On ice: Mushing, carving events postponed or canceled due to lack of winter

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Organizers of an event the size of the Peninsula Winter Games have a challenging task in ironing out all the details required to hold a communitywide event, but they’d gotten it all taken care of — volunteers were lined up, space had been reserved, announcements were made; everything was ready to bring the peninsula out to the games.

But somebody forgot to take care of the “winter” part.

With the Tustumena 200 Sled Dog Race, Al York Memorial Junior Musher Sled Dog Race and ice carvings scheduled to begin over the weekend, the weather turned from a two-week, below-zero cold snap to rain and temperatures in the 40s, washing away hopes of events that depend on winter conditions.

“The weather’s the one thing we can’t control, and that’s frustrating,” said January Yeager, project coordinator for the Soldotna Chamber of Commerce.

Typically, the first weekend of the Peninsula Winter Games includes volunteers cutting 2-ton blocks of ice from the pond along Marathon Road in Kenai, which local carvers use to create ice sculptures around town.

On Saturday, the pond was covered with water.

“There’s like a foot of water on top of the pond. We can’t ask volunteers to go out there and do that. It’s not safe. You’re working with 2-ton blocks of ice and cold water on top of that, so it’s not good,” Yeager said.

The ice carving was canceled.

“It’s a total bummer,” she said. “There was just way too much water on there to get equipment out there and everything. And that’s one of the best things. They’re so cool to look at.”
Well, not so cool at 40 degrees.

“Yeah, exactly,” Yeager said.

While the carving event fell victim to a lack of good ice, the Peninsula Sled Dog and Racing Association’s Al York kids’ mushing races fell victim to too much ice.

Warmth, rain, then overnight freezing have left the mushing trails by the Soldotna Airport bare in spots, icy in others and with just a weak layer of crusty snow in the trees.

“It would be bad for the dogs. Dogs can’t negotiate this ice, there’s really nothing we can do for them,” said Mindee Morning, one of the event organizers. “They have a little bit of a stud system built in, but I’ve had a few dogs fall in the dog yard, hitting their chins or splaying their legs out. Put a load on that and try it, it’s not the best of things. People can do it and dogs do it all the time, but I voted for no, especially with kids. It’s really hard to fall on the ice.”

Danny Seavey, race organizer, said the event is now scheduled for March 21, to be held in conjunction with the Clark Bradford Memorial Race on March 22 — if conditions improve by then, of course.

“Just do a snow dance every single day, because dogs don’t ice skate,” Morning said. “I have a bunch of dogs, they don’t know what happened. They don’t know why they’re not running.”

Morning asks that people and dogs stay off the trails until they do get more snow.

“It’s just better right now for everyone to stay off the trails. Hopefully we’ll groom as soon as we can,” she said. “In the trees, there is snow, similar to what you’re seeing on the side of the road or any trails where snowmachines can’t go. It’s crusty on top and they’ll fall through and just pound it down into little lumps of ice.”

The Tustumena 200 Sled Dog Race is in a holding pattern waiting for snow, as well. It was supposed to start this Saturday, but has been pushed back a week until Jan. 31 in hopes of better conditions.

“The reason we did that is the lack of snow and the trail conditions, so we’re giving it another week,” said Tami Murray, executive director of the T-200. “We got 4 inches of snow on Saturday night up in the hills, but we still need a lot more down low, so keep your fingers crossed.”

Pushing the race back creates some logistical challenges, especially for mushers who may have had other plans for the 31st.

“We had a couple that had to withdraw, one because of the Yukon Quest. The food drop is that same weekend,” Murray said.

Kasilof musher Jason Mackey will miss next week’s T-200 in order to get his food distributed in preparation for the 1,000-mile Quest race from Whitehorse, British Columbia, to Fairbanks.
But they’ve picked up a few more mushers by extending the registration deadline to Jan. 23. They’re up to 23 for the T-200, and nine or 10 each for the T-100 and the junior race, Murray said.

Race organizers are also trying to make sure their volunteers are ready to go a week later.

