Alaska Man Monday - Refreezing, Denali, and the Iditarod

Things are settling back into a more normal Alaska winter, and everyone hereabouts is breathing a sigh of relief, mostly taking the same attitude:

Hooray! Our normal Alaska winter is back! We're back to "You know you're an Alaskan when you go outside, note that it's 5 above, and think, 'Gosh, it's sure warming up.'"

Temperatures were dropping all over the state already Tuesday. With the drop, many locations will see more NORMAL temperatures.
Winds were gusty through the west coast. A wind gust of 55 mph was recorded in Cold Bay. With the wind and cold air, wind chills will be a factor over the run of the cold snap.
Back to back storms are going to bring snowfall to the Panhandle. Winter storm watches are calling for 5 to 8 inches of snow in Juneau, and totals of 12 to15 inches in Hyder.
The Northern Susitna Valley east to the Copper River Basin will also get windy leading to blizzard conditions. Southwest Alaska will also see increasing winds and blowing snow going into Thursday.
Interior communities will see drier, much colder and clear weather.

It’s already happening here. Over the weekend we had nighttime lows in the double-digits – below zero. That’s not at all unusual. But we’re still looking at a dry winter, without much snow in the forecast, at least not out as far as it goes. My concern is what will happen with all this rock-hard ice under the thin layer of snow everywhere when all this starts to melt.

Alaska Man score: 2.5 of 5 moose nuggets. Bad weather yields bad results, but we’re Alaskans. We’re used to weird weather. But that doesn’t mean we won’t complain about it.

Yeah, this isn’t going away. A pro-Trump Alaska Republican is asking the Trump administration to leave Denali as Denali:

Rep. Kevin McCabe, R-Big Lake, joined other Republicans, plus Democrats and independents in a 31-8 vote that asks Trump to reverse his decision to label North America’s tallest mountain as “Mount McKinley.”
The peak had that name between 1896 and 2015, when the Obama administration officially renamed it Denali following decades of lobbying by Alaskans.
The Alaska House of Representatives had voted 28-10 on Monday to approve House Joint Resolution 4, which asks that Trump keep the Denali name, but McCabe requested that vote be reconsidered, and on Wednesday, lawmakers voted again.

Most of the people I know around here are still calling it “Denali.” I’m still calling it “Denali.” It’s what I’m used to, and while I haven’t conducted any formal polling, most of the folks I’ve talked to about it are shrugging and saying, “We’ve always called it Denali”:

Speaking in the House, McCabe said he had heard “significant discussion” from his district since initially opposing the resolution.
“Alaskans have embraced, in my opinion, the name Denali,” McCabe said. “Not just Native Alaskans, but the people that live there, the people that thrive there, the people that use Denali and the park for their livelihood, and they have clearly told me that despite the fact that they all support the executive, the chief executive of the United States, and his ability to do this through executive order, that they would also like him to know that they would like to keep the name Denali.”

Unlike the Gulf of ~~Mexico~~ America, Denali is completely within Alaska. It’s ours. We should have some say in what we are calling it. Of course, we're Alaskans, and we'll go on calling it whatever we like. One friend of ours insists on just calling it "the mountain." Seems as good as anything.

Alaska Man score: 5 moose nuggets. Alaskans are speaking out, and that’s good.

Finally, let me share some of my concerns about the upcoming Iditarod – and our troubling lack of snow.