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 […]
The first two rockets launched from Poker Flat Research Range north of Fairbanks on Tuesday, March 25, with one taking a route similar to Saturday’s rocket and the other flying farther north to eject colorful vapor tracers over the Arctic Ocean above Utqiagvik and Kaktovik. The mission, titled Auroral Waves Excited by Substorm Onset Magnetic […]
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 […]
A new study sheds light on the benefits and implications of the use of electric vehicles in rural Alaska. Electric vehicles, or EVs, are widely thought to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Many rural communities in Alaska are not connected to larger electric grids. They use diesel fuels to generate most of their electricity and face […]