Glorious Saturday Morning (publ. 2025-04-14)

Winter clings on doggedly here in Fairbanks, and despite much warmer temperatures, and some very sunny days, we are still getting occasional dumps of snow. But last Saturday (2025-04-12) was a beautiful day, and Emily and I were able to step outside for the sunrise at 6:25am. Our yard is not an ideal place to watch the sunrise, as the horizon is obscured in every direction by trees and houses, but one can still have a good experience sometimes.

When I stepped outside at 6:25 the sky was mostly clear except for clouds to the NE, which were thick, but stretched outwards at the edges. There were gentle hints of pink along these edges. From these edges, the sky turned gradually into a white-blue, then a light blue, then a darker blue toward my zenith, and then light blue again toward the west. I observed some light pink color also near the horizon toward the south.

The air around me was thick with the sound of birds chirping in every direction. Emily said they were redpolls. I heard a variety of sounds:

- A high-pitched staccato chirp. My notes say about 0.3 Hz, though that seems rather slower than I remember.

- A faster staccato set of two or three chirps, at a lower pitch, with a note repeat frequency of about 6 Hz (my notes say 3 Hz) with each group repeating about once ever second.

- A sliding sound, with the patch raising over about 1/2 a second, and repeating every 1 or 1.5 seconds.

- Long trains of 1/8 note chirps, with 4 or more chirps grouped together.

At 6:34am I observed a darker pink color in between some of the thick clouds to the NE. Also, I noticed that the lodgepole pine trees have a light frosting of snow on their branches, from the snow which fell yesterday, looking like white glaze on a cookie.

At 6:37 I observed a now orange and red color in between the thicker clouds still to the NE. Amid the continued bird songs, I picked out one interesting sound which is an energetic, vibrating trill, lasting about 1/2 seconds and repeating every 1.5 seconds.

The temperature feels just a little cold, and my hands and ears are getting chilled. But it is warm enough that I am getting by with no hat and only my blue jacket.

After going back inside for a while, I stepped outside again at 7:26am. At that point, the sun appeared to be about 10° above the horizon and very bight, and there were no more clouds in the sky. The paper birch tree in the yard now has a reddish tint to it, even on the white bark, and the shadows are very long. The snow is glittering. The shadowy parts of the snow are dark blue, while other patches are white, or white with a hint of read.

The sun is a glorious, overwhelming orb of light. At the edges of my vision, it appears as a white orb surrounded by a thick yellow halo, which is then surrounded by an orange fringe. However, covering the sun with my finger causes the halo and fringe to go away completely. The sky near the sun is white with a hint of blue, going to a medium dark blue at the zenith, and then a slightly lighter but more vibrant blue to the west.

The bright low sunlight is giving the needles of the lodgepole pine a vibrant, medium dark-green, and accentuating the dark green lines that travel up the length of each needle. The paper birch tree has a thick red-orange color along its higher fringes, caused by the red sunlight and by the numerous catkins.

There is a lot to enjoy in God's creation, even in our front yard at the end of winter. That being said, I'm looking forward to the arrival of the first flowers, and the openings of the tree leaf buds, which might still be a few weeks away.

Copyright

CC BY-SA 4.0 Deed