landing east of American Samoa, they were recovered by the USS Hornet.
The Apollo 12 mission lasted just over 10 days, 4-1/2 hours.
Superman not included
A recent job had me “installing” a phone booth outside a customer’s home. The booth is complete with working pay phone and light. I have not had many requests in the past to get one of these back in working order, but I do like to diversify.
Good things to keep in mind for a future install: A pay phone weighs 55 pounds, so shipping to Alaska is quite hefty; a phone booth, can, with difficulty, be moved by one person with an appliance dolly, but it also slides like a blunt bobsled on the fresh snow.
Possibly one of those only in Interior Alaska moments.
9-0
A sellout crowd saw the Golden Gophers top the Nittany Lions in a match of previously unbeaten teams.
A happy group at TCF Bank Stadium
You better grease that pig, Iowa.
Breaking Trail
Snow! Finally, we received a nice dumping of snow.
I have 8-9″ of fresh snow outside my door.
I took the snowshoes out for a spin for the first time this season, which required breaking a new trail. The beavers seem to be content within their lodge and under the ice. Any remaining standing trees should be safe until spring thaw, but I’ll keep checking on them.
Otherwise, it was just a nice afternoon out in the woods, checking out the fresh tracks in the new snow. Which includes, for the first time in a few years, lynx tracks. I’ll have to get a trail cam or two out there.
Denali Fault Quake
Photo credit: Daily News-Miner
This week is the 17 year anniversary of the 2002 Denali Earthquake. At a magnitude of 7.9, to date, it is the largest quake I have personally experienced.
On 23 October 2002, the Denali Fault released a magnitude 6.7 quake. That would be a foreshock of what was to come on November 3.
Highway Shift; Richardson Highway, circa 2002
After the 6.7, I remember the Alaska Earthquake Center saying that the Denali Fault was capable of producing an 8.0. Sure enough, the fault came very close.
I was at an intersection in my ’66 Chevy C-20. All of a sudden, the truck was lurching all over the place, and I found it hard to stay on the brake pedal. There were two university students in the next lane, the passenger rolled down his window and asked what the hell was happening. I said, “Earthquake”. He then promptly hit the driver on the arm and said, “I told you it was an earthquake”.
The light changed, I drove on, but had to stop at the next light. The earth was still shaking. An elderly couple had been walking on the sidewalk, and the wife fell to the concrete, the husband was struggling to stay upright by hugging a signpost. Then the shaking was over. I rolled down the other window, to see if the couple was all right. They were, and I headed home to see if there was any damage.
The quake had ruptured 205 miles of earth along three different, yet connected faults in Interior Alaska. It was the largest ever recorded in Alaska’s Interior. It was the largest inland quake North America had seen in almost 150 years.
Both the Parks & Richardson Highways saw major damage. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline moved sideways 18 feet, and rose 5 feet. The engineers had designed for the fault, and the pipeline behaved exactly as it was designed to behave. Although, it did come within two feet of its sideways movement limit.
The Denali Earthquake was felt as far away as Louisiana.
Previously, the largest earthquake Fairbanks had experienced was a magnitude 7.3 in 1937.
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