In Which I Talk About What March Looks Like In Alaska

Although March is the month when spring comes to many states, Alaska is not one of them. It has been getting down to 0 degrees Fahrenheit at night, although on sunny days it actually warms up to the point that the snow starts melting.

So there are glimpses of spring here, even though we had three nights of snow this past weekend, adding several more inches where it was starting to melt on the top. The snow keeps compressing as it settles and melts, but there is still at least 2-3 feet in the meadow, and the trails Andy made with the snowblower to get to the chicken house and the goat pen are almost like tunnels to the children.

But one of the best parts about this time of year is that it is getting lighter every day. The sun rises at 7:30 AM and sets at 7 PM giving us almost 12 hours of sunlight!

That will get messed up in a week with daylight savings time however. While time change may make sense in the lower 48, up here in Alaska it is completely impractical. This is the time of year when each precious minute of daylight in the morning is so helpful, and yet we get set back an hour while having daylight into the evening until around 8:30 PM.

It won’t be long until we never see darkness at all in the evenings, so it sure would be nicer if that happened gradually. Oh well.

Spring has been the hardest season for me to adjust to since we moved to Alaska. I always have to try to think of it as winter still, instead of comparing progress to back east. We can’t count on much warm weather until June.

So until then, we’ll be busy planning our garden, lots of fishing and camping trips, and a caribou/bear hunt for late summer. We can hardly wait!