29 October 2024

The Legend Lives On

 No, not this one.

This one: we moved to Anchorage in early October 2003. Our new church family couldn't wait to tell us all about our new digs, including tales of Alaskan weather.

One thing they told us is that there is almost always permanent snow cover on the ground by Halloween. We, as Midwestern transplants, nodded and said okay. Right or wrong, there's nothing we could do about that. Although we looked forward to fluffy/powdery snow, instead of the icy slush that typically fell in the St. Louis area.

This particular bit of folk wisdom is demonstrably true, however. In the 21 years we've been here, it has failed only once - and then only by a few days.

So sure enough, an active system brought snow, starting yesterday. It stalled out over Cook Inlet, so parts of west Anchorage had over a foot already this morning. Mid-town got 9" to 10". We, living in the mountains to the northeast, had only 3" at 0630 when we left for work.

AccuHunch guesses there will be another 3" to 6" by lunchtime. Okay, then.

Meanwhile, life goes on. Local schools have declared a "remote learning day", using the setup left over from the Covid farce debacle days. 

And the rest of us just go back to work. A foot of snow? We call that Tuesday. :)

4 comments:

drjim said...

Very similar to here. Our in-laws/extended family told us that there's a 90% probability of snowfall before Halloween.

After seven years living here, it's been seven years of snowfall before Halloween. And sure enough, the forecast for Wednesday is.....SNOW! It won't stick for long, but hey, it did snow..

Rev. Paul said...

I guess the difference is that we have permanent snow cover by Halloween. Our only problem with this particular snowfall is that we've had no hard freeze (below 26°) yet. The road surface isn't cold enough to support the white stuff, so everyplace a tire passed turned to slush, which later turned to ice. There were plenty of fender benders to go 'round.

Old NFO said...

And you are welcome to it! :-)

Rev. Paul said...

We promise not to ship any cold or snow to Texas.