And lo, it arrived: the shortest day of the year. Here in Fairbanks this brings just 3 h 41 min 29 sec of possible sunlight. The sun skims along the southern sky, at its peak hitting an angle of only 2 degrees above the horizon. Its light is all sunrise and sunset colors, all day. These weak but welcome rays, heavy in oranges and reds, stream through our south-facing windows at such a shallow angle that they can penetrate right through a building if there is no wall to stop them. You relish the light because it is such a short thing every day. We get up well before sunrise (10:59 a.m.), work hard well past sunset (2:40 p.m.), and return home after it’s been dark for hours.

The sun doesn’t bring much detectable warmth when it’s up so briefly and only shining at a shallow angle like this. It sure is beautiful, though. The skies are usually cloudless at this time of year, and the dry winter air is at its clearest, so the views of the mountains are spectacular. The southern horizon across which the sun is skimming is the Alaska Range, and the mountains are really interesting to watch as the day goes rapidly by because of the quickly changing light and the long-reaching mountain shadows. Under the right conditions, a fata morgana (a complex mirage formed by bending light waves) can appear between us, and at other times a wind-whipped snow plume off of one of these distant peaks is highlighted by the spearing sunlight behind it. And then there is Denali (Mt. McKinley), over where the sun sets and finishes the day’s light show. Last night when the sun went down behind it, the snow blowing off the peak gave it a sort of pink-haired, Einstein-with-a-bald-crown sort of look. That we can see this at all is a result of the seasonal dry air: this mountain is  157 miles (252 km) away from my office, according to Google Earth.

The nights are long, but it’s interesting that we never focus on 20 h 18 min 31 sec of possible darkness, but rather on the much briefer period of light. Actually, because the sun skims its way across the southern sky, we get long dawns and dusks, so unless it’s cloudy, our daylight hours are well over four hours long. The darkness can get to some folks—seasonal affective disorder (SAD), a depression brought on by the short days, is a common problem among those living here. Light therapy, activities, and vitamin D are common treatments. But it is not really very dark. Those clear, crisp skies are just full of stars, the moon, and, often, the aurora borealis. We haven’t seen any good auroras yet this year, but that’s because the best ones seem to be occurring in the small hours of the morning when we’re usually asleep. (I do check when I’m up in the middle of the night, though). Last night, just a half-moon lit up the landscape beautifully.

I accidentally created a new type of woodpecker feeder, one that has a new species (for us) coming in often to feed. In our wood shed two summers ago I had made a wide rick and laid down a four-foot deep pile of four-foot firewood logs to dry and then cut up later. In late October I emptied about half of one of these ten-foot ricks by pulling out the logs and standing them on end in the shed. This horizontal-to-vertical shift created a dense new stand of dead wood, and a Three-toed Woodpecker (Picoides dorsalis) now comes inside to hammer happily away. There must be some insect larvae in there, because the bird keeps returning (though now with more pecking marks I see that the fresher upright logs for which there was no space in the ricks seem to be preferred). In fact, it has become as tame as a chickadee, hammering at the wood, calling frequently, and allowing me to approach to within two or three feet. There is no door on the shed, so apparently it doesn’t feel trapped or even very awkward. We have suet out, but this species does not come to feed on it.

The rest of our usual wild visitors come in regularly. By day, Black-capped and Boreal chickadees, redpolls, and Downy and Hairy woodpeckers come. When it’s warmer, we have a red squirrel, one who successfully braved the “no red squirrel” policy implemented over the summer (they can be really obnoxious, and I keep the “squirrel tickler” handy; and the mammal collection wanted more from Fairbanks). Our most welcome guests, though, are a pair of northern flying squirrels, who use the long nights to visit whenever they want. These animals hardly qualify as rodents when measured on the cute factor. Severely fluffy, with big, dark eyes, they are very welcome to come to the feeder. In late summer I had the chance to see them scuffle over who got to eat first. It was very fast and silent, with rapid chase and flee movements ending with the loser running up the feeder tree, along an outstretched branch, and then flying swiftly to the ground for an escape to the nearby wild trees—until the feeder was unoccupied again. These guys are the only animals that come at night (aside from the occasional moose).

