Wizard of OTZ

Incognito in Kotzebue:

Kotzebue is a Native Village of roughly 3,000 people in the western arctic that lives on a gravel spit. I traveled there recently in route to do a few days of field work on the Agashoshak River, a beautiful little spot in the western Brooks Range. It was a week of new experiences - snowmachining to work, camping in an arctic oven equipped with a travel wood stove and all, and witnessing a small piece of native village life.





My trip also included an unexpected flight to three small villages: Ambler, Kobuk and Shungnak. My first flight in a Caravan. A delivery of lots and lots of soda and a few passengers, including a girl that was medi-vac-ed out earlier that week and a State Trooper who rode along so we could pick up a "perp" in hand-cuffs at Shungnak. It was a pretty full village experience.

One Pack of Marlboro Lights Please

I think I'd like to start smoking. With Alaska on fire, I feel like I should at least get a nicotine buzz from all the smoke.

Despite very few wildfires in the Arctic or even within 100 miles of Toolik, we have spent much of the past 2 weeks smothered in smoke.

(click image to see detail)
The yellow indicates area burned. In less than 2 weeks the burn scar across Alaska has increased from 1 million to now 2.5 million acres. Most of the fires are in the interior part of the state. Toolik, which sits 300 miles north of many of the largest fires, has been thick with smoke when the wind blows from the south. Many days our horizon is just a pale blue.

Taken from a time-lapse camera looking out my Toolik office window.
Sunday, Aug 2
Wind direction: N
A rare day of clear skies and clean air.


Monday, Aug 3
Wind direction: S
This is typical of what we get these days.

Liar Liar...Alaska on Fire

Smoke looms over the Tanana River.

This year marks one of the worst wildfire years for Alaska in the past 50 years. Over 1 million acres have burned in the state. The state's largest fire, over 200,000 acres, is burning just 50 miles south of Fairbanks. This pales in comparison to 2004 in which over 5 million acres burned across the state, but it lands in the top 15 worst burn years in the past 50 years. And it's not even August yet.

July 21, 6:30 pm

Fire burns south of Fairbanks

July 22, 7:00pm
Winds shift and Fairbanks disappears.