Slippery Slick

Yesterday's heat melted off almost all of the snow, but was not enough to melt through the ground, which had already started to freeze, so the water had nowhere to go. It sat on top of the ground and then froze to solid ice at night. The roads are quite terrible today, so we are staying home for the weekend. I am hoping that it stays warm enough to melt the remaining snow, and for all the ice to melt and run off, and then we can just start fresh with new snow that won't melt and will stay with us through Winter. The thing about Fairbanks is, when it's cold, you want it to remain cold, so we don't have calamities like our roads are having now. And when it's warm, you want it to remain warm. Transitions are always the worst.

Times like these, I wonder how people with "normal" Winters survive. We recently had some colleagues visiting from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It was at the beginning of the freeze, so the roads were quite slippery, as they are now. Generally, when Fairbanks has visitors from Outside in the Winter, we worry about them--their health, their driving, their tolerance to the cold. But these guys had no trouble at all. They were comfortable with the weather and had less trouble driving than most locals do. Then I thought about it and realized that since it is warmer in the UP, it is paradoxically less safe to drive in the Winter. That slick-slippery stuff we get during freeze-up and breakup? They have that all Winter. My mind boggles.

Okay, Weather Gods. Here is my request--stay warm this weekend, melt off this dang ice, and then drop below freezing and stay there for Winter! And then--more snow! We'd like to go skiing! The girls would like to go 'joring! If you can manage that, it'd be great! kthxbye!