The weather has been stable for maybe 7-8 weeks now. Seriously, I've been wearing the same amount of clothes this whole time. I'm thinking the temperature will start dropping again soon, but this has not been unpleasant. I think that with the extreme temperature changes here, the changes during times of change are more rapid. Or something like that. Definitely, the daylight works that way, because the earth's orbit is circular, so the lengths of the days change as a sinusoidal function, and the cos is at max when the sin is zero. Err... I spend too much time thinking about this, don't I?
Anyway, because the Natural Sciences building is on a hill that faces south, we have a quite lovely view of the winter sun as it moves along the southern horizon. And it really does just move along the southern horizon, coming up on the eastern side (to the left), taking a long arc, and then dipping down on the western side (to the right). It's like a big long sunrise and sunset rolled into one. It's quite lovely.
The other funny thing is that, in California (as in the rest of the world in general, what Alaskans refer to as "Outside"), the sun is on one side of the street in the morning, and on the other side of the street in the evening. Not so in Fairbanks in Winter! The sun is to the south, all day. You don't realize how disorienting it is until you realize that a whole day has passed, and the sun is still on the same side of the road! Also, apparently, magnetic compasses don't work so well here, because we are so close to the Earth's magnetic pole that 1) the field lines go upward at an angle, and 2) the delta between magnetic north and rotational north is actually significant. And to add just one more could into the confusion, the North Star is almost directly overhead.
Most people in cities don't worry about NSWE directions on a constant basis, particularly in the Silicon Valley, where the highways and roads that come down the Pensinsula round Eastward to go around the Bay. There, taking the highway "North" means taking it Westward. Exiting South from a "Southbound" highway means turning ninety degrees to your right! I would think that eight years of living with such directional confusions, combined with a natural inclination toward a bad sense of direction over all, I would not even notice a difference up here. But I do. The only directional sense I have is that the Alaska Range is due South, and you can see it from most places on clear days, and that the Chena River runs roughly from East to West. The Chena is more suspect, though, because it winds and bend around all over the place.
So there you go. I am all confused.
6 comments:
I've always wanted to ask someone somewhere very cold this - can you freeze dry your washing outside?
Freeze dry? As in, get dry? No, but you can freeze your clothes into blocks of ice! And then I suppose if it is *very* cold, the ice will sublimate off. Is that what you are referring to? Heh it sounds interesting. I should try that with a wet towel when it gets to -40. See what happens. :D
Yes, that's what I mean. I've always wanted to try it. It's not cold enough here (ever) but I'm happy to let you give it a go until I get the chance ;-)
I will let you know how it goes!
It doesn't work as well as you might think, though it's worth a try just to see. And be careful getting the towel off your clothesline -it's liable to break. Like going outside in weather <0 with wet hair. *snap*
Hey that's pretty cool about the sun staying on the south side. So does that mean that you'll get an all-day-sunset/sunrise colored sky pretty soon?
Yup. It's already quite beautiful now. At noon now, the sun is at the same apparent height as it is in a normal place maybe two hours before sundown. Only it doesn't feel like evening, it just feels like this infusing, gentle, golden light. Against the blue sky, it's striking.
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