Rumbleinthearctic — A blog about Life in the US

As half of October passed everyone are wondering where the snow is. Snow usually appear around the middle of October, at the latest! We did have some snow back in September but that snow disappeared as fast as it came. The meteorologist are calling it "unseasonable" warm weather. We are just now starting to have temperatures below freezing again, and with last years long winter it makes me wonder what this winter will be like.

This past year we had 200 days of winter (counting days with temperatures below 50F, October 4th 2012-May 9th 2013). The past season we had one of the coldest winters in history with temperatures dropping down to -50F, yes -50F, do you know what it feels like to be outside when it is -50F? We had several consecutive weeks with -40, I even biked to school in -40F/C.

This summer we had one of the warmest summers ever, up to 92F, after a winter with down to -50F. It makes me a little worried about this winter, will we see temperatures down to -40F/C as a normality this winter too? We had tons of snow last season, how much snow will we get this season since we haven't got any at all so far?

Either way I am craving winter dorkiness/adventures sooner rather than later. Time will tell.

Until then:

And then summer arrived...

Since I have been so busy lately, I haven't had time at all to update. I was updating so infrequently as it was before the summer, so yeah, the updates have been closer to zero than anything else. But summer finally did arrive, late, much later than what I have been used to. W left in June to do his PhD in Madison. So we have two cats, Olive and Tycho, but Olive is his cat, and Tycho is my cat (even though i secretly think Olive loves me more...). I had both cats for a while and then I shipped Olive to Madison in August. But I will see her soon enough :) This below is Olive:

And Tycho, Tycho was a stray cat and he lost his ears because of frostbite (like many other cats at pet-pride in Fairbanks).

This summer was so dry, almost no rain all summer, and anyone who knows Alaska knows what that mean, fire.

One of my favorite flowers, fireweed, the color is just stunning when it's all in bloom. I love seeing the color of fireweed, makes me realize summer is here for real.

They say that when the fireweed has bloomed out, summer is over.

This summer did feel extremely short and long at the same time. Short in the sense that I kept busy, and long cause I felt like I had so many things to do, and I missed W of course.

I had a nice garden this summer too, I grew potatoes, cucumber, zucchini, beets, lettuce and basil. The cucumbers did great, mostly cause this summer was so hot.

I didn't do that much hiking this summer, I guess I was too busy. I did get to travel south, to Ninilchik, close to Homer. That was a blast. Not the 12 hr car ride it involved, but the trip itself :)

The sky in the summertime is beautiful, well I guess that is true in the fall, wintertime and spring too....but the summertime is the only time you get amazing colors and shapes even though it is really late at night.

Often times I don't have my "real" camera, only my iphone, but I use it a lot more than the regular camera. And the pictures do come out pretty well there,