Bad weather?

July 21:

    Ever since I got here it's been hot, like really hot. Ok, I know that a lot of people are used to temperatures up in the 90's and above combined with humidity up towards 90%, me? not so much. I am so happy that we bought an AC right when I got here, because I don't think I would have been able to survive otherwise. I like it cool, I love sweater weather, and this is everything but sweater weather. 

    We seem to have these high pressure storms, where the heat is always combined with some sort of rainstorm. Makes it hard to dress for hot temperatures and rain, I am definitely not used to that. W and I got a metrological weather station for Christmas that measures wind speed and direction, barometric pressure, rain accumulation and rate, and humidity and temperature of course. It's been really cool to have it now when we've had these rainstorms to see how much rain we get. Usually it says "it's raining cats and dogs". Madison is about the same latitude as southern France, so for someone who never lived more south than say the southern part of Canada (cause that is right about where the latitude of Cranfield in UK is, and of course, Stockholm Sweden which is approximately southern part of Alaska, and then of course, Fairbanks Alaska, Madison is far far south. Fairbanks do get hot in the summertime, I mean, we've had weather up in the 90's before, but generally that doesn't last very long, and it's usually very dry, so not the same type of heat that we experience here. I only had one pair of shorts when I moved here, yeah one pair, a climbing pair. Well, and one pair of running shorts. But as you can understand I went shopping for more after a few weeks in this heat. Best money spent in a long time, and I came home with 6 different pairs of shorts. 

    As I have mentioned earlier Madison lays in (on?) an Isthmus, and we have two lakes on either side, Monona and Mendota. We usually swim in Monona, and while it is definitely not clear, it has been semi OK. Yesterday I biked by the lake and eek what a smell, I was just thinking on the bike ride that it would be nice to maybe go for a swim. But that smell, not fresh lake smell, but yeah, algae. There were people over there swimming and having fun in the water, but I don't know, I am a little skeptic. The first three pictures below are of Lake Monona and the fourth one is Lake Mendota. 

We need to talk about Climate Change pt. 1

Climate Change

    I guess no one has missed the news about the fires yes FIRES as in multiple large fires raging in Canada right now. This is not that unusual, not even here in Alaska. Last year about 5 million acres burned, and a lot of times people do not realize how many fires we do have in Alaska every summer. Most fires burn in the middle of nowhere and don't affect us per see. But when these fires are coming closer to our towns we are bound to see a disaster.

    Jag antar att ingen har missat att det är flera bränder som just nu härjar i Kanada, den värsta i Fort MacMurray. Det är inte ovanligt med stora och många bränder, även här i Alaska. Förra året brann cirka 5 miljoner hektar, det är ungefär nästan lika stor yta som Norrbotten i Sverige. De flesta här i USA (och i andra länder också förstås) förstår inte hur många bränder vi har här i Alaska varje sommar. De flesta bränder brinner dock mitt ute i ingenstans, och påverkar således inte oss människor. Det är när dessa stora bränder kommer närmare bebyggelse och städer som katastrofen är ett faktum.

“People don’t fathom how big Alaska is. You can have a 300,000-acre fire, and nobody knows anything about it, because nothing’s been done about it, because of where it is,” says Tim Mowry, spokesman for the Alaska Division of Forestry.

Fire

    In the science community it's no news that the fires are getting larger, more frequent and also more severe. Projections into the future are showing that this will continue during the 21st century. Alaska is experiencing the greatest increase in air temperature compared to the lower 48. This past winter season we broke so many climate related records that I actually feel a bit worried, however, this might not mean that this will be the future, but it definitely gives you something to think about. Like Alberta Canada, our winter season was very mild and we also did not receive as much precipitation (snow) as we usually do. This spring here in Alaska has also been really warm, not as warm as in Fort MacMurray which experienced temperatures closer to 90℉ when the "normal" temperature usually lies around 55℉. The combination of dry spring, warm weather and the fire prone spruce forest makes for a perfect match, literally a match that will burn until there is nothing left to burn, or an intense rainstorm hits. At this point the fire fighters that are fighting the fire in Fort MacMurray and the surrounding area have said that they will not be able to stop this fire. 

    Det är inte direkt någon nyhet  bland forskar världen (inom ekologi) att bränderna blir större, mer frekventa och även mer intensiva. Prognoserna pekar alla åt samma håll, detta kommer fortsätta under detta århundrade. Alaska är ett område som är ett av det hårdast drabbade när det gäller temperatur ökningen jämfört med resterande USA. Den här vintersäsongen så har vi slagit rekord efter rekord, det är inte hundra procent säkert att detta kommer fortsätta in i framtiden men det får en som sagt att tänka över situationen och att i mitt fall bli lite orolig för vad framtiden har att ge. Precis som i Alberta, Kanada, så har denna vinter vara oerhört mild med lite snö. Våren har även varit väldigt varm, inte lika varm som i Fort MacMurray, där temperaturen har hållit sig runt 32℃, att jämföra mot den "normala" temperaturen runt 13℃. Kombination av en torr vår, varmt väder och den brand benägna granen har skapat ett inferno utan dess like. Just nu så brandexperterna talat om att denna brand kommer inte att kunna släckas utan en intensiv regnstorm. 

Fairbanks

    The other day I was thinking, this could be Fairbanks, but then I thought, neeh, we don't have that many spruce trees in fairbanks do we? Later that evening I drove by one of the lookouts from campus and stopped to see the view and quickly realized that what happened in Fort MacMurray could actually happen here. Below is an old picture from the fall I took a couple of years ago, but that is downtown Fairbanks.....and everything that is not orange is  black spruce (probably mixed in with a lot of white spruce to, which is less fire prone..)

    Häromdagen så tänkte jag "kan det här hända i Fairbanks?" men så släppte jag snabbt den tanken, jag tänkte, vi har väl inte så mycket gran i staden...eller? På vägen hem så åkte jag förbi utsiktsplatsen på universitetet. Jag stannade till och kollade ut över Fairbanks och insåg att samma inferno som pågår i Fort MacMurray skulle absolut kunna hända här också. Jag tog denna bild en höst för flera år sedan, men den visar ganska tydligt hur mycket av denna brand benägna granen vi faktiskt har i city kärnan.

    Next day US National Weather Service - Alaska posted this on their Facebook page:

    Nästa dag så publicerade USAs motsvarighet till SMHI detta meddelande på Facebook:

    How are the fires where you live? Do you have any and have you ever thought about preparedness for a potential fire disaster?

    Hur beter sig bränderna där du bor, har ni några alls? Har du tänkt på hur du kan förbereda dig inför en brandkatastrof?

Spring is around the corner?

The weather has been playing tricks with us all winter, and of course this little game has continued. Currently the weather is mediocre, but really warm for this month comparably to previous years (currently 46F at 7 pm). It's always fun to go back and look at old pictures and see when the first snow arrived, when the first sign of spring arrived, when the snow disappeared etc. A lot of people of course define spring differently. Even though spring has an official definition. My definition is bud burst. First you have a bud, and then the bud burst. Life has returned, spring has sprung. 

This normally doesn't happen until May, and believe it or not, but I usually kill my first mosquito before this happens. 

Spring never had such a great impact on me when I lived back home. Mostly because back home the season of spring is kind of long. Here you can miss spring if you are gone a couple of days. I have gone to Denali for hikes previous years and the way down looks kind of dull, coming back you notice a color change, the bud has arrive. Within a day or two bud burst has arrived. 

But, for now I am still waiting, waiting for the first mosquito and spring. Weather forecast says it's gonna snow on Saturday and Sunday, but I stopped believing in them a long time ago.