Extreme cold slams Alaska
Published Wednesday, January 7, 2009
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Stumble It!JUNEAU — Ted Johnson planned on using a set of logs to a build a cabin in Alaska's interior. Instead he'll burn some of them to stay warm.
Extreme temperatures — in Johnson's case about 60 below zero — call for extreme measures in a statewide cold snap so frigid that temperatures have grounded planes, disabled cars, frozen water pipes and even canceled several championship cross country ski races.
Alaskans are accustomed to subzero temperatures but the prolonged conditions have folks wondering what's going on with winter less than a month old.
National Weather Service meteorologist Andy Brown said a "ridge" of sorts has developed over much of central Alaska east toward Canada. That keeps other weather patterns from moving through. New conditions get pushed north or south while the affected area faces daily extremes.
"When it first started almost two weeks ago, it wasn't anything abnormal," Brown said. "About once or twice every year, we get a good cold snap.
"But, in this case, you can call this an extreme event. This is rare. It doesn't happen every year."
Temperatures sit well below zero in the state's various regions, often without a wisp of wind pushing down the mercury further.
Johnson lives in Stevens Village, where residents have endured close to two weeks of temperatures pushing 60 below zero.
The cold has kept planes grounded, Johnson said. Food and fuel aren't coming in and they're starting to run low in the village, about 90 miles northwest of Fairbanks.
Johnson, whose home has no heater or running water, said he ventures outside only to get more logs for burning and to fetch water from a community facility. He's been saving the wood to build a cabin as a second home, but that will have to wait a few years now because the heat takes precedence.
"I've never seen it this cold for this long," he said. "I remember it 70 below one time, but not for a week and a half."
Folks in Northway aren't faring much better, said Marcy Coman, a lodge owner in the village about 250 miles southeast of Fairbanks and 42 miles west of the Canadian Border.
The average low in January for Northway is about 29 below zero. Wednesday's high was 41 below zero, after warming up 15 degrees from the overnight low.
Coman said locals are keeping things in perspective. Last year, temperatures dropped to 69 below for 10 straight days.
Among the few vehicles that will start is town's school bus, which is kept in a heated garage, Coman said.
A heating fuel delivery truck has broken down, cutting weekly supplies, so the town conserves and sometimes shares fuel.
When really pressed, Coman said, she will drive 50 miles north to a town called Tok and buy heating fuel.
"We are involved as a community, and that helps us get through it," she said.
In Anchorage, Alaska's largest city, residents are used to lows of about 10-degree temperatures in January - not 19 below zero, which is what folks awoke to Wednesday morning.
Temperatures finally settled to about 10 below at midday, but that was cold enough to cancel races in the U.S. Cross Country Ski Championships.
Skiers won't compete unless it's at least 4 below zero, but the numbers have ranged between 10 below and 15 below.
That has led to four days of canceled or postponed competition with organizers hoping to get a set of races under way on Thursday, the event's final day.
Meanwhile, in Juneau, the state's capital is enjoying balmy weather by comparison with lows in the single digits.
Community Discussion
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We must done something to make God angry.
Goodness, I can't spell. :)
As my old sourdough neighbor told me in '89 when it was so cold...."Maybe it will stay like this for a few more days, then cool off!!"
Whatever happened to global warming?
Summer 2008 satellite photos show that many many areas of forest within 50miles of Fairbanks has been decimated for firewood supply.
This 6" polypipe gasline is easily capable of delivering 200gallons per minute of LPG or ethane-condensate to Fairbanks.
200gpm = 288,000 gallons of condensate or propane per day
http://s281.photobucket.com/albums/kk209...
Propane - 91,600 BTU's/gallon
Hardwood (20% moisture ) 24,000,000 BTU's/cord
91,600 x 288,000 / 24,000,000 = 1,099.2 cords of birch x $200/cord = $219,840 firewood/day
woodstoves have 40-60% heatloss thru the chimney
propane out-vented heaters have 10% heatloss outdoors
this means 23,742,720,000BTU's of heat from propane
can be delivered to indoor heating using the 6" polypipe gasline
this will give 23,742 houses a million BTU's per day.
..this will turn 132million gallons of water to steam
Seems I read that Alaska was in for a warm winter this year. Guess they missed the mark on that one.
From my experience propane is a terrible heating fuel in the interior. At forty two below it quits flowing and its main byproduct is moisture. I don't see us using propane for home heating here. Natural gas is another story but don't think that it can be tanked and delivered.
she drives to a "town called Tok". What, we never heard of Tok? who wrote this???
