Springggg Timeeee

Sung in a cabaret voice of course. Finally, this place resembles real life. Sunshine (sometimes), more decent temperatures, and no snow (at the lower elevations at least)! We're up to about 16 hours or more of daylight. At midnight you can see a bit of twilight to the north, and by 4 in the morning it starts to every so slowly get light again.

It's a crazy thing...trying to go to bed when it's still light outside. I welcome it, though. I find myself missing meals and staying up too late, because I'm running around fishing or taking Maddy on walks. Speaking of fishing, H2O is slowly deciding to exist in a liquid form again. It's crazy. I saw some rain the other day...pretty much for the first time since September. Lakes are slowly melting, and the rivers are pretty much all broken up. Now we just need some leaves...maybe this week (fingers crossed).

So I don't have a ton of sweet pictures to show that I personally took, but I do have some that Andy took on a recent adventure. This past Saturday we drove down to the Kenai River for some fishing. It was cold, and the fishing was slow, but it was great to be out.

It was not super cold, but with the wind blowing and wet hands, I seriously had the coldest hands ever in my entire life. In fact, my fingers are still tingling (just kidding Mom). So without further ado, here's the good stuff.




looking down river. very beautiful



looking toward the outlet of kenai lake and the bridge at cooper landing.



great picture here. just pondering life and how Cameron has the ability to warm his hands simply through thought. No kidding, he can make his hands warm up by just thinking about it.



we saw a ton of eagles that day. here is an immature with a mature eagle. they chilled in the tree pretty much all morning. i would say I probably saw 2 dozen eagles that day. pretty neat.



this is how i looked yesterday. Andy and Lisa put on a fundraising lunch for babies. The food was stinking delicious. This is my round of seconds. I "slayed" some cookies too. The sugar crash at about 3 pm was tough, but I powered through.

Thankfully I took a razor to my boy beard last night. Also notice the crackhead-like dry area around my face. Dry skin up here is seriously ridiculous. I think I'm slowly shedding now that its sort of warm out.

Alright, more to come soon(ish).

Redoubt Continued

19 eruptions thus far. Thankfully things have started to get a bit quieter though...until Saturday morning at about 6 am. Redoubt had a pretty intense eruption...one of the most powerful yet. The ash went about 50,000 ft. up, but this eruption lasted for over an hour.

I've got more images to share, especially for those who like satellite images and other assorted weather weenie things.

First... here is a video a guy took of one of the eruptions. It's a time lapse of 26 minutes I think? Gives you a great idea for how ridiculously powerful a volcano is:

http://vimeo.com/3892358

The video is of previous eruptions, whereas the rest of this stuff is from recent eruptions.

This is a MODIS image (satellite), true color, taken today. You can really see the ash down on the southern Kenai Peninsula. I always like satellite images of this place, because it gives you such a good idea of how huge the state really is! For example, it takes about 5 hours to drive to Homer. Homer being the city/town most affected by this particular ashfall. I think it's funny that Homer is a big destination for people from Anchorage...but it's so far away. It's like driving to DC from Raleigh.



Moving on...here's some web cam images from Homer Saturday morning. Crazy stuff. The first image is around 630 am, right when it's starting to get light out these days. Next image is from 7:20 am. You can tell something's not quite right, because it looks sort of "orange-ish" outside. This is the approaching ash cloud. Next, at 7:40 am, essentially pitch black night outside. Mmmm ashfall. Good stuff!







I have been meaning to upload some pictures I took here around town when we had some ashfall. I also collected some ash samples (as requested), so those should be reaching the inquirees soon enough.

I'll stop here, so I can get back to work (yay for midnight shifts). Otherwise, things are going alright these days. We've had some beautiful days, with a whole lot of daylight. Up to about 14 hours a day now. When i drove in to work tonight, at 9:45, it was still twilight outside. Wierd stuff. Oh yea I forgot the bonus webcam sunrise image of redoubt the other morning. pretty spectacular if you ask me.

Redoubt finally does its deal

Redoubt finally decided to start erupting. I think it was about a week ago now...man it's been one of the longest weeks of my life. I feel like all I've done is work since that day...which I basically have!

So, first off, no need to be concerned. I'm awaiting the inevitable phone call from my mom when she gets out of the mountains this weekend and gets some cell phone coverage. Funny things... you know...moms. We did have some ashfall in Anchorage yesterday. It smelled like sulfur, and was basically like a dust storm. Lots of crap getting in your eyes, and just enough particulate matter to make you question whether you should really be breathing the crap or not.

Otherwise, no harm no foul. So without further ado, here are some pictures and assorted images related to the volcano. I mean, that's why you're here anyways, right?

This is a satellite image (true color) taken the day after the first round of explosions. You can see the ash deposits along the Susitna Valley and along the Alaska Range. Anchorage is located in the lower center of photograph, on the tip of the little peninsula.

