Winter takes a last gasp as spring colors prepare to come in

I got an email from Sujitha this morning and she said she is really excited to see Spring pictures on my blog now that the weather is warming up - the lovely pleasant colors of Alaska. So here you are, Suji - Springtime in Alaska, in shades of blue and white. It is indeed warming up but as you can see, it is still pretty chilly in the mornings...

I jokes! I jokes! 

This is actually not a recent spring morning at all, but is a picture that got mislabeled and popped up in my Kivgiq edit as I was working on Uiñiq today. It is one of the thousands of such random pictures that I continually shoot that no one ever sees, including me, but, since it mistakenly popped up and I was planning to write about the onslaught of spring tonight, I decided I would throw it in so that someone would actually see it before it slips away and is forgotten.

This is springtime in Wasilla, today near noon. Mornings still are pretty chilly here in Wasilla, but a lot warmer than they are in Barrow. If you could have swung by East Coast Pizzeria today it would probably have looked pretty much the same as in the top photo.

When I first spotted this puddle, the ice lay unbroken in a sheet just a little above the puddle. so it was hollow beneath. It caught my eye, but as I stepped toward it for a closer look, the sheet of ice suddenly collapsed onto the puddle with a crackle and a gasp as the ice shattered and the air rushed out from beneath.

Even though the road felt solid beneath my feet, I wondered if it was the weight of my footstep on the road that had caused the ice to collapse? I don't know. It might have just been coincidence, because I walked by other raised ice sheets and they did not collapse.

This afternoon, I did not go through the Metro Cafe drive-through but went inside and sat at table and had soup and a sandwich. As I was enjoying my soup, Kristina announced that Shoshana had pulled up to the drivethrough window and Carmen said I had better come and take a picture. Hence:

Study of the Young Writer, #5000.2: The young writer appears on the wrong side of the drive-through window as Carmen speaks of small matters.

Two girls and fire log, two houses down, as I drive from our house towards Seldon. It had warmed up a lot by now: 42 degrees (5.5 C). Margie will be home from Arizona May 1. I think there will still be some snow waiting for her. She called tonight. She said she was stuffed with Mexican food. She had been visiting her mother and they went up Carrizo Canyon. It was hot and she had a hard time dealing with the heat, but she still enjoyed it.

In places with broad sun exposure, where the wind had already blown away much of the snow even before it warmed up, the snow is all gone. Suji, the pleasant spring colors you long to see will soon follow. Two weeks maybe.