"Skiers won't compete unless it's at least 4 below zero, but the numbers have ranged between 10 below and 15 below."
Either that's a tough bunch of skiers or somebody meant "They won't compete if it's colder than 4 below".
aframe,
If you noticed this is an AP story and could be picked up by a few newspapers across the country, they probably have never heard of Tok.
Right. Propane/Heating Oil creates moistures and noticeable amounts with subzero temps, while by products of wood & coal can easily rise higher into the atmosphere. It's all CO anyways and we're only looking at efficiency.
Ditto aframe. I drove from the lower 48 and never heard of Tok. lol Nonetheless, it's still a very good story.
I just hope this propane/oil/wood stove dispute gets settled with focus on what's right for the long term and without being biased towards politics & money. If you need case book scenarios, look at the lower 48.
IMO, we should ban all vehicles and use horse drawn buggies. Watch the air quality turn almost pristine in Fairbanks. If you want an example, just travel North Pole where there aren't any stores where people need to leave their vehicles running while shopping. ;-)
LOL as I went into Fairbanks once last week... I couldn't even breath. But a mile or so south, could breath just fine!
But, I should boast and should be thankful I had a good real estate agent, else, I could be living in Fairbanks & crying like the residents of the city about their air pollution and the disregard of the local stores allowing vehicles to be left running constantly without access to an enclosed garage. :-/
Distant Thunder "Summer 2008 satellite photos show that many many areas of forest within 50miles of Fairbanks has been decimated for firewood supply."
What is the source of this imagery? Do you have a link to it? How did they identify that the source of the loss was firewood woodcutting?
I'm sorry, I'm going to call BS on that. If anything, the imagery to the north may show the Boundary Fire. I'm not aware of any 50 mile circle of "decimated" forest around fairbanks. You realize that circle would go past Harding Lake, south to the Rex trail, to Nenana, almost to Chena Hot Springs, the end of Murphy Dome Road, Nome Creek on the Steese, and Colorado Creek trailhead on the Elliot. That's a lot of territory for those wooodcutters to travel.
Yep...on the negative side of -80 below at Kaltag in 1989 on a dial type thermometer and mercury one, too. The old barrel stove gobbled up a snow machine toboggan load of fire wood ever two days, and that's a good thing because it took about that long to get the sno-go going again after I turned it off.
Good thing I got my husband that fur hat for Christmas. He won't get to stop cutting wood anytime soon.
I feel bad so many are hurting so much by the chill. wish I was there to help in some way. Almost feel guilty for enjoying Alaska so much.
Kaltag - thats a warmer spot right now cp. to North Pole.
I'm looking forward to flying down their again next week to warm up :) Hopefully our place is thawed by then; I hear it froze up during the first part of the snap.
so... are we going to get punished by the epa because of our pollution build up during this cold snap?
akman50, ditto on that moisture problem with propane. We installed a propane heater in our first cabin... So much moisture built up that we had mold problems like it was Southeast. Yuk. Wouldn't do that again. Oil or wood are much better. In our present cabin, we're dry and have static electricty issues. Static electricity was NOT a problem in the propane-heated cabin.
Wood heat rules!
yaaaaaa......
propane is not for everybody, it's just an important part of the total mix.
If you use 90%propane/10%ethane it makes an ArcticMix that works well down to -100F if you wanna go for 80/20mix.
propane boils at -44F
ethane boils at -127F
In most cases propane should have vented exhaust in Bearflanks winters.
I'm a prospector who likes to range around in the winter, and at times propane is the best portable fuel for me if I had a steady supply of it.
Much of your trubbles with any fuel system is just getting the hang of how to use it.
In China I can buy propane fuel-cells that are real popular with the siberians-- these gizmos weigh 4kilos and can melt snow and heat water like a Paloma for a shower, or they can heat a 10x12 room, all while they crank out 1000watts of power -- silent,noisefree.
Yeah I knew my over the top remark about your precious firewood habits would draw some fire..
It's been at least 3 centuries since I've been back up to squareflanks..
[ left about 1000tons of gold up there you lazy geeks haven't found yet -- you're waiting for me to come back and show ya exactly where it's at ??? ]
the satellite photos I saw were on a pals computer..
we were having coffee together at a wifi-java and he was showing me some recent sat-pix from around the world he had on 2 CD's..
he had quite a few of Alaska, so we got busy talking and lookin more.
I should ask him to burn me off some copies of those.
I noticed a big clearcut for a long stretch on the north side of Old Murphy Dome road...
