The weather has moderated again. Our temperature is just now 30 degrees! This has been a peculiar winter with rain, snow, warm temperatures or very low temperatures. It used to be predictable. Now, it is not. At least we don’t live in the interior or along the arctic coast where it is very cold most of the time. The state high was at Dutch Harbor with 43 degrees and the low was at my husband’s birthplace of Tanana with -23 degrees.

In about a month, Barrow will have a sunrise. We will continue to lose daylight until next Wednesday when it will very slowly begin to gain. After a few weeks of slow gain, it will increase fairly rapidly for a few months. Today’s sunrise was at 10:06 with the sunset at 3:52. That gave us a net daylight of 5 hours 46 minutes and 23 seconds which was a loss of 1 minute 28 seconds over yesterday.

Mt. Augustine is an active volcano not far from Homer on the lower Kenai Peninsula. Mt. Augustine has become somewhat active recently. Yesterday it sent a plume of steam that extended about 50 miles. It had quite a sulfur (rotten egg) odor, but for the most part didn’t spread over populated areas. The volcano has not erupted, yet, although there are many small earthquakes with the mountain each day. The last time it did was in 1986. There is a very good chance that it will do so again and probably within the next couple weeks. Depending of the air currents, we may or may not be doused with ash. It really stinks and makes a mess of things. Aircraft can’t fly with ash in the air, so a disruption at Christmas could irritate a few people. Cars shouldn’t be driven while the ash is in the air as that really messes up the internal workings.

Tomorrow, my husband and I are planning a trip to Anchorage to drop off Christmas gifts for my daughter and her family, and to finish some shopping for others, too. Next year a Walmart will be built in Kenai. That will cut down the amount of trips to Anchorage. Our area doesn’t have a K-Mart (although we did for 10 years), a Burger King (we used to have a couple), a Wendy’s (another casualty), or a KFC (went out of business this year). We do have McDonalds, Taco Bell, Arby’s, and Subway. There’s a lot of fuss about Walmart coming to town. I do have my concerns, but it will be nice to buy underwear at a reasonable price. We really don’t have many choices right now. But, I’m also afraid that more people will move into the area and we will grow even faster.

I’ve begun to do some Christmas baking. It isn’t hard to use the alternative flours in place of wheat, and to make other adjustments to the recipes. It is really surprising how wonderfully delicious good-for-you foods can taste. Next week I plan on baking about four different kinds of cookies. The one’s I made last night are already gone.

Till next time….take care.