On a Lifelong Journey to Learn my Place
On an wet August hike up Indian River valley, I found this dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) looking quite robust in a pool of standing water. Dandelion is an introduced species and considered fairly invasive. It’s the only introduced species I’ve noticed occurring with any regularity in locations that haven’t been directly impacted by humans (and usually … Read more
Water spilling over Blue Lake Dam, mid-October 2004 Last week I wrote up a post about discrepancies in 2011 precipitation data for Sitka and speculated a bit on possible explanations – both for the discrepancies, and what was seeming to me like a normal amount of precipitation for the year, but low amounts of water … Read more
(follow-up with corrected precipitation totals) Recently Sitka’s precipitation totals have been in the news as part of the on-going issues related to relatively water low levels in Green Lake and Blue Lake, where the vast majority of our electricity comes from in this community. As a result, the electrical department has been utilizing diesel generators, … Read more
Today was the first opening of the 2011 Sitka Sound Herring Sac Roe Fishery. It was held in the afternoon near Middle Island. I don’t think it was close enough to see from the road, but it did not matter too much for me since I needed to teach class during that time. Total precipitation … Read more
Rainfall was continuous today, though the intensity varied from moderate to heavy. All told, over an inch of it was recorded at the airport recording station. No doubt more fell in some of the wetter areas of town. Temperatures dropped slightly, falling into the upper 30s after spending the past several days in the 40s. … Read more
Temperatures warmed up again today and topped out in the mid-40s. The rain never seemed particularly heavy, but it was pretty much non-stop through daylight hours. The kids and I braved it to visit the house for a little bit this afternoon. Much of the snow that fell late last week has now melted off, … Read more