OK, so I was wrong and Island Economics

In my last post I said that the rain comes in gails. While this is true, the current storm has lasted 3 days. I guess that this is pretty common. I have heard more than once that if you can make it through October and November that you have it licked. Well it is the 13th so we only have another month and a half to go.
Collin's first wrestling meet is today, it will be one of the few we will be able to go to since most of them are out of town and he will have to fly. We will keep you posted on how his season goes.
If you want a fun website check this out
http://www.airnav.com/airport/PAKT
On the right side is a picture of the airport and farther down you can put in your airport code and it will tell you how far you are from us. Just below that you can see your sunrise/sunset for the day. Right now we have a little more than seven and a half hours of daylight that is filered by the clouds. That will drop to around six by the winter solstace.
Since the area is hilly (see Steeper than I Imagined) we will need studded tires to get around on the days when it is icy. Though food and gas is expensive up here, nothing will give you sticker shock quicker than tires. In fact I found that I can order tires online and have them mounted on new aluminum rims, balanced and shipped here Fedex for the same price or less than buying them locally. Go figure.
How important are studded tires you ask? Well the way I figure it Maren will be ready to go home the first time she goes down Carlanna Lake Road sideways.
Sorry I don't have any pictures for you, I guess I'll have to dust of the camera.

22 Inches and How to Get There

The days have gotten cooler in the last few weeks since the cruise ships have left. Proof that the cruising industry knows just what they are doing. Short sleeved shirts and light jackets have been replaced by sweatshirts and raincoats. Coming from Phoenix makes this difficult to imagine. This month alone we will be getting as much rain a phoenix does in about 3 years. When telling people that we were moving to Alaska the most common comment was, 'Oh you are going to be so cold'. Too which I would reply, 'It doesn't snow much but mostly rains in Ketchikan'. 'So like Seattle,' they would say. The answer is Seattle gets roughly 37 inches of rain per year compared to Ketchikan's 156 inches, so no not like Seattle.

October begins the rainy month for Ketchikan. If you go to http://weather.msn.com/local.aspx?wealocations=wc:USAK0125 and scroll down to the averages for temperature and rainfall you will see that Ketchikan gets 22 inches of rain this month.

So how do you get to 22 inches of rain in one month (that is more than half of what Seattle gets a year)? Well it requires roughly 3/4 inch per day. But it doesn't rain all the time so some of that rain comes in the form of large storms from the Gulf of Alaska.

This is the current image for Dec 23rd. ( I will try to update it regularly)

These arrive in South-East Alaska in the form of gail force winds and several inches of rain in one day. Unlike some places, Phoenix for example, if you don't like the weather you just wait a few minutes and it will change. In Ketchikan if you want to wait for the rain to stop before going out you'll have to wait until April. People just go about doing what they want to do despite the rain.

The other thing that surprised me about Ketchikan is the moss on the roofs. I remember the line from Elton Johns song 'I sat on the roof and kicked off the moss', now I know what he meant. I had never seen moss on roof before here. I will try to post some of those pictures when I get the chance.

One more link for you folks. If you want to see what the weather is like in Ketchikan click on http://www.earthcam.com/usa/alaska/ketchikan/ . The site refreshes every twenty seconds.