Tag Archives: travel
Shades of 2004
Fairbanks is smoked in. We have a wildfire 60 miles to the southwest and another about the same distance to the northwest. Both were started by lightning.
I went out for lunch today. Upon my return, I smelled like a campfire.
It’s thick.
The smoke is not as bad as in 2004, when over 6 million acres burned up across the state. That year, Fairbanks was within a ring of fire, and a change in the wind direction did very little for relief.
Still, it’s bad enough. On the plus side, I hear the pollen count is down, but that has never bothered me anyway. The forecast says we are a week away from any chance of rain.
Rosa acicularis
My back “yard” is full of these fragrant, prickly little roses. The Arctic Rose is a thorny, devil and seems to love the company of my willows. The plant can grow up to 8′ tall.
Katmai Bear Cam
The Bear Cam at Brooks Falls within Katmai National Park is back up and running. It is brought to us every year by the fine folks at explore.org
The link is here:
https://www.explore.org/livecams/explore-all-cams/brown-bear-salmon-cam-brooks-falls
Lat 65 Roundup
After a lull in lightning strikes to start the season, the skies have been very luminous of late. Strikes across the state have been widespread since the weekend. Over 5600 strikes on Monday, with over 15,000 strikes for the three days of Sunday-Tuesday.
A wildfire started near the Dalton Highway and the Arctic Circle, which closed a popular campground there.
So far, over 1 million acres have burned in Alaska this season, which is the earliest we have crossed that threshold in many decades. At least since 1969, Alaska has not seen 1 million acres burn by this date. Records were a bit sketchier back then, as recording acres burned in rural Alaska is a bit challenging.
Fairbanks hit 80F for the first time this season on the Solstice.
As of Monday, Alaska had seen 289 wildfires this season.
Midnight Sun Baseball
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
Update: The Alaska Goldpanners won the game 10-9 in the 10th inning. The game ended at 1:40am ADT. The entire game is played without the use of the artificial lights. Sun power only.
Smoke moving in
Most of the wildfires burning in Alaska right now are near the coast, but smoke from those fires have finally made its way into Interior Alaska. The sun was a bright orange pumpkin on Sunday morning.
The largest wildfire right now is the East Fork Fire near the community of St Marys. At 122,000 acres burned, it is the largest tundra fire since 2007, and the second largest in the past 40 years. St Marys is being evacuated, and the fire is now threatening other communities. The fire was started by lightning.
According to the BLM and Alaska Fire Service, Alaska has seen 314,057 acres burned so far this fire season. That is particularly note worthy, since it is already more than the entire season in 2020 and 2021.
As for the Interior, Fairbanks has now gone 25 days without measurable rainfall. It is a rare summer dry streak, as we have only seen two years with more: 1947 (28 days) and 1957 (26 days).
Creative Commons
Circle to Circle is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.Like the Stories & Photos? Help Keep the Rover Rolling.
