During the first 21 days of November 2014, no recordable snow fell in Anchorage, Juneau or Fairbanks. Over an unusual swath of the state, the ground was frozen, dusty and brown. Even extreme parts of Alaska were in a snow drought. “No manual observation site has even had 10 inches of snow this month, including […]
The revival of the virus responsible for the 1918 Spanish flu, the killer of millions of people, was the end of a long journey for Johan Hultin. Hultin, 90, twice retrieved samples of the virus from the lungs of flu victims preserved by permafrost in an Alaska village. Molecular pathologists used the latter of those […]
“Rectal Temperature of the Working Sled Dog.” “Cleaning and Sterilization of Bunny Boots.” “Comparative Sweat Rates of Eskimos and Caucasians Under Controlled Conditions.” These are some of the studies completed by scientists who worked for the Arctic Aeromedical Laboratory from the late 1940s to the 1960s. Developed during the Cold War to “solve the severe […]
It is a very remarkable fact that a region under a civilized government for more than a century should remain so completely unknown as the vast territory drained by the Copper, Tanana and Koyukuk Rivers. So wrote Henry Allen in a government report on his muscle-powered journey from the mouth of the Copper River to […]