Winter Wondering

Yeah, it’s been a while. There’s many reasons you haven’t heard from me lately. Some will be fleshed out here. But enough excuses. I’m writing this post in search of a proper description of the cold, dark and long Fairbanks winter.

Of course, we could use "cold, dark and long." Those are appropriate words, but I think we can break them down to get to the root of what I’ve experienced. They have cold, dark and long winters in New England. This is the Arctic. There’s a bit of a difference.

A quick thesaurus scan lead me to believe that "benumbed" is the most accurate word to describe 40 degrees below zero.

"Biting" is close, but it implies that you have feeling for more than a few minutes. That is only true in Fairbanks for the stinging feeling you get in your lungs after a deep breath. Nope, once the thermostat goes so low as to freeze mercury (pictured in the above post), your fingers and toes become little more than movable icicles with less than three layers of gloves or footwear.

"Frigid" is close, too, because it gives you the impression of a lack of activity. This is a merciful aspect of the Fairbanks winter.

There is little wind chill or what airline pilots refer to as "weather" here. Fairbanks is protected by the Chugach Mountains on the southern coast of Alaska and the Northern range, so when wind and storms do make it here, they drop down from the mountaintops and bring warmth with them. Warmth is the relative luxury of above-zero temperatures.

My first day below negative 20 came with little warning. Okay, the weather report predicted it, but I stopped believing weather predictions up here.

Accuweather, the service that the News-Miner uses for forecasts, runs a graphic that just says "Cold" whenever the weather is below negative 10. That’s about 70 percent of the winter, so the copy desk has to continually call them and ask them to change the five-day forecast that just says, "Cold Cold Cold Cold Cold." Duh Duh Duh Duh Duh.

Sunny days are predicted cloudy. Expected snowy days are dry as a bone. I don't think it's their fault. No one seems to know what tomorrow will bring.

Nevertheless, I didn’t see it coming. It was my off day, so I went down to North Pole to take pictures of the Christmas in Ice sculptures (pictured above). I didn’t notice until I had been in my car for 10 minutes with the heat blasting and it was still too cold to take off my gloves or bomber hat.

I had 40-below-tested boots at home, and here I was driving in sneakers.

Halfway to North Pole, the highway passes just south of a retention pond which wafts over the road. The chemical-filled water was a frozen mass of air that crystalized immediately onto my windshield.

A gray blotch grew from a spot near my rear view mirror to engulf the top 18 inches of my windshield. I had to slow from 55 to 30, divert all my hot air to defrost (now dreadfully regretting leaving my boots at home) and slink my head down until my chin nearly touched the steering wheel.

The alkaline in my batteries froze while taking pictures of reindeer at the Santa Claus House. I had to buy lithium ones to get shots of the ice sculptures.

The shots didn’t come out great because I’m an idiot who didn’t realize that since the ground is white, much of the details in the ice wouldn’t show well until the night.

Yup, there’s 20 hours a day when these things look awesome and I brought my camera during the four that didn’t.

Which brings us to the next aspect of Fairbanks winters: the darkness.

The solstice was Dec. 22, and every day leading up to that was gradually shorter. The funny thing was, until about mid-November, I hardly noticed. Because I wake so late and go to work at 4 p.m., there was usally daylight from the time I got up until work.

But still, it got to me. My eating habits were thrown off. I sometimes ate dinner at 5 p.m. after only being up since 10 a.m. My sleeping habits were thrown off. Some nights I would toss and turn in bed from 9 p.m. to noon; others I would restlessly scour the Internet or watch Cartoon Network, unproductively trying to calm my nerves and get some rest. I couldn’t focus enough to do any task for more than 10 minutes, thus my main excuse for the lag on this blog.

I was very mildly suffering from seasonal affective disorder. Some of the more extreme symptoms of this -- which I did not experience -- are depression, weight gain (aside from the standard holiday fare) and moodiness. Though apparently I did suffer from both temporary insomnia and poor sleeping habits.

But on the whole, I believe my first bout with the dark winters went well.
As far as length of the winter, well, that has yet to be tested. Nothing’s expected to melt until May and I hear the best months are ahead of me.

Snow has fallen continually over the weekend, and I now see this town’s true picturesque charm. All the ugly buildings are painted with a fresh coat of 1 2/3 inches of snow. The sun is rising higher every day, and I'm beginning to see it above the building to my south around noon.

Good things to come.