Monday Melt

[layla]

For the past few years, I've done a little photography project that I call Monday Melt: every Monday in April, I go around the property and take pictures, so that I can compare them to past years and see how our spring is coming along.

(And yes, I know it's not Monday, but I took these pictures on Monday; I'm just now getting around to dl'ing them from the camera!)



As you can see, we have a ways to go yet.



This is our (currently) main driveway, through the gravel pit.


The old driveway, which we haven't really been keeping plowed this winter (much). This is where most of my previous years' Monday Melt pictures were taken, so it makes a good basis for comparison.


2012 was about like this year. (Picture taken April 2, 2012.)


2011 was a little farther along. (Picture taken April 4, 2011.)

(I love how all of these pictures have dogs in them. You can tell I have company on my excursions.)

Check out 2010, though!




(The dog on the left appears to be doing something unhygienic in the latter picture. Pay no attention to him.)

These were taken at almost the same time of year as the other pictures (April 5, 2010). It's amazing how different it can be from year to year -- which is why I started doing this in the first place, because I was really curious how much variation there is. The answer is "a lot".

Comments

[killing_rose]

Huh. Interesting. I have at least mental comparisons to Anchorage for a couple of those years, and I definitely thought y'all got consistently more snow than we did. However, that impression does not hold up to several recollections of winter.

[layla]

No, we don't! Most of my family still lives down in the Anchorage area, and we get WAY less snow than they do, because we're a very dry interior climate and Anchorage gets all the coastal wet weather. It's uncommon for us to get more than 6-8 inches of snow in a single snowfall, and it's light, dry, powdery snow. If Fairbanks were warmer it would be a desert. (I think we average about 10-12 inches of rainfall a year, including melted snow.)

[frith_in_thorns]

I think I'm going to stop complaining about how cold it is here.

(Except I probably won't :P)

[layla]

Oh, there is no climate on Earth that isn't worth complaining about. ;p I sometimes complain that it's too sunny here, because I don't like hot weather and because we're a near-desert climate, we typically get almost no cloudy days from May to August except for the occasional thunderstorm. This causes people in wet, rainy climates to give me funny looks ... justifiably so, I suppose.

[astridv]

we typically get almost no cloudy days from May to August

Oh god, that sounds so appealing. What I'd give for that. This winter was the opposite, we got almost no sun from December through February.

Winter is late to leave, too. A few years ago I posted a photo of a sun-lit crocus in mid-January. This year... well, the crocuses have been out for three weeks but they're freezing their little petals off.

[astridv]

The cold here is just nasty. The humidity makes a hell of a difference. F%§#ing ocean. And man, did you guys get that icy Russian wind last week too? That was fun.

Imsosickofit.