“We’re just confirming everybody as we speak. Our vets are our main concern. They take time off from their practices to volunteer for this,” Murray said.

All of this depends on snow showing up — on a timeline that coincides with forecasts and schedules.

“It will, it always does,” Morning said. “That’s where humans have to make plans, and the weather doesn’t have any plans.”

A schedule of events for the Peninsula Winter Games is available at www.peninsulawintergames.com. For information on the T-200, visit www.tustumena200.com.

Cold affront — Breakup of ‘omega block’ will bring end to frigid temperatures

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Forget communism, this is the real cold war.

The central Kenai Peninsula has been under siege by frigid conditions for two weeks now, with temperatures plunging below minus 30 in Soldotna and Kenai at night, and even lower than that in the cold sink that is Sterling.

The culprit? Russia.

Not that the country has any control over the situation, but if having a scapegoat makes frozen pipes or dead cars any easier to deal with, Alaska’s neighbor to the east is as good a target for frustration as any.

A weather pattern called an omega block (or bloc, perhaps?) is holding court over Russia. In an omega block, low-pressure systems sandwich in high pressure and don’t allow anything to move east or west, said John Stepetin, a specialist with the National Weather Service’s Anchorage forecast office.

These conditions could form any time of year, but in the winter it’s leaving Alaska shivering from cold air coming down from the north.

“When we get that omega block it could last two or three weeks sometimes,” Stepetin said. “We could have it in the summertime and it could be nice and warm and dry. It’s just you get two low pressures blocking high pressure that nothing’s moving.”

Lack of air movement is making the peninsula even chillier than other parts of the state, with Anchorage registering about 10 to 15 degrees warmer than the Kenai-Soldotna area lately. That’s because Anchorage is getting a breeze, and the central peninsula is not.

“The difference between you and us is that we get a little wind that mixes up the temperatures and warms it up a little, whereas you’re not getting any kind of breeze. There are warm temperatures aloft, but it’s not mixing things up at all,” Stepetin said.

Without wind to bring warmer air down to the ground, there’s nothing to do but shiver until the weather pattern breaks, which should be soon.

“That block is weakening, so we’ll start seeing low pressure moving in and start warming things up Wednesday and Thursday,” Stepetin said.

That forecast didn’t do much to keep Chelsie White warm on her chilly walk along the Sterling Highway in Soldotna on Monday from her job at Subway to Sal’s Diner in minus 23 degrees. White was headed to Sal’s to get a ride from her dad.

She and her boyfriend, Ben Winn, usually walk back and forth from their home near Fred Meyer to their jobs — hers at Subway and his at McDonald’s. But in the recent cold snap, and with White nine months pregnant, she’s been getting rides more often.

“I haven’t been walking much since it’s been this cold,” she said. “I usually get rides from my parents. They get mad when I walk.”

White had a car, but it met an untimely accidental demise.

“My dad kind of hit it with a boat and trailer, so, yeah, it don’t work no more,” she said.

Overall, White said she likes winter. She enjoys snowboarding, sledding and hunting, but she was six months pregnant when snow first hit this year, so she hasn’t been able to enjoy her normal snowy pursuits. Mostly, she’s just walked in the stuff.

“The first part of winter when it was mostly wet snow instead of dry and cold like this, that was a nightmare to walk in,” White said. “It’s not bad when the sidewalks are plowed, but you get that fresh bit of snow and you’re walking through it. That sucked.”

The banged-up car isn’t salvageable, and other means of transportation aren’t affordable, she said. It costs about $10 for a one-way cab ride from their home to work, and Central Area Rural Transit System rides are $50 for a punch card.
“It’s expensive, and when you’ve got diapers and formula you’ve got to buy, it’s too expensive. That $50 is two packs of diapers, and they go through them so fast,” she said.

“If they had a bus down here, I think it would make it easier on so many people. With cabs you can spend $200 a month on cab bills, and that can be just going back and forth to work.”

So that leaves walking, which usually isn’t too bad, White said.

