Snow Happens

(by Leslie)

Being California and Hawai‘i gals, Robin and I have not been around much snow. Sure, I spent six years in Columbus, Ohio as a kid, but since we moved to California when I was eight, those cold mid-western winters are only a distant childhood memory for me. So I wasn’t sure exactly how I’d react to winter in the coldest city in America.

When we arrived in Fairbanks a little over two weeks ago it had recently snowed, and everything looked like a fairyland to my newcomer eyes.

fence near our house here in Fairbanks

(notice how the snow droops and forms a ribbon, defying gravity)

We’ve now started to get accustomed to this new climate. Robin has learned to drive in second down our steep street and to brake really early for signals (I’m too chicken to even attempt driving here in the winter); Ziggy has discovered that it’s great fun to pounce in and out of snow drifts; and I’ve come to feel that 25 degrees above zero seems pretty darn warm.

Just when we thought we had it all down, it started to snow. And snow, and snow and snow. We watched from the living room window during cocktail hour as the flakes filled the sky, blotting out the sun. It was still coming down when we went to bed.

The next morning when I let Ziggy out to do her business I was greeted by a scene of almost pure white. Stepping outside, my snow boots sank six inches into the powdery snow.

little Ziggy is dwarfed by the drifts

I’ve been suffering from a bad back the past week, so the shoveling duty fell to Robin, who—with Ziggy looking on with fascination—was able to make our driveway passable for the car:

Well, that was exciting, we said to one another that night during cocktails. Such a lot of snow! And then we noticed that it had started to come down again. It didn’t stop all night. By the next morning, another six or eight inches had fallen:

the street in front of our house the next morning

I took Ziggy down to the end of the driveway to get the newspaper, and marveled at how the trees had “bloomed” over night with white:

So incredibly beautiful.

But as I walked back up the drive, I realized a shovel was not going to work this time. It would have to be the “snow-thrower,” the contraption Mark had shown Robin how to use when we first got here. Trooper that she is, she duly brought it out and cleared the way for the car to pass (Ziggy, endlessly curious about these things, tagging along):

if you look closely, you can see

that the snow right behind Ziggy is taller than she is

The newspaper the next day reported that this was the most snow Fairbanks has had this time of years in several decades. And here we thought it was just a normal winter storm. The snow plows have been working overtime the past three days to get all the roads cleared. Here’s one that was working in our neighborhood:

Okay, so now for the down-side. No, it’s not the shoveling and snow-throwing. (Though I haven’t been doing those in any case.) It’s this: As many of you no doubt know, there has been quite a bit of solar activity this week, the result of which is that there have been spectacular displays of the aurora borealis in places like Finland, Anchorage, and even North Dakota and Minnesota.

But what have we had here in Fairbanks, which is known as the aurora capital of the U.S. because of its clear March skies? Snow. And clouds. And more snow. Which means no aurora for us. [Edit by Robin: Of course, we did have this night under our belt already.]

So we’re bummed.

Snow, snow, go away. Come again some other day!