But what about the cold? As usual, we went white with “permanent” snow cover in the third week of October. It is prettier and psychologically warmer in winter when there is snow. So this snow cover was welcome when we went into what turned out to be one of the coldest Novembers on record. It was also among the driest, so our snow cover was light compared with the average. The skiing was poor, and the frost line in the ground was driven deeper than usual by the combination of very cold temperatures with light snow cover. Some folks are going to have sewer and drainfield freezeups in March as a consequence. We hope we are not among them. What is it like to live through one of the coldest Novembers on record in Fairbanks? It seemed unseasonably cold—too early for this stuff. The average temperature was about -9º F (about 11 below average). It got colder in December.

With the deep cold came the moose. The first night that I noticed they were back was a really cold night (-30s); a pair had laid down at the edge of the glow of our cheery lights in the tree in the back yard. I think I got the lights up in a moose-proof position this year, and they have stayed put for weeks despite irregular moose visits. When air this cold settles in on Fairbanks, we get a thermal inversion—the coldest air is near the ground and does not warm up to rise and mix with the air above it. So we often see temperatures in the hills that are 15 to even 20 degrees or more above the lows in low-lying areas (all in Fahrenheit). For example, as I write this, it is -44 at the airport but only -28 here at home. This must be why the moose start to show up when it gets really cold; walk uphill and get into warmer temperatures. Earlier this week it went from the low -40s up to -25, and that 15+ degrees felt great. It seemed downright balmy. It is surprising how fast you acclimate, but we only had a short taste of that before heading down into the 40s again. We tend to stop using the negatives during this season, because it gets as redundant as saying “plus” or “above” before the temperature in the summer.

Vehicles drop like flies at these temperatures. Batteries don’t work well to start with, and if you’re not plugged in to an outlet when you park for more than an hour, you’re basically doomed. Light snow and ice fog fallout gradually label your vehicle as dead in the parking lot. Every lot has some, cold chunks of dead metal just waiting for things to warm up again.

Last week I was on a conference call with folks back east, and someone asked about the weather. I mentioned that it had warmed up 60 degrees in a week and that was really welcome; it was 20 above. So we did get a nice pulse of warm weather (someone labeled it a “warm snap,” which really fits Fairbanks and Fairbanksans at this time of year). A really nice winter storm came blowing through, bathing us in warm, wet air that dumped about 14 inches of snow. This was one of the largest snowfalls we’ve seen in 15 years here. It was welcome, but digging out was hard work. In the aftermath, I estimated that it took me about one hour for every four inches of snowfall to clear the driveway. Good, honest work, though, and a very welcome change from the normal too-cold-to-ski weather and the excessive need to be splitting firewood to keep the house warm. It is really beautiful out now, with the snow-clad landscape and trees looking properly seasonal. But one thing you notice when you’re out away from human activity is that it tends to be very, very quiet.

We do have a very nice boiler. It burns fuel oil. Fuel oil here so far this winter costs about $4/gallon. Recent data show that Fairbanks pays 110-140% of the energy costs of the lower 48 states, which keeps our thermostat turned low and our wood stove red hot when we’re home. Energy politics are a perennial favorite here in Alaska. You’d think that being such an important oil-producing state might help keep fuel prices down, but that’s not the case. We pay among the highest fuel costs in the nation, and yet we still shudder when we see what folks in the villages are charged.

I need to go back to talk about those thermal inversions, because at these temperatures they trap particulate matter (exhaust from combustion is the most important component), and ice fog forms. Low-lying areas become dense with ice fog when it hits the 40s (minus for those of you not from here), and even in the daylight you have to drive carefully with your headlights on. It is a level of smog that trips the EPA limits, and health warnings are routinely issued. To top it off, this year we collectively voted for what I like to call the “I can burn tires and railroad ties if I want” ballot measure, which assertively put individual liberties above the health interests of the community and leaves us stewing in our own mess unable to proactively solve a problem that the Feds are almost certainly going to make us solve their way now. Small particulate matter and high fuel costs are making this an unhealthy place to live when we’re at low temperatures. On the drive home last night, when the fog was particularly dense, I was wishing for a weather change—warmth or wind—to drive off the heavy fog. It was hard to see lights 50 yards away until I climbed up out of it. Like a cold moose.