Last Monday, the Fairbanks’ students had a rain day. Yes, a rain day. When you live in mid-latitude or tropical climate you wonder. You have rain on average every three days or daily, respectively. What’s the problem about rain in Alaska? It’s not a problem in our summer (June, July), in our rain season (August), or our spring (May) and fall (September). It’s a winter (October to April) problem.
In winter, all surfaces are usually at temperatures below the freezing point. When now a cyclone moves in with warm air, the warm air moves over the heavy cold air that sits on the ground. The rainwater of the warm air now falls into the cold air and on the cold ground. When these super-cooled raindrops hit a surface they freeze upon impact. Think of aircraft icing. This freezing leads to slippy, hazardous road conditions and an ice shield everywhere. We could not even open our garage door! The rain that fell against it, had frozen the door shut 🙂 .
The photo above shows the thickness of the ice on our driveway.Here it was about 1.5 cm (0.6 inch). However, there were places in town where the ice was even thicker than this. The ice shield remains until melt-up. It wears down a bit at road crossings or on heavy traveled roads. But that process fails to improve the driving conditions. On the contrary, you get the feeling of driving over a road full of pot-holes in the Utah desert except for the heat.
Alaskan kids get rain days, not snow days. Tweet this.
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Photos: G. Kramm (2015)
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