The Winter Solstice

December 19, 1999 -

Still no new snow to speak of... And the temperature this morning was +2 degrees.

The shortest "day-time" of the year is this week. The actual day is December 21st - that's the Winter Solstice.
Our "kids", adults all, will leave to fly back to their home in California, after their long holiday - weekend visit here, on that day. Starting the next week, the amount of possible sunshine will gradually increase.

This is high noon on December 15th, looking south.

Any low-lying clouds would obscure the sun but we've had clear cold weather now for quite a while here in Anchorage. Last year at this time we had been shovelling snow for 2 months already. Altogether about 20 feet of snow buried us last year, down on the lower Kenai Peninsula...

There never seems to be any thing "normal" about Alaska's weather.

In Alaska every schoolchild knows that the sun rises and sets in the south in the winter. In summer It's up in the northeast and down in the northwest - but still light enough to see outdoors, for the most part, during the "night".

As the earth rotates around the sun during the year, the angle of the light shining on us increases again. By the Summertime, as Earth reaches half-way around it's Solar rotation, the North pole is pointed sun-ways and Antarctica is in the dark. Poor penguins...

Post Script
On December 20th it finally began to snow here in Anchorage - and by the time the kids left for their 1:20 a.m. flight for Los Angeles, there was a foot of snow on the ground. Their plane was delayed by an hour, a not uncommon occurrence during the holiday season. A neighbor helped us by plowing our driveway, but the drive to the airport was done with caution, as only the main roads had been plowed. The snow continued throughout the night, and the temperature warmed up to above freezing; now we are getting some rain mixed with the snow. This morning we were still diggin out. At 2:30 in the afternoon the mail vehicle, the plows and the garbage truck all made it into our little circle and there was a great flurry of activity. We really have a "white Christmas".