![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/blog\/images\/2014\/March\/birchLoop.jpg\")
<\/p>\nSnow. We’d nearly forgotten. The weatherlady said expect 2″, maybe. Instead, 6-8″ fell. Ah, the folly of Man’s hubris, one minute we’re predicting the Higgs boson and the next we’re knee deep in unexpected snow.<\/p>\n
Some viewed this as a setback; we accepted it as opportunity. We loaded the twelve year olds into the Subaru and up into the mountains we all went to enjoy a positively serene plod through the snow.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
BIGGER<\/a>.<\/p>\n Happy Wife broke trail:<\/p>\n \u00a0 BIGGER<\/a>.<\/p>\n Back at the trail head we met a man visiting from Tahiti. He was holding a camera and gazing at the white mountains set against the bluebird sky. Speechless. I love that.<\/p>\n Despite this latest snowfall we’re well below our annual average, and north of us, closer to Fairbanks, the day-to-day temperatures this winter have been well above average, and so, like others, I think this may mean the ice on the Tanana River could break up earlier than usual, that is if you call this usual:<\/p>\n Source<\/small><\/a><\/p>\n With the possible exception of 1963, last year was the latest breakup in almost one hundred years — over 60 days after the vernal equinox (VE). There’s a celebration held every year in Alaska called the Nenana Ice Classic,<\/a> which involves a contest to see who can guess the time when the tripod will fall on the Tanana River. $2.50 per guess, enter as often as you’d like. I’ve not participated in years past but this year I’m going to. The payout<\/a> last year was $318,000.<\/p>\n You might think that a higher than average day-to-day winter temperature in Nenana would cause a breakup much earlier than “normal,” and that’s true, but low snow cover means the cold penetrates deeper into the ground which has the effect of delaying ice breakup. A multi-factorial problem for sure. There’s something about April 29th at 3:42 pm that’s speaking to me right now (39 days after VE).<\/p>\n Or I suppose I could ask the weatherlady when the ice will go out. Snow. We’d nearly forgotten. The weatherlady said expect 2″, maybe. Instead, 6-8″ fell. Ah, the folly of Man’s hubris, one minute we’re predicting the Higgs boson and the next we’re knee deep in unexpected snow. Some viewed this as a setback; we accepted it as opportunity. We loaded the twelve year olds into the Subaru […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wikipediapreview_detectlinks":true,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3303"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3312,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3303\/revisions\/3312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/blog\/images\/2014\/March\/birchLoop_big.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"