It's a bit on the nippy side here...

[Blue_In_AK]

but after hearing this story on last night's local news, I'm grateful to be where I am.

Stevens Village locked in by deep freeze of 60 below

by Jill Burke
Tuesday, January 6, 2009

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- If you think it's been cold here, it's no match for people living in Stevens Village.

It sits on the Yukon River northwest of Fairbanks, and villagers say they've had a full week of temperatures at 60 below and colder.

It hasn't stopped kids there from going to school or playing outside, but it is getting tough for the villagers. Some people have run out of wood to heat their homes.

And with a lingering ice fog keeping planes out, food supplies are also running low.

Families there say they're sharing with one another to get through.

"One of the familes that fishes, she gave me a salmon and we've been eating on that for three days now, so we are just budgeting our food intake," Deborah Brouillette, the post master in Stevens Village, said in a phone interview.

A plane with mail and groceries is expected to make it in later this week.

Contact Jill Burke at [email protected]

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. My dear Blue...

A bit nippy? :scared:

Yikes.

I love your pic!

:hi:

[Blue_In_AK]

2. I thought it was good to keep a record

since this is one of the longest subzero spells on record here. It's supposed to warm up to 10 by Friday. It'll feel like a heat wave after so much cold.

With this very cold winter following our record-breaking cool summer, it's hard to convince people around here that global "warming" is real. I'm more inclined to say "climate change." :)

[Juneboarder]

7. Nice Documentation Blue...

It takes a tough, tough person to brave those temps... and to say you like the winters!! :)

Hats off to ya! :yourock:

[comrade snarky]

3. I hate to tell you this Blue

But I think your state is trying to kill you.

Negative 30 where you live and -60 out in Stephens Village? With ice fog? Lord what kind of fresh hell is that? Ice, floating in the air? Just like floating there, IN the air? I can't wrap my head around it!

Stephen can keep his village!

[Blue_In_AK]

6. Ice fog is like regular fog

just a lot colder, like tiny crystals floating in the air. It's really quite pretty, I love the way it coats the trees with frost.

Alaska can't kill me. I know how to dress for going out, and when it's this cold, I stick pretty close to home.

I guess I'm a weirdo, but I really kind of like winter. Good thing, huh?

[comrade snarky]

9. Still having a hard time with it!

Ice should fall damn it! :-)

The way I picture it you could poke a hole in the air with your finger or walk through it and crunch out a Blue shaped tunnel. Then again I do live in a cartoon.

Some people think I'm weird because I love the San Francisco grey foggy days. They make me feel alive, sounds like winter is the same for you.
Of course my fog is just damp, the way god intended.

Stay warm out there!

[Blue_In_AK]

10. I lived in San Francisco back in the day,

and I know what you're talking about. I used to have a little studio apartment up there on Sacramento Street, and I loved listening to the foghorns at night. :)

[comrade snarky]

11. Nice

My wife and I live in the Richmond District, out in the sticks.

They turned the fog horns off for a while, maybe 6 months. Apparently they aren't necessary anymore. San Franciscans complained until they were turned on again!

[Blue_In_AK]

12. I don't know how old you are but...

do you remember the Steve Miller Band album "Sailor," the one with "Quicksilver Girl" on it? The main reason I loved that album was because of that song at the beginning with the foghorns. :)

[comrade snarky]

13. I know the Steve Miller Band

But that's not one I know off the top of my head.

To the internets iTunes with me!

[Blue_In_AK]

16. You can find it here

http://www.last.fm/music/Steve+Miller+Band/Sailor "Song for Our Ancestors" is the one I was talking about. I hadn't listened to these songs in ages - it really takes me back. This particular song kind of reminds me of later Pink Floyd tunes. I really like Steve Miller in his early albums, this one and Children of the Future, but he kind of sold out later, IMO.

Although I will say in his defense that I went to a concert he put on here back in the early '90s and he played and played and played for over three hours, which was well worth the price of admission after we're so used to the 75 minute "concerts."

[sandnsea]

4. That is why we left Montana

Thanks for the reminder. Just... BRRRRRRRR.

And those poor people stuck in 60 below, sounds way scary to me.

[Blue_In_AK]

5. Those folks out in the Bush are very resourceful,

but I do hope the supplies can get in to them soon.

[bvar22]

8. Brrrrr!

Reminds me of Minnesota.

It was 65 degrees here today.
I worked in the garden in a T-Shirt.

I now have a broadband connection and will be hanging out here more!
:hi:

[Tindalos]

14. Y'know, when you say it's -30 there...

I think: Damn, that's cold but I could handle it.

Then, I realize you mean Fahrenheit. :scared::scared::scared:

[Blue_In_AK]

15. LOL.

Yep. We have an unofficial reading from Tok of -80. This article from this morning's Anchorage Daily News tells some of some of the problems people are having up in the Interior. Gasoline like pudding?

Cold is a Relative Term http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/648784.html

Sure Anchorage is freezing. But you don't even want to know what this latest cold snap has been like in Interior Alaska.

"The coldest temperature was 68 below in Chicken yesterday," National Weather Service meteorologist Jim Brader said Friday. "And we've had a 63 below in Tok yesterday."

When it gets that kind of cold, mushers can't mush, small planes can't fly and gasoline turns to a slushy pudding in your gas tank.

"You can actually scoop it out," said Maurice Shultz, who owns Napa Auto Parts in Tok and has seen the usual winter rush of customers buying fan belts, fuel filters and magnetic heaters.


<snip>

About 50 miles north of Northway is Tok, where local blogger Aliza Sherman Risdahl posted a photo this week of an electronic temperature gauge seen at the Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge office.

It read 80 below.

"I've been trying to drive a little bit into town, and as you drive, you can feel your steering wheel freeze up," Sherman Risdahl told National Public Radio this week.

That minus-80 doesn't count for the record books, however.

The coldest official reading in Tok this week was 63 below, said Brader, the National Weather Service meteorologist in Fairbanks.

[Tindalos]

17. Ack!

It hurts just thinking about that!

We are a bunch of wimps down here. Most of us see snow and go back to bed. My neighbour hasn't bothered to dig his car out - for a month!

This winter has been unusually cold for us, -20's (Celsius) and several feet of snow. The media have dubbed it the Snowpocalyse.:rofl:


Edit to say, I just saw it's snowing again. The snowpocalyse continues!

[pipoman]

18. Holy Cow!

OTOH, I guess it is a dry cold, huh?

uh..sorry...bad humor is my trademark