I am attaching my SIMB images for December 2013. What a time we had last
month! About 3 weeks ago a storm moved through the Fairbanks area bringing
snow, rain, ice and strong winds. As you may remember we don't normally
have windy conditions here in the interior of the state. But these winds
were very strong, some over 40 MPH (17.8 m/s). Many people lost electric
power for several days due to ice-covered trees and limbs that fell onto
power lines. We were very lucky at our house - we only lost power one night
for 3 hours. But after the storm left it started to get very cold: -18 C
and colder, and so some families had to find ways to keep their homes warm
without electricity. Fortunately, many of these homes were in the hills
where people have a "back up" power source, such as a wood stove, and so I
think everyone came through ok. But some people were without power for 6
days after the storm!
Since then we have had some "normal" winter weather with additional
snowfall and temperatures down to - 30 C. Yesterday, when I took these
images, it was -25 C at 1 pm (about 20 minutes past solar noon) and the
total snow depth was 285 mm. There is an ice layer 110 mm down from the
surface due to November's big ice storm.
Our daylight is very low, of course, since Winter Solstice is only a few
weeks away. The sun rose yesterday at 10:22 am and set at 3:00 pm for a
total day length of 4 hours 38 minutes. By Solstice on 21 Dec we will lose
almost an additional hour of light!
