Morning sunrise (9:13am, official sunrise today occurred at 8:47am) and Otis looking the wrong way.
It was 10 degrees [F] this morning, 11 with the wind chill? So, the actual temperature at our house must have been near zero. Weather forecasting here is a little different than in the lower 48. So next time you get mad at the weatherman, just be thankful you’re not in Alaska. It’s really not the fault of forecasters; you can drive 10 minutes in any direction and find temperatures 20 degrees apart, clouds and snow instead of sun or maybe rain, etc.
Sorry I couldn’t post much of anything this week, here is a short update:
Despite having slightly shorter Quantum and Electrodynamics assignments, this was a tougher week than normal. Maybe its due to the fact that all of the physics teaching assistants are on the 4th week in a row of 80+ hour weeks, maybe its the fact that last weekend didn’t lend itself to taking my typical 1 day with no schoolwork, but regardless it was a hard week. Teaching is time-consuming, grading is monotonous and time-consuming, homework is hard, classes are hard to stay awake in, time to eat is scarce, and everyone is severely deprived of sleep. Tomorrow will be a full day off. I will do something fun and write about it.
We had our first snow this week (previous post), and our first dog-sled encounter that you can read about on Kate’s blog. We also managed to get out for a while and explore the University’s trail system. Just north of campus UAF owns 1100 acres of land that is filled with trails. In the summer the dry trails are open for walking. In the winter there are snowshoe and skiing trails. Many of the ski trails groomed and are kept lit so that even in the dark winters we can get out and ski.
Supposedly the tip of a coronal mass ejection was supposed to give a glancing blow to the Earth’s magnetosphere yesterday so I got a little aurora excited, but nothing happened. It’s been too cloudy recently to see much of anything. The falls (winter) in Fairbanks are always cloudy, the springs are usually sunny, so the best time for viewing is the spring. Maybe it will stay clear a little longer than the forecast says so I can get some more pictures.
