Cold Dark Night

It's beautiful but chilly these days in Anchorage. One of my goals for this first winter in Alaska is to track my responses to living in such an "extreme" climate.

In many ways, Anchorage is not all that extreme. The Weather Channel this morning was predicting a whole lot more snow for Washington and Oregon than we're going to get here anytime soon.

Anchorage isn't any colder than Saginaw County, Michigan, my last place of residence, and actually gets less snow.

Two things are different, though.

First of all, winter starts much, much earlier. It's only the 3rd of November, and it looks outside like it would in December or January "back home." The trees are bare, the sky is winter-blue, and a light coating of frost or snow covers almost everything. We watched "Scooter" Libbey get arraigned this morning in Washington, DC, and the footage looked strangely dated because the sunlight looked warm, the trees were still green, and no one was wearing a winter coat.

Second, the darkness does not creep up on us here--it runs toward us at full tilt. This is the first time I've lived in a place where they keep such close tabs on the number of daylight hours. Today's Anchorage Daily News reports that the sun rose today at 8:35 a.m., and will set at 4:49 p.m.

There is a plus side, however. Those crisp, dark winter skies are perfect for stargazing--and aurora watching. The ADN also reports aurora conditions, which tonight should be moderate. This means that, "Weather permitting, moderate displays will be visible overhead from Barrow to Fairbanks and visible low on the northern horizon from as far south as Anchorage, Juneau, and Whitehorse, Canada."

Maybe we'll bundle up tonight and head north into the cold darkness for Alaska's brilliant night spectacle.