“My boyfriend doesn’t mind it, but he’s kind of a polar bear. He’s used to it. He’s been up here his whole life. A good pair of gloves and a jacket and he’s fine. I draw the line at him opening the window at night, though,” she said.

If it weren’t so cold, White wouldn’t mind the walk either.

“I need to exercise a little bit. I feel too much like Moby Dick on sticks right now,” she said. “I’m so ready to not be pregnant. I’m ready to put my own socks on in the morning.”

White and Winn’s son, Logan William Winn, is due Jan. 15. As of Monday, White is on maternity leave from her job, so she’ll be able to wait out the rest of the cold snap in the warmth of home.

If it helps pass the time between now and when the thermometer does finally rise, Stepetin suggests looking at the bigger weather picture.

“You look at the Yukon Flats and they’re anywhere from 55 below to 65 below, so it might make you feel a little bit warmer,” he said.

Cold weather heats up business — Plumbers, auto mechanics snap into action when cold hits

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

When it’s 25 below and the furnace goes out or the car won’t start, the last thing customers want to hear is they’ll have to wait for service.

The second last thing they want to hear is the best solution to their problem would have been preventative maintenance.

Nevertheless, that’s the message many central peninsula residents are getting when they look for someone to bring their vehicle or heating system back to life.

It’s not that mechanics or heating and plumbing technicians enjoy telling people the equivalent of “I told you so,” but if people get the message now, it might save them from being in a similar situation in the future.

“Preventative maintenance — get your block heater tested, your coolant tested. Preventative maintenance is key because you never know when this kind of stuff is going to hit,” said Taft Davis, manager of Alyeska Sales and Service in Kenai.

Below-zero temperatures for the last two weeks have kept auto repair, vehicle remote start distributors and heating and plumbing repair businesses busy lately, especially with the recent holidays.

Jeff Bittle, a remote start installer at Rhino Linings in Soldotna, said he’d been working on Christmas orders when the cold weather hit.

“We’re seeing an additional two or three a day. We’re booked out about two weeks right now,” he said.
At Alyeska, orders for block heater installations increased as temperatures decreased, and they’re also seeing vehicles in need of repair.

“No starts, no heat and lots of flat repairs when the temperature drops down,” Davis said. “… Or they overheated if the thermostat sticks. You name it, I’ve got a parking lot full of cars from tow trucks out there right now.”

He said the shop is running about a week behind on repairs.

“Usually we tell people they can get right in, but now I tell them it’ll be Friday, and they’re like, ‘What? What do you mean?’” he said. “It seems like when it gets cold, people will fight their cars for three days. They’ll wrestle with jumper cables and fight with it but after three days they say, ‘Enough. I’m going to pay to have it fixed.’”

The best way to get out of that situation is to avoid getting into it. Regular maintenance and a properly sized, properly installed and properly maintained block heater can keep cars on the road, instead of in an auto garage parking lot waiting for a mechanic to have time to look at it.

Same goes for home heating and plumbing systems.

Rocky Smith, owner of Preferred Plumbing and Heating in Kenai, said Monday that they got about 150 calls over the New Year’s holiday weekend.

“We’ve been busy. Oh yeah. We have three lines and they’re just ringing nonstop,” he said.

Smith said he doesn’t think it’s been cold enough for long enough for underground pipes to be in much danger of freezing, but home freeze-ups are common in these conditions.

“When you have a freeze-up like that it can burst the pipes in your walls, then you get some water damage, too,” he said.

Freeze-ups can be as easy to avoid as making sure the garage door closes all the way or having someone reliable check on a home regularly if the owner is going to be gone, Smith said. He also recommends hooking up a freeze alarm, which can be set to dial a predetermined phone number if the device registers a temperature lower than the threshold at which it’s set.

The big problem is when the threat of freezing comes from home heating systems breaking down. That’s not unusual when temperatures drop and furnaces or other heating systems that involve an electric blower motor kick into overdrive.

“It’s like anything electric, your electric motors have a life of a certain number of hours. If they’re running constantly, they overheat and they just quit,” Smith said. “So that’s what happens there. When they don’t have to run very long or very hard they’ll last a long time.”

