The Fuhr Five: A Brutal Arctic Winter

Aaron and I love winter in Alaska. We both love getting outside in the snow and playing - cross country skiing, downhill skiing, sledding. I love how pretty everything is covered in snow. We love the snow so much, we don't even mind the cold temps of a normal Anchorage winter.

This winter however, has not been a normal Alaskan winter. It has been a bizarre, intense, record setting winter. We have set records on the amount of snow fall we have gotten so far this season as well as for how cold it has been. For records to be set in the arctic, this means A LOT of snow and some extremely cold days!

Picture stolen from Leland Reed

Each month of the season so far has just been weird: November was freakishly cold for being so early in the winter and brought more snow than anyone could remember for that time of year, December came with Chinook winds blowing in bursts of warm days followed by cold days of heavy snowfall, and January was the coldest January in recorded history. During the entire month of January, we spent all but a few days below zero. And not just a little below zero, 15-20 degrees below zero. Amazingly though, the first few days of February have warmed up dramatically, with more snowfall.

Like I said earlier, I don't mind cold weather. In fact, I think the perfect winter day here is around 20-25 degrees above zero. I don't even mind when the temps dip down below zero for a few days, it gives us a chance to cozy up inside and relax. And we expect January here to be cold, spending up to a week at a time well below zero most years. But we do not expect to spend the whole month that way. And turns out, we do not enjoy the whole month being that way. A month of not getting to play outside up here is a long, long month.

Another picture stolen from Leland, looking across the frozen inlet

To sum up our winter so far - every day the temps are above zero, it snows and is cloudy; when the snow stops and the clouds leave, the temps drop to frigid levels.

We have gotten more snow this winter so far than any other year on record. Just today, we had another blizzard dump another foot of snow on us. At our house we are well over 100 inches for the year, with more falling as I type this.

Picture stolen from Franky Lopez

In addition to the intense weather, the aurora borealis has been putting on better shows this winter than they have seen in decades. And the clear, cold nights we have been having are perfect for viewing them. We spent most of one night in January in our car above the city watching the green flares dance across the sky.

Since the temps were so cold, too cold to take the kiddos outside, we have spent a lot of time inside. By the end of January, everyone in town was going a little stir crazy after being cooped up so long. It's a good thing Ethan is so in love with his train set he got for Christmas, we have been playing with it a lot.

Ethan is in love with trucks just as much as he is with trains these days. If he's not playing with his train set, he's probably at the window looking for the snow plows and dump trucks that have been spending a lot of time in the neighborhood clearing streets. He can sit for an hour at a time watching the trucks work outside our house.

All the snow we've gotten this winter has made for an incredible downhill ski season. We spent one weekend of the cold snap down in Girdwood, the little ski town down the road from us, skiing during the day and relaxing in the hot tub each night (hot tubs at -15 degrees are a little chilly to get out of!).

Ethan joined in on the fun and took his first run down the slopes. He loved cruising down the bunny hill on his skis with Dad. Although, since it was negative 6 degrees that day, we had to bundle him up so much you can't actually see his face to tell the excitement. Aaron said he giggled the whole way down every time. And the giggles would get louder the faster Aaron went.

Video of E's first downhill ski:

More pictures of our epic winter: