Last Sunday night/Monday morning, we got about 4 inches of snow. Not quite enough to shut down my workplace the next day. ;(
But since then — ah, warmth! Dare I venture to say, break-up? In earnest, this time, not the fake break-up we got in February. Warm temps by day (that is, above freezing), residential streets turned into slush & meltwater, mud-puddle water flying from people’s wheels onto one’s windshield… (as I told Rozz last night, break-up is not the time to be out of windshield washer fluid!)… yes! All the signs!
Break-up, for non-Alaskans, is an Alaska term related to but not synonymous with spring. It refers most specifically to the break-up of ice on the big rivers of Alaska — the Yukon, the Kuskokwim, the Koyukuk, etc. — & has over time come to also cover the melting of ice & snow in general. So in urban Anchorage, it’s associated less with the great thunderous grinding noises of river ice breaking up, but with the spraying noise from a car or truck moving swiftly through a huge lane-wide puddle of water.
Or the “dammit!” of the person standing at the bus stop in reach of that great arch of spraywater.
