Reader Todd Mackinaw recently admired how the great horned owl can thrive from the Brooks Range in Alaska all the way to Uruguay in South America. The knee-high owl known for its “plumicorns” — tufts above its ears that resemble horns — haunts every forested bit of Alaska. Right about now, in early April, many […]
MINTO FLATS — Within a vast bowl bordered by blue hills, I rolled along on a trail scratched into ice by snowmachines. That deceptive basin — Minto Flats — is big enough to swallow Denali, if the big mountain happened to stumble in here and fall. Just over a ridge west of Fairbanks, Minto Flats is […]
Rick Thoman noted in a recent report that the paucity of 2024-2025 snowfall in Anchorage and other Southcentral Alaska locations may be unprecedented in the era of modern records. “For the three locations with 50-plus years of snowfall data, both Anchorage airport and Alyeska had the lowest mid-winter totals, while the Matanuska Experiment Farm was […]
Pete Wilda, a Fairbanks reader of this column, wanted to know how the snow here can bend off railings and loop from power lines without breaking. He grew up in eastern Wisconsin and doesn’t remember the snow defying gravity there. Snow tilts and bends in Interior Alaska because there’s not much wind and because it’s […]