Just a few weeks away! In late April, the willows start to bloom and their catkins open up. This is an extreme macro of a male willow catkin—showing the bright red anthers and yellow-green filaments surrounded by fine white hairs.
In my Wildflowers as Art Gallery: https://photos.lwpetersen.com/Galleries/Alaska-Photos/Wildflowers-as-Art
6:00AM: 38F, clear.
One last sunny day before wind and rain move in for a wild & crazy weekend.
Finally! Sunshine is soooo boring!
Someone needs to create a Miss Bear magazine just for this beauty! Lacee Johnson says she literally poses as if aware her photo is being taken. She is such a beautiful black bear. #Alaska #AlaskaWildlife #AlaskaBlackBear
A cross fox (a color variant of the red fox) and her silver fox kit (a melanistic form of the red fox) in a field near Fairbanks, Alaska, taken in mid-May. The father was also a silver fox.
More of my wildlife photos: https://photos.lwpetersen.com/Galleries/Alaska-Photos/Wildlife
“I never, ever thought that I would ever see the day, in my lifetime, that Tlingits could return to the Homeland,” says local resident Jeff Skaflestad in the opening of the film, “Sanctuary for the Future.” But in 2016, thanks to many years’ work and a collaboration between the National Park Service and the Hoonah Indian Association—the tribal government of the Huna Tlingit clans—Xunaa Shuká Hít marked a momentous homecoming.
https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2025/03/xunaa-shuka-hit-glacier-bay/
6:00AM: 38F, mostly cloudy.
The clouds are just a tease. 'Twill be sunny today and tomorrow, leading up to a very soggy weekend indeed.
I'm a great fan of The Great British Baking Show and every time I use or hear the word "soggy" I think of "soggy bottoms." iykyk
John is heading out for a couple days fishing before a gale sweeps in Fri/Sat. 17 ft. seas fit for neither man nor beast. (Well, maybe sea monsters.)
UAF Cooperative Extension is hosting a webinar at Noon AKDT Thursday and I’ll be not only talking about how Alaska’s environment is changing, but how that plays out in our lives and how to better understand the interplay between long term change and short term extremes. Register at:
https://bit.ly/ThomanClimate
On April 1, 1974, Porky Bickar of Sitka faked the eruption of Mount Edgecumbe with burning tires, tricking residents & Coast Guard, a required annual post. More on the greatest Alaska Fools joke in Alaska history in my 2020 article: https://adn.com/alaska-life/2020/04/06/the-story-of-porkys-rising-alaskas-greatest-ever-april-fools-day-prank/ #alaskahistory #alaska
A few favorite non-glacier photos from the Worthington Glacier area near Valdez, Alaska. The landscape here is full of motion and texture — and if you look closely, there are a lot of small, surprising details tucked into the cracks and edges of the terrain.
More info and hikes here:
https://www.lwpetersen.com/alaska-guide/worthington-glacier-hikes/
6:00AM: 37F, extremely clear.
As in, not a cloud in the sky.
BUT, it looks like rain will arrive by the weekend. YAY! Reeealllllly getting tired of sunny days.
In other Alaska news, PFD application season ended yesterday. April 1st is the day I have at least 2 or 3 folks come in asking to file and I have to say it's too late. Eek! (However, you had 3 months people!)
Nothing like free $ to get people riled up.
1979 Avon cosmetics magazine advertisement that suggests a woman "30 miles from Fairbanks" drives a one-horse sleigh to get around yet is a successful Avon saleswoman. #alaskahistory #alaska
Rally in my town this week with a local group organizing #CBJuneau #Alaska #HandsOff #Resisters
Kinematic Evolution Of A Large Paraglacial Landslide In The Barry Arm Fjord Of Alaska
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https://doi.org/10.1029/2023JF007119 <-- shared paper
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https://doi.org/10.5066/P9EUCGJQ <-- shared technical article
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https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalogMaps/mapping/ows/5fff561ed34e592d8671ee85?service=wms&request=getcapabilities&version=1.3.0 <-- shared web mapping service
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#GIS #spatial #mapping #massmovement #landslide #engineeringgeology #remotesensing #sitespecific #LiDAR #iFSAR #paraglacial #kinematics #mapping #monitoring #spatialanalysis #spatiotemporal #fedscience #risk #hazard #glacier #retreat #climatechange #Alaska #BarryArm #fjord #hazardassessment #tsunami #wave #BarryGlacier #change #sensors #fieldwork #surveillance #melting #permafrost #Whittier #geophysics #geology #Alaska #geomorphometry #deglaciating
@USGS
April 1992, hundreds of UAF students protested school disrepair, budget cuts by legislature/Gov Wally Hickel, & tuition increases by UA Board of Regents. Students burned an effigy of Hickel & seized Butrovich Building for a sleep-in. Learn more (https://www.adn.com/alaska-life/2025/03/30/burn-him-down-a-history-of-effigy-burning-protests-in-alaska/). #alaska
Alaska Natives want the US military to clean up its toxic waste
"The U.S. military has a long history of contaminating lands and waters through military training and battles sites, including on Indigenous lands. Citizens of the Navajo Nation in Arizona and Yakama Nation in Washington continue to raise concerns about the ongoing effects of military nuclear testing on their lands and health. In the Marshall Islands, fishing around certain atolls is discouraged due to high rates of toxicity due to nuclear testing and other military training. On Guam, chemicals from an active Air Force base have contaminated parts of the islandʻs sole-source aquifer that serves 70% of the population. Last year, a federal report found that climate change threatens to unearth even more U.S. military nuclear waste in both the Marshall Islands and Greenland.
In 2021, the Navy in Hawaiʻi poisoned 90,000 people when jet fuel leached from aging, massive underground storage tanks into the drinking water supply after the Navy ignored years of warning to upgrade the tanks or remove the fuel. The federal government spent hundreds of millions of dollars to remove unexploded ordnance from the island of Kahoʻolawe, a former bombing range in Hawaiʻi, but the island is still considered dangerous to walk on because of the risk of more ordnance unearthing due to extensive erosion.
The complaint filed last week by the Alaska Community Action on Toxics calls for the United Nations to write to U.S. federal and state agencies and call upon them to honor a 1951 agreement between the U.S. government and the Sivuqaq Yupik people that prohibited polluting the land. "
https://grist.org/indigenous/alaska-natives-want-the-u-s-military-to-clean-up-its-toxic-waste/
6:00AM: 35F, clear.
Brrrr! One of these days the mornings will be as warm as the afternoons.
Today is not that day.
Greg Cocks 
