Signs of Spring "Break Up" in the Interior

6 April 2012
8:45 PM

Sunrise at	6:47 AM	in direction	72°	East-northeast
Sunset at	9:02 PM	in direction	288°	West-northwest

Duration of day: 14 hours, 15 minutes (6 minutes, 47 seconds longer than yesterday)

A picture is worth 1000 words, or so they say; I am including photos of the visible signs of break up around us.

First campus, city, and borough crews blade roads, sidewalks and parking lots as close to the ground or pavement as possible.  The technique is more thorough than blading after winter storms.  At the edges of the road, the blade is run alongside and down into the side culverts so melting snow drains away from the road as much as possible.  Along sidewalks, a foot wide edge of ground is bladed as near to the grass as possible without damaging it so snow melt can hit the ground and be absorbed or evaporated before covering walk ways.  Along neighborhood roads like ours, hard pack snow is broken up into chunks and piled along side so runoff will flow without forming mud-soft gullies in the road itself.

Snow piled from roads visible at the top and cleared area next to the sidewalk.
Sunny slope is melting naturally.

Visible patches of clear ground increase daily, despite any snow flurries that affect the ground temporarily.  As the snow rots, a road will reach a turning point in the frozen-vs-melt balance and run off flows into city drainage and eventually into the Chena and Tanana Rivers.  Each road will have periods of run off until all snow has melted away and then some water channels and low lying areas will continue to have running water as ground thaws and water seeps to the surface.  Each night, as the temperatures cool, break up abates, only to begin anew when the sun heats the ground to threshold melt temperatures.

Hill sides on campus nearly free of snow

How quickly all of this happens depends on snow accumulation and the ambient temperature for several consecutive days.  The first year we moved into the house, on April 4 we were still firmly locked in snow without any signs of ground.  Two weeks later, it was completely, and I mean completely, free of snow.  During that break up every road surface sported furiously fast rivulets for most of the day.  

This year, break up began last week, a few days before I took those first photos and posted them.  Today, we still have mounds of snow on campus lawns, our lawn, and along road ways.  If you look across our lawn, and through the trees.  The surface level of the snow continues to lower, but no bare patches are visible.  If you looked only there, you wouldn't know break up is underway a few yards at the entrance to our lot and near the house.  But stepping outside on the deck, you can hear the sound of water running in the cutters and down the drain pipe to the underground drains that deliver water out into the lower part of the lot.  If temperatures continue as they are now, we will probably be snow free in another two to three weeks, with river ice fully released some time after.

Snow piled at the driveway entrance greeted upon our return home yesterday

The entrance of our driveway showing the difference between
bladed surface and our driveway cleared after the last heavy snow in March. 

The photo above is of the entrance to our driveway.  Although it shows the different texture in the surfaces between what was cleared yesterday and the driveway which is melting without blading, it doesn't clearly show differences in height.  We have all wheel drive in our Ridgeline, yet entering the driveway was not smooth today.  We borrowed our friend's truck tonight and although it looks like the driveway does not require much to get up from one surface to another, Gary needed to put the truck in 4-wheel drive to get enough traction.   

Hard packed snow from the road piled at the side

Each year, there is betting on when the ice will go out at Nenana.  The last two years I have not made it in to place a bet.  I enjoy the betting process, a rite born in the hope of spring, but February and March were intensely busy months due to race volunteering and other personal events of which I've written.  Soon I will begin to check the news to see when the big day occurs and the Tanana River is free to the Yukon.  It's hard to imagine it will be soon.  As I posted earlier, my daughter and son-in-law skied down its length from Fairbanks to Nenana just last week.  But, it's like that.  One day you drive by and there is some surface water on the ice and a channel running freely along the shore and the next all ice is gone.