Dear Friends at Journey North,
Our lives here revolve around the natural calendar of seasons, fish runs up our river, berry growth dependent upon the right amounts of sunlight and the right amounts of rain, the migrations of the caribou, and the migrations of the songbirds and waterfowl. This "calendar" has literally been the determining factor of survival of humans on this earth.
Long ago Native Alaskans eagerly waited for the spring arrival of the migratory birds. Traditional stories, lessons for children, and explanations of how the world began were based upon these migrations.
In today's modern world we who live in the remote parts of Alaska still depend upon the natural calendar of the seasons. This includes the spring and fall migrations. While people in the "lower 48" look for the shadow of the groundhog, we look for the lengthening of days, the chinook winds and watch for "spring clouds" which appear different than winter clouds.
All over North America our winter has been considered out of the ordinary. Record snows, record high temps and record low temps. Even in the interior of Alaska we have experienced unusual weather. Most of the winter we had very warm temperatures, not much snow and last week, rain. We are used to at least 4' of snow in our area, temperatures ranging from 20 degrees fareignhite to -60. We hit -50 once and that was all.
Now it is already like spring here, which, for March, is REALLY weird! My class got to talking about how early our spring "feels" this year. We would like to share with you some signs of spring that will show you how unseasonal our weather has been. These are some signs that we would NORMALLY see in the middle to end of April:
--granulated type of snow cover
--hard crust in the morning
--afternoon thawing
--rain last week, all week
--the slough (creek) is already open and running.
This is normally frozen until late April!!
--mean nighttime temperature staying at 20 degrees F.
--daytime temperature hovering at 33 degrees F.
So what about the animals? We are watching for signs of an early wake-up call for bears in our area. They normally wake up from their long winter hibernation in early April.
We are excited to be a part of Journey North again this year. If there has ever been an Internet program that has fit our lifestyle, Journey North is the one.
Watching the skies,
Joyanne Hamilton and Students
Innoko River School
Shageluk, Alaska
TSJMH1@acad1.alaska.edu
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