Dear friends, here in Southeast Alaska, the winter of 2022-2023, we never really had winter. Just rain, rain, rain.
This Fall Rain Pattern started in July or August and didn’t let up for us here in Southeast Alaska.
Yes, I know, you folks in the “Lower 48” (as we fondly call it) really got slammed. It’s the Jet Stream and El Nino say the weather keepers.
Nevertheless, March did not disappoint. We are finally getting winter weather here in Juneau, nicely cold and some decent snowfall.
We even had a brief Taku Wind event last week, 70 mph gusts off the Canadian icefield. This is a local, sometimes violent, williwaw that sweeps down the steep slopes across from us.
It is not unusual to have two or three of these every winter. The gusts pick up salt spray from Gastineau Channel, leaving white speckles on our windshield here in Douglas where we spend most of our time.
March is always a trial of patience.
The days are swinging to more hours of sunlight, and there is a warmth to it. You feel spring in your bones. April is just around the corner. May is dependable. But March is a cruel temptress.
Today is all any of us really have. Be encouraged. Make the most of it. Love one another.
Take Care,
Devita and Ross
P.S.
A lifetime of painting, I can’t imagine doing anything else, and my husband Ross has been with me every step of the way. See the links above for more.
We are an artistic team. Ross is my Sherpa (when I go painting he carries my stuff), my public relations man, my ghost writer. He is a painter, a carver, a boat builder, my hero. And a published author.
As a way to revise and update our book, we recently we have started blogging about our experiences and observations of changes we have seen as long time Alaskans.
Devita Stipek Writer is an established Alaska landscape painter and muralist. An estimated one million people experience her public work every year. In 1964 she left art school to marry an Alaska fisherman. There followed a life of adventure, tragedy, and triumph.
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