Last week was a heck of a week to be in the Fairbanks area! A day or two after we had just received almost a foot of snow the rain came. A weather condition called the Chinook wind, a blast of warm air that makes it over the Alaska Range, hit the interior of Alaska hard. Fairbanks ended up with almost and inch of freezing rain, which hasn't happened in November in over 70 years! While it rained the temp hovered around freezing and with all of the sewers along the roads plugged from snow, the rain literally made ice rinks of all the roads.
It usually takes quite an event to cripple Fairbanks and this rainstorm did exactly that. All schools, the University, public buses and a good portion of stores were closed or shut down all week. My friend Ralf with the tour company couldn't even back out of his parking spot at Billie's, which is completely flat. And Ralf has 600 pounds of sand loaded in the back of his van for added traction!
Some people got around town with chains on there tires but they were still sliding everywhere. One of my other friends here at Billie's works on a school bus, as an attendant and said 7 buses either had accidents or went in the ditch, even with chains on!
Thankfully it quit raining around Thanksgiving and by the time the weekend was over everything was back to normal.
The picture shown today was taken Monday the 22nd in the afternoon and yes it is as slippery as it looks.
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