Pyroclastic lightning due to one of the eruptions two nights ago. This photograph was taken from about 50 miles away from the volcano. This is hardcore. I like it.
A picture of the lava dome the day before the explosion. Look at all that snow just waiting to be melted and start a flood
This picture was taken from Homer during one of the explosions. Pretty much every explosion has been obscured by clouds (much to everyone's dismay). Finally, a decent shot of the plume.
Pretty neat image taken from a satellite positioned over Asia. This eruption went up to above 60,000 feet. Pretty cool to see.
Here's another satellite image of one of the eruptions where the ash got wrapped into a low pressure system. I believe this one is from this past Friday.

This is the Drift River Valley, which drains the glacier/snow from the summit of Redoubt. With pretty much every eruption there's a little flash flood in this valley. Fortunately, no one really lives here. Unfortunately, there's an oil refinery at the outlet of the valley that drains into cook inlet. I think something like 60,000 barrels of oil are currently stored there. There are dikes that have thus far protected the refinery from creating an environmental disaster.
This is taken from the north side of Redoubt, in the Crescent River Valley. These mountains are actually snow covered... they're just coated in ash!
And finally...this is what the ash cloud looked like moving over Homer last Friday. Pretty freaky looking.

Before anyone asks.... I have not yet seen Pierce Brosnan. It would be pretty sweet if he did drive by in that Jeep with the tires on fire though.

Updates have been requested

Sorry for falling off the blogging bandwagon once again. Not that things have been uninteresting, though. Let's see...since my last update Mt.Redoubt has pansied out and decided it will likely not erupt anytime soon. We'll see, I guess. Back in January a friend of mine's sister, and her friend, moved out to Anchorage. It's been great having them around. You know...some people who know the value of Bojangles. They've been doing the majority of the picture taking, so I think all of the following pics were taken by them.

So besides heading home for 10 days at the end of February, quite a few activities have taken place. There's been some ice fishing, downhill skiing at Alyeska (Girdwood), a quick trip down to the Kenai, watching the ceremonial start of the Iditarod, and a snowshoeing adventure.

I won't chronicle everything, but it's been nice to be able to have some company and get outdoors more. The daylight situation is pretty fantastic these days. We're up to almost 12 hours of daylight, so things are back to normal I'd say. It doesn't even get completely dark until near 9pm. It's still been kind of chilly, but 30 degrees and sunny here is pretty darn nice!

So here are some pics taken during various activities. I will try my best to get back to blogging more over the next couple of months. Right now I'm just wishing Spring/Summer (whatever you call it here) to come along. Anyone who knows me decently well can easily assume i'm going just about half crazy to be able to start fishing!


Here Holly and I are at the Iditarod ceremonial start enjoying a reindeer dog. No joke, these things were delicious...but I paid dearly in indigestion later!




This was taken back in January on the quick afternoon trip down the Kenai. This is maybe 3 in the afternoon...thankfully the sun situation is pretty awesome right now. I even managed to get a sunburn/windburn the other day after snowshoeing. Thank God for sunlight reflection off the snow. I was told when I was back home that I "wasn't as pale" as everyone had expected. So I've got that going for me, which is nice.




Last, here we have a shot looking down and across Turnagain Arm from the ski resort Alyeska. The conditions were fantastic. I think in the future when summoned for trips to Wintergreen, I will participate solely as moral support. It's tough to think about skiing on fake icy snow again once you can have great powder and untouched groomed trails all day!

The Upside to Situational Awareness

Staring at the Redbout webcam is not without its benefits. Beautiful sunsets. It seems like the past couple of days the sun lowers in just the right place to light up the steam plume in a beautiful way.

Here is what it looks like right now:



I heard a rumor about 65 degrees back in the old north state today. and then a chance of snow tonight and tomorrow. sure... the weather's crazy there, but thats the best of both worlds. We're stuck just above zero. The joke's over at some point, right?

The Waiting Game

I officially would like to call Mt.Redoubt out. Erupt already, or go back dormant. I'm getting tired of looking at your seismic activity and webcam views non stop at work. We are as ready as we're gonna be. Take any longer and you're just going to be the volcano who cried wolf. You've been on the national news, you've been on the international news...oh I get it, you're selfish. Just come on!

For the record, here is what work mainly involves these days: using an excellent page developed by none other than Mr.Sam Shea, which shows some webigrams (seismic activity) and some webcams. One webcam is pointed at the mountain from across Cook Inlet. The other one is situated just north of mountain on an opposing peak... I think it's like 7 or 8 miles away. Here is what it looks like currently:






And sure, it's really neat stuff...but I feel like we've all been in queue for the past week waiting for this thing to go! All I ask is that it keeps the ash away from the city. I have no desire to walk around in a dusk mask like the residents of China did during the Avian Flu outbreak or whatever it was. I equally have no desire to find out how harmful ash can actually be. But man, the view will be spectacular!

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!