5-19-14 Poor air quality - Anchorage Alaska, USA

1-24-14 Winter plants blooming - Bethel, Alaska, USA

Folks here are famous for being able to handle the cold, but anything wet in December has always made us nervous. Especially wet falling from the sky. Lately, weather, our favorite nemesis, has broken the rules. Our confidence in the most-trustworthy feature of the Arctic -- winter -- has been wounded.

11-11-13 Weather effects caribou migration and season - Barrow, Alaska, USA

The blueberries are so ripe now that the best time to pick those are late morning while they are chilled down and the leaves are not so moist, otherwise they fall easily or squish in your fingers.

Thawing permafrost and river bank collapsed on the Cheenik Creek.

The past couple of years there haven't been a lot to pick.

7-25-13 Invasive dandelion - Levelock, Alaska, USA

7-24-13 More salmon berries - Nondalton, Alaska, USA

Residents were amazed to see lightning actually arching down to the ground.

High spruce pollen levels causing eye, respiratory irrigation and nose bleeds.

5-15-13 Spruce aphid infestation Kake, Alaska, USA

Batogoo Dorj is a nomad in southern Mongolia’s Bayankhongor Region who makes his living raising cashmere goats. Each spring, Dorj can shear about 300 grams of the valuable, downy wool from each of his 350 goats. Those voracious and sharp-hoofed animals are contributing to the desertification and climate change that is reducing Mongolia’s available grazing land.

A mystery bloom brightens up local beach.

We are worried about the effects of large infestation and about wildlife.

The winds came east out of the Chugach Mountains and caused damage to forest, unlike anything we have seen in over 50 years. It is going to be expensive and time consuming to clear the windfall.

There has been an outbreak in Fairbanks of the amber-marked birch leaf miner (Profenusa thomsoni), an insect that came to North America in the early 1900s and arrived in Fairbanks by about 2002.

7-19-12 Great gardening - Anchorage, Alaska, USA

Non-sting wasp (cynipoidea) larva

More leaf miners this year, less blue berry blossoms, but more cranberry.