New Years Eve

I am so terribly behind! Keep a watch for backdated posts all day today, since I do have a plethora of photos to toss up here. Joe has been an enthusiastic helper for this project since purchasing a new camera right before Christmas. I finally managed to snag his SD card and upload some good shots. I appreciate it, since my camera isn't fond of being exposed to the cold once it gets around 25 below zero or colder. His new camera seems to handle the cold a lot better than mine which is a good thing considering the weather this week.

With all of that said, I'll bring on the pictures from Dec 30th in this post.

No, that isn't snow you see. Those white dots are particulates normally found in the air, but as it gets colder small bits moisture ends up freezing to them which makes them slightly larger than usual and much heavier. You can't really see them that well with the naked eye (yay for camera flashes), but they do seem to form a fog at times or just hang around and decrease the air quality.

Celestial photo as the sun finishes setting. I can all ready tell the days are getting longer. Even as recently as last week, the light would have been pretty much gone by 4:40ish PM after work.
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I will hope for the best regarding pictures today. I know Joe wanted to see if he can snap a few of the fireworks tonight, so my fingers are crossed. The temperature is around -45 to -50 and colder. It's hard on just about everything, even vehicles with trickle chargers and all of the heating pads aren't that happy about starting. The seats in the truck were rock hard when I got in, and it took a while for the tires to round out too.

I wish everyone a wonderful New Year full of fun and happiness. Have a great celebration tonight, but remember to take care of yourself and others- don't drink and drive. Stay warm folks!

Photos from Dec 29th

All of the photos displayed in this post are thanks to Joe. He braved the cold during his morning break (around 10 AM) to snap a nice set of pictures of the sunrise and the city of Fairbanks. All photos are taken from the roof of one of the buildings up on UAF's West Ridge.

Everything I tried to take came out overly blurry, since it was cold enough to make my camera not want to behave outside. It also drained the batteries. Somehow I doubt my little Fugi was cold weather tested.

I'm going to leave these photos as rather large ones. The colors are stunning, and I can't bring myself to take anything away from them. Joe's new camera takes awesome pictures.

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Starting off here is the sun over the valley. You can see the inversion layer hanging over the tree tops and a few mountains in the background on the horizon. This one is a nice reminder that the sun is, indeed, still present for a bit during the day. After a while one tends to forget that fact...

Mountain range framed by a couple of the vents from the building.

The city in fog. It really isn't that polluted up here but everything looks even worse since even a "cool" temperature will start steaming at thirty below.

Trees in the valley.

This picture is a great example of the inversion layer. The wind isn't blowing- it's so cold anything in the air flattens out and hangs at a certain level. That's how the ice fog forms.

Great shot of the mountains!

More mountains. You can really see for miles in this cold!Without so much zoom. That sunrise would make an awesome cross stitch pattern!

A panoramic view of a Fairbanks sunrise.

I all most forgot to add one final photo. Here’s the UAF temperature as of 4:40ish on Monday evening.

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One of the things I enjoy the most about living up here are all of the colors I can see during the winter. Even in during the dark and days made almost entirely of twilight, there are so many different shades of blue, purple, pink, yellow, and orange that it is hard to explain. So many people ask me how I can handle living in the dark for so long- I have to tell them it makes me appreciate the different colors found everywhere even more.