To keep heaters running, it’s back to the same mantra:

“Annual maintenance. Annual maintenance. Yep, that’s what we try to push people towards. Then you don’t have to worry about them when it gets really cold out,” Miller said.

Winter’s on the way — Forecasters predict return to normal conditions

By Ben Histand
For the Redoubt Reporter

As temperatures drop, the approach of winter is becoming harder to ignore. In Cooper Landing, snow is descending to ever-lower altitudes, and as quickly as the mountains are turning white, the lowlands are losing the bright colors whose arrival marked the end of summer. Several night frosts have prompted more than a few residents to harvest potatoes from the garden, and fall pumpkins have made their debut at local grocery stores. Winter may not have arrived yet, but it is certainly on its way.

What kind of winter is in store for the Kenai Peninsula? After an anomalous summer that by National Weather Service statistics ranked as one of the coldest on record, residents may be wondering if the out-of-the-ordinary weather will continue. While speculations vary, on the whole, climatological data suggests that abnormal weather will not continue.

Dan Peterson, observation program leader with the National Weather Service’s Anchorage Weather Forecast Office, said that based on 30 years of climate records, his office estimates temperatures for the next three months will be near normal. According to the Western Regional Climate Center’s Web site, that would indicate fall temperatures averaging 34.6 degrees Fahrenheit in Kenai, and winter temperatures averaging 14.9 degrees.
With summer temperatures often struggling to top 60 degrees, however, a typical fall and winter may feel uncomfortably cold to some. Morgan Renney, of Soldotna, isn’t worried.

“I’m hoping for lots of snow,” he said. He said he’s looking forward to snowboarding Redoubt Hill in Soldotna and Mount Alyeska in Girdwood. Normal cumulative snowfall for Southcentral Alaska is 69.5 inches, and the first measurable snowfall typically comes in October. The record for latest measurable snowfall is Nov. 11, according to the National Weather Service Web site.

One possible factor influencing the cold summer temperatures was the La Niña effect, which refers to cooler-than-normal ocean temperatures in the eastern South Pacific that influence weather patterns as far away as Alaska. La Niña dissipated as summer passed, according to the NOAA, but ocean temperatures may still be influencing Alaska’s climate in other ways.

Martha Shulski, a climatologist with the Alaska Climate Research Center in Fairbanks, said temperatures in Alaska are significantly affected by a phenomenon known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which, like La Niña, involves trends in ocean temperatures, but takes place over a much longer period of time. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation refers to cycling phases of warmer and cooler surface temperatures in the North Pacific, and these lead to warmer and cooler air temperatures in Alaska.

Historically, the PDO appears to shift every 20 to 30 years. The most recent observed shift, from a colder phase to a warmer one, was in 1976. Shulski said there is speculation, but no consensus, that the PDO is now shifting or has already shifted back to a colder phase. If it does shift, climatologists would expect mean temperatures in Alaska to drop on the order of a degree or two.

Dwain Gibson, a resident of the Kenai Peninsula since 1957, said he thinks accurate forecasts are difficult to come by.

“We’ve had a wet summer,” he said.

From what he can remember, wet summers are often followed by a severe winter. But he was reluctant to make a prediction about this year.

“You’ve got to just take it a day at a time,” he said.

Hail of a storm — Pea-sized ice chunks a surprise for drivers, golfers

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

When Michael Gangloff bought his Harley-Davidson Sportster motorcycle in April and took a riding class at the Kenai Peninsula Harley-Davidson store, it prepared him for just about anything the road might throw at him.

Pea-sized hail in September was a surprise, though.

Gangloff was riding home to Sterling from Homer around 4:45 p.m. Friday when a storm front passed over Sterling, spewing torrential rain, pea-sized chunks of ice and thunder and lightning over the Sterling Highway.

The storm didn’t reach downtown Soldotna, but the massive black cloud marring the otherwise sunny fall afternoon sky could be seen from miles away. Even so, Gangloff wasn’t expecting what he was driving into.

