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A couple of milestones were reached today. Snow flurries filled the air for much of the day, eventually turning to straight rain by late afternoon.
It was also the first day this season that I wore a long underwear top underneath my sweatshirt.
Damn.
It would seem that S.O.B. Jack Frost is burning the bridge to summer.
Record Rain
This afternoon’s rain shower officially put the Summer of 2014 in the books for the wettest summer on record in Fairbanks. The 11.62″ of rain broke the 1930 record of 11.59″.
Photo Credit: Erin Corneliussen/Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
Moving On
The sandhill cranes are migrating through the Interior. I have quite a few of them hanging around the cabin right now. Everything is so wet from the rainy summer, that the cranes have plenty of marshland right now to romp through. Of course, in a couple of months, I’ll be able to walk over it, but the cranes will be long gone by then.
Wet Fairbanks
After the wettest June on record, July 2014 falls .18″ short of repeating the feat. In the end, this past month was the second wettest July on record. It was the rainiest June & July ever recorded by two full inches.
As the rain gauge stands right now, this will be the 6th wettest summer, even if we get no rain at all in August, which is already out the window, considering it has rained both days so far this month. Traditionally, August is the Interior’s wettest month.
The rain is bound to stop at some point… When it turns to snow…
Water Update:
1.92″ of rain fell at the airport on Tuesday, followed by 1.39″ on Wednesday for an official total of 3.31″ over a period of 36 hours. The 6.57″ of rain we have seen in the past 15 days is the wettest 15-day period on record for Fairbanks. It surpasses the 6.17″ of rain that fell between August 1-15, 1967 that caused the worst flooding in the city’s history.
The flood gates at the Moose Creek Damn were lowered for the second time in two weeks to restrict flow into the lower Chena River. It was only the 22nd time that the gates have been lowered since they were built in 1979.
Overflow
The amount of rain in the gauge over the past 24 hours was 3.5 inches! That is a lot of rain for Fairbanks, Alaska. The average rainfall for the entire month of July is only 2.52″.
I had to drive the Steese Hwy today and the runoff along both sides of the road looked like rivers, complete with white water. I didn’t even go near the actual rivers today. There has to be some serious water in the Chena, Salcha and Tanana.
Wet, wet, wet…
June 2014 was the wettest June on record in Fairbanks. Judging by the water flowing down the Chena River, I believe it.
Sadly, the month of July seems to be continuing the trend.
Wet
My rain gauge had .83″ of water in it this morning when I emptied it, and it had at least half as much in it when I returned home this evening. It is still raining, which puts a damper on the job of putting new shingles on a roof.
Luckily, I did get the lid done on the house, and all I have left is to tackle the roof on the garage.
On a sidenote: The front porch had sagged so much in the center, that the rain water spilled over the gutter right there in the middle where the steps are. After removing 20 deck planks, I found that the two 8×8″ porch pillars have nothing but air underneath them. They are both just hanging there in mid air like rough-cut stalactites waiting for the day when they will touch Earth. In fact, other than a couple of oddly placed, and now rotting, railroad ties, there seems to be very little supporting the porch and its very heavy roof at all.
Since I found the waterfall over the steps to be a tad annoying, I jacked up the deck in the center with my Hi-Lift, and like magic, the water now flows through the gutter and… overflows the gutter downstream because the downspout is completely clogged.
Cleaning gutters was not part of the original bid.
Denali
Since I was down by Denali, I figured I might as well get inside The Park, and hike around a bit. The visitors center was absolutely packed with people from all points of the globe. I was claustrophobic within minutes. I found a sympathetic ranger who handed me a map and suggested the Healy Overlook Trail as a means to quickly get away from the mass of humanity. I doubt I was in the center for more than five minutes, before I was back outside looking for the route in the light rain.
By the time I passed the railroad depot, I was alone in the mist. It was almost eerie after so many people cramped into the small space just a few hundred yards away.
It was a nice, roughly 4.5 mile hike, and I met up with several other hikers, but I’m sure the rain helped to keep the numbers manageable. I did startle a family who were singing “The Bear Song”: “Hey Bear! Hey Bear! Stay Away Bear!”. Words to that effect, sung to a sort of country twang. In my defense, I was wearing a yellow rain jacket, so I wasn’t exactly hiding, and I saw them coming, but I still managed to make them jump out of their slickers when I said, “Hey”, as we met around a corner on the trail. When they caught their breath, I asked if they had actually seen a bear. They hadn’t. Any wildlife at all? None. I went on feeling rather amused.
I spotted several moose, and flushed a group of ptarmigan as I moved up higher. The hike up to the overview is a climb of 1700 feet in elevation, and I’m sure on a nice day the view would be wonderful. But it was raining the entire time I was near The Park, and the clouds were moving low through the gaps and valleys. Still, it was a much needed escape for a couple of hours.
I did a couple of more hikes afterwards, with minimal elevation gain, mainly just to keep the legs moving before I made the drive back to Squarebanks.
Well short of the town of Nenana, on the drive back, the rain had stopped and I was reaching for the sunglasses on the dashboard.
Life in Alaska.
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