...whutz happening there?
Please AL GORE gather your LIBERALS & HELP us out of this
I'm just as interested in the ethane as the propane.
Ethane is used to make poly eth ylene
Propane is used to make poly prop ylene
Both plastics, and a few more are used to make various types of polypipe.. and other stuff like kayaks and ice resistant windmill blades and fish totes and gold miner stuff.
Sourdoughdiablo, you're right!!!
Wow, almost everything is going down. The price of gasoline, the price of heating fuel, the temperature. The only thing that is not going down is my propane bill! From Amerigas today delivered to the Healy area, $4.469 a gallon! This stinks in more ways than one!! Stay warm everyone, I know Amerigas people are!!!
OBAMA gets the office on 1/20/09 the messica promise change so it will warm up
If you have a tired old diesel generator, boost it with propane and you'll get another year of use out of it... cleans up the exhaust too
Enjoy the low fuel prices while you can. Believe me,...fuel will go up, again,...just give it a chance. I'm praying it won't, but check out what Russia is doing. The Saudis aren't going to like losing US cashola.
Remember Bush hugs that Arab guy,...too wierd.
Distant Thunder - I think you are seeing a DNR hazard fuel reduction project. Too much timber too close to cabins.
Distant T--Alaskaman100 is right. DNR burned the woods this fall after dozing it and cutting it down this summer. We live at the foot of MurDome and the burn ran right along our boundary line.
PS--where is your gold. I won't tell :)
Let me tell you about something that has cost the same for the past thousand years: sweat and determination. That's about all it takes to fill your woodshed up with 9 cords of mixed spruce and (mostly) birch. I'm not paying for some Amerigas exec to send his kid to Cancoon for springbreak.
Speaking of spring break, a word any cold-snap loving Alaskan hates to hear was used in this afternoon's NWS discussion group...Chinook, check it out below.
http://pafg.arh.noaa.gov/wmofcst.php?wmo...
Where the hell is TOK? Is it in Alaska?
It's the place you stop to take a rest before getting to the Canadian border. How do you think it got its name?
One tok over the line
The writer was right on the wording here:
1) "she will drive 50 miles north to a town called Tok" - for those not familiar with the community.
2) "she will drive 50 miles north to Tok" well, figure that out for yourselves...
There is an association with the community's name, Tok, with the slang term "toke" which refers to a draw or inhale of marijuana.
I am going to Tok and have a great time! (can you see what i mean?)
50 miles around Fairbanks forest decimated by firewood cutters? Um that would be 7853 square miles... Now if I could find the open fields to ride my snowmacine in.
It's my understanding that Tok Jct. got its name around the time of World War II, as it was there that the trail/road went south toward the shipping industry on Alaska's coast and the sea trade/shipping that involved routes toward the Aleutians, Asia, and Tokyo (as in 'Tok').
I don't know if that's true, but it seemed to make sense.
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BTW, If you look to Europe, they frequently have/had LNG at their fuel stops on the Autoban.
Many vehicles in Europe are equipped to burn LNG. The pumps are certainly present between Amsterdam and Arnhem, in the Netherlands. But with a reliable rail system that travels at an estimated 90 mph, and more or less stops at every two-bit burg on the way, depending on which train you catch, why burn expensive fuel at all??
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Did it really take Juneau two weeks to notice that the rest of the State had more or less stopped moving?? Were they really that self-absorbed??
Had enough of these temps. Do you think gov. bailout program would buy me a blue ticket? I'll find my own way back in the Spring (June).
Just tell them that you have further evidence of corruption amongst Alaskan lawmakers, but that you buried it in Palm Springs or Phoenix. They'll probably even throw in some time in a 5-star hotel with a heated pool, and a food stipend.
Then take them out into the desert, and either tell them that your old GPS was a better unit (they might buy a new one of those too), or insist that someone must've seen you burying the evidence, and stolen it after you left.
Make sure that you shrug with significant humility when you announce that the evidene must have been stolen. That'll be a crucial moment..
DNR didn't bother to turn it into wood-pellets??? whthfck?
http://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?Sear...
Tok--- yup that's the story I heard too, the left turn there past Slana was the road to Tokyo... a shotgun blast to the roadsign removed the yo off the tok... if you turn right instead of left there it gets you into some good gold country---
turn left to fight the japs..
turn right to mine some gold..
..whutt would you do??
I think maybe you should'nt compare one gallon of propane to one cord of wood,anybody with half a brain would rather a cord of wood than one gallon of propane for heat.
Global warming does not apply to Alaska
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