From a near 24 hours of daylight to now under 8 hours a day, the winter season is quickly setting in. The sky is pitch black and glittering with billions of stars well into the morning when I go to work. When the sun finally does rise at around 10:30am now, it comes in brilliant oranges, yellows, and pastel pinks, illuminating the white-blanketed buildings of town in a soft glow.
Mouth of the Nome River, frozen
No sea ice yet, but the mouth of the river is pretty well frozen over. On a short drive out of town last week I saw the first ice fisherman tomcodding behind some of the camps.
Fishing and hunting camps outside of town
Remnants of summer
While I haven't been able to try my hand at ice fishing yet, I have taken advantage of other opportunities to play in the snow. Namely, this involved a few of us driving out to Anvil Mountain and constructing a ginormous snowman.
Giant snowman building commences!
Snowman napping on the tundra
The snowman turned out to be too big to stand up (would have been around 8 ft tall), so he opted for a nap on the tundra. I was quite pleased with the finished product. :)
Nome Science Fair
Also this week was the local Science Fair at the elementary school. Naturally, the NPS had a table there, with activities for kids to make their own fossils and small archaeological excavations. I arrived a little later to take photos of the event, and was surprised how many people showed up!
The planetarium was a big hit
Other highlights of the event included an inflatable planetarium show, an interactive globe, opportunities to extract your own DNA, some sort of laser exhibit, microscopes, and some informational booths about arctic research.
DNA extraction activity
The NPS table was quite popular!
And finally, for a little local flavor this week, check out Pamyua (pronounced Bum-yo-ah), a tribal funk group from southwest Alaska that fuses traditional Inuit music with modern beats. They're coming to perform in Nome next weekend so I'm pretty excited to see them live.
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