“It just started hailing. About a mile up it wasn’t doing this,” Gangloff said.

The weather had been nice all the way up from Homer on Friday. Even when he reached the edge of the storm near the Soldotna Animal Hospital, he didn’t think it would do more than make a soggy ending to an otherwise pleasant ride.

“I didn’t think it would be too bad at first. I thought it was just rain, but it started bouncing up on the road,” he said. “I had my visor open. It was stinging the face pretty good.”

Traffic was picking up at the early end of the workday commute as the rain deluge started reducing visibility. When the hail started rattling car roofs and ricocheting off windshields, vehicles pulled off onto the road shoulder, into parking lots and on side streets to get off the highway.

“When it started I slowed way down. I was probably doing only about 30,” Gangloff said.
The Harley-Davidson store where he bought the bike was in sight, so he pulled under the awning covering the front door and went in for a cup of coffee to wait out the storm before riding the remaining 12 or so miles to his home on Feuding Lane.

“It started getting pretty thick on the road,” he said. “I think it’s going to be pretty slick for a while. I might have to drive with the emergency lights on on the side of the road.”
Gangloff has only been riding since May, so this summer has entailed a lot of firsts for him on his bike. He didn’t think riding through a hailstorm would be one of them.

“I sure didn’t think this was going to happen today. I was actually planning to go to Anchorage tomorrow. It sure don’t seem like it now,” he said.

He said the instructors of the riders safety course he took when he bought the bike covered what to do in inclement weather, even if they didn’t mention hail, specifically.
“More or less,” he said. “Just get out of it.”

Rita Geller and her son, Dan Geller, followed that advice at Birch Ridge Golf Course. They were on the fourth hole when the hailstorm hit.

“We were gonna try and sit it out until we saw lightning,” said Rita Geller, who works in the pro shop at Birch Ridge.

They thought better of walking around an open expanse with metal sticks and took cover in their golf cart. Even under shelter the right side of Rita’s pants still got soaked.

“The cart was fishtailing when we were driving back. It was pretty icy in the fairways,” Rita said.

After 20 minutes the storm passed and the sun was once again peeking out from the clouds, illuminating the greens that now looked like they were covered with a blanket of Styrofoam.

“We tried to putt on the green, but it was too bumpy,” Dan Geller said.

Rita said she only gets her son out to play about three times a year, and put the blame for cutting this game short squarely on her son.

“I was complaining about the heat earlier,” Dan said.

“Yeah, you did it. It was your fault,” Rita said.

Actually, a mix of sunlight and cold was to blame. David Vonderheide, a meteorological technician with the National Weather Service’s forecast office in Anchorage, said a lack of wind, a layer of cool air up above and afternoon sunlight warming moist air down near the ground created air instability.

As the sun warmed moist air near the ground an updraft was created, sucking the moisture up to the layer of freezing cold air above. Big, puffy clouds form, and the moisture freezes into ice pellets. If the updraft is strong enough, the ice is held aloft and collects more moisture, turning into bigger and bigger chunks of ice. When the ice becomes too heavy for the updraft to keep aloft, or if the ice shifts too far from the updraft, it falls back to the ground as hail.

“Gravity takes over and they all just spill out,” Vonderheide said.
He said pea-sized hail would take updraft wind speeds of 30 to 40 miles per hour to form. Some hailstorms can have 80- to 100-mph wind speeds, which can result in chunks of hail as big as grapefruits.

Anchorage has also seen some hail showers in the last few weeks, Vonderheide said.

“It is a little unusual. Usually you get weather like that during May and June,” he said.

Vonderheide chalked it up to the changing of the seasons, since equinox was Monday.
That means winter is not far away. The Kenai Municipal Airport recorded a low of 37 degrees Sunday night, while the Soldotna Airport dipped down to 34 degrees.

“It was kind of a close call this morning for people who forgot to take their plants in,” Vonderheide said Monday. “Probably just a few places got maybe an hour or two of frost. The first real general, regular frost will be coming within the next two weeks, I think.”