Holy Chinook, Batman!

It has been a really harsh Winter this year, folks. Please don’t bother coming at me with anecdotal tales of that one Winter in nineteen ninety-something where the snow was 30 feet high, or that one time in the eighties it got so cold even the polar bears froze their ballsacks off. I am not interested in debating your machismo and quintessential Alaskan-ness. If I want a fisherman’s tale, I’ll go watch Jaws. Quint and I are not impressed with yours.

I am interested in data. Cold, hard facts. In my book (and remember, I actually have a book), I have weather data collected over the past seven years out here in The Hills (and three and a half years in SouthEast). I understand that for weather observations there are patterns that span much greater periods of time; That one huge snow you remember does not a pattern make. It is possible that it repeats every 20, 30 or 100 years, but for simple seasonal patterns, my decade of collecting data is enough to tell you when the moose abandon their yearlings, when the pineapple weed and various grasses bloom, and when to expect the dragonfly nymphs. It is also enough to tell you a few things about this Winter:

• The deep cold came late.
• When it did come, it stayed in the deep negatives for a significantly longer stretch of time without warming fluctuations than it has in the past 7 years.
• The snow was not late this year, it was right on time.
• It is neither a high-, nor a low snow year; it is pretty typical.
• The Chinook is about a month later than usual.

Anyway, with a big snow dump right at the start of the season, and a long period of hard cold, it has been really rough on me. Last month I waited with bated breath for the Chinook Wind to come, as it usually does in early to mid January. It finally arrived last night. The Chinook doesn’t always present itself as actual wind out here in The Hills, because we are so sheltered, but boy, howdy; It sure did this time! I almost felt like I was back in Ketchikan in Fall.

The wind took down a fee trees around the property. These two widow makers are alongside my driveway.

With a good portion of snow down from the last two days that was now melting into a giant slurpee on top of the older ice crust, and angry beetle-killed trees threatening to fall on me, I decided it was probably a good idea to go to the store early in the morning in case things got worse. Honestly, some times my life is a meme.

Unfortunately, I was thwarted by a downed tree on Mastodon Hill. With no working chainsaw anywhere around, this put me in a pickle. I took the tractor up and pulled most of the tree down. My distant neighbor Ernie came along to get water from the Spring and helped me drag the rest of the tree away. It was 3 PM before I actually made it out of The Hills. Some times getting a pack of night diapers is a whole day affair.

There is always a silver lining though. The livestock were quite happy with the near tropical temperature of 36 degrees Fahrenheit. Rheagal joined me in a song:

Let’s hope the rest of Winter goes easy on us.