Because of where Southeast Alaska sits — at the wetted lips of the planet’s widest expanse of blue — it is often soaked by atmospheric rivers, firehoses of moisture flowing up from the tropics. And even though the forests and muskegs of Southeast Alaska have evolved to drink up and shed stunning amounts of rain, […]
Once again, I got “Shalaned.” This time was in a 55-mile multisport race held on snowmachine trails east of Fairbanks on March 5, 2022. Even though Shalane Frost started 15 minutes after I did and was on skis rather than the snow-bike I was riding, she passed me on the first big climb. Frost went […]
A NASA Black Brant IX sounding rocket soared high out of Poker Flat Research Range north of Fairbanks at 2:27 a.m. Saturday to learn more about pulsating aurora. The Loss through Auroral Microburst Pulsations, or LAMP, experiment seeks to determine whether the pulsating aurora is connected to another phenomenon called microbursts, higher-energy electrons from the Earth’s magnetosphere driven […]
Right about now, songbirds in Brazil are shifting on their perches, feeling mysterious impulses that will soon make them leap off their branches and head toward Alaska. One of these birds is the olive-sided flycatcher, about as tall as your hand, with a blocky body and head. With good fortune, these birds will in a […]