Tuesday Afternoon Report

It is election day in Anchorage. Other than the standard spate of bond issues, what's at stake is the slim, fiscally-conservative majority on the City Assembly. We'll see if the big spenders can be held at bay once again. Like their counterparts in D.C., they seem intent on spending money we don't have. (Photo from the Anchorage Daily News)

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So we got about an inch of fresh snow overnight, and had various flurries and rain showers today. The temperature hasn't risen above 38 at my place for the last several days. Tell me again how Spring is coming? I just need the encouragement...

In addition, it snowed rather heavily all morning. Of course, the temp is in the mid-30s, so very little of it did anything but cause a drippy, slushy mess.

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Mt. Redoubt is rumbling again. "A swarm of small earthquakes began Monday at Mount Redoubt in what scientists said was a warning that the volcano could be waking from its slumber." Excerpts:

The small quakes started about 1:45 a.m. near the summit of Mount Redoubt, a 10,197-foot volcano about 100 miles southwest of Anchorage. The regular pattern of the tremors are often seen when magma is moving inside a volcano, Wessels said.

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Redoubt has erupted several times since the 1960s. Its last major eruption was last winter and spring, including 19 significant eruptions over several weeks that sent ash plumes as high as 65,000 feet and cloaked parts of Southcentral Alaska in up to a half-inch of ash.

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The volcanic eruptions also caused hundreds of flights to be diverted from Anchorage over concerns that an ash cloud could damage airplane engines.

Click the link to read the whole article.