Things an Alaskan notices while standing on a road in Costa Rica: Trees are shaped like mint-green umbrellas rather than charcoal-green rocket ships. Flesh-colored flowers smell like warm honey as they fall with a plop from a tree to sticky pavement. A bird perched on a power line has turquoise eyebrows and a double tail […]
Rod Boyce of Two Rivers, Alaska, reports that he has noticed — at a time when the outside air’s temperature has not been above freezing since October — three butterflies living in his heated garage. Though we in middle Alaska will be thinking a lot about insects in a few months, mosquitoes and their kin […]
The U.S. National Weather Service said Saturday the life-threatening cold temperatures and dangerous wind chills that a good portion of the country is currently experiencing could create “a potentially life-threatening hazard for travelers that become stranded, individuals that work outside, livestock and domestic pets.” The weather service said, “If you must travel or be out […]
One winter day not long ago, a reporter from the Sacramento Bee called. She had read a story I wrote about life at 40 below in Fairbanks. Meteorologists in the Sacramento office of the National Weather Service office had forecast a drop to 25 degrees in central California; people were concerned about their pipes freezing […]