Alaska goes hardcore

This week is shaping up to be quite interesting. It started on Saturday morning with a 6.1 magnitude earthquake. This is by far the strongest I've experienced since I have been here. We had a 5.4 or something back when Mom was here... but since my apt is on the east side of town on more stable ground, it wasn't much to talk about. I texted Mom at the airport to see if she noticed it and her reply was "Is that what it was? A really big lady walked by me and I thought the airport was poorly constructed to allow the floor the shake like that." This is the exact thing she texted by the way.

So this one was much more intense...it first started with a nice little jolt and the building at work was making funny noises. Then the good part started and went on for maybe 15-20 seconds. It was odd for sure. I think earthquakes freak me out more than any other natural phenomena. If there's one thing you can usually count on, it is the fact that the ground is steady. Not so, friends!

Then I come into work yesterday (Sunday) and am informed that one of the volcanoes south of Anchorage is acting up. This particular volcano is Mt. Redoubt. It last erupted in 1989/1990 for several months. There's some crazy pictures on google images if you look it up of the eruption. I would be laying if I didn't say I hope this thing explodes. Fortunately no one is really around the area of concern for the volcano, so Pierce Brosnan will be riding around in his Jeep with the wheels melting for no reason. Here's a pic of the last explosion:


Thats some cool stuff. So I'm being responsible and stocking up on some extra air filters and what not. Doesn't matter if everyone gets off work because of ashfall and stuff.... we'll still have to work!

On a separate note, the cold has returned. We've gotten back to seasonal temps (highs in the 20s, lows in the low teens). Unfortunately though we haven't had hardly any snow since Christmas Day. I think we've had a whopping .7 inches since the nice storm when Dad got here. the good news is it looks like we might be in for a decent snow through the end of the week. Of course with this good news comes the fact that it's supposed to get really cold again by the weekend. I could do without -25 again... so we'll see how bad it really ends up getting.

Since i have no radically awesome photos to share again, I will post one of what Anc is looking like today:




Nice and sunny the past couple of days. Like I said back in November or December... I do NOT take it for granted any more!