When you enter the "Golden Years" of your life, some changes in your life patterns will slowly evolve. At first, they are alarming because you start thinking to yourself, "god I am just like my parents". Little things in life become more important. Like enjoying a cup of coffee with friends to discuss the daily politics, sports, and resolve most of the problems in the world in less than an hour. Sometimes there are disagreements, but the one thing that is always agreed upon is that "damm kids of this generation are going to hell, wasn't like this when I was a kid".

Other items that you find yourself enjoying, which to yourself you readily admit that you never cared about in your youth. You find yourself feeding the birds in the dead of winter, skipping the essential foods that you personally enjoy in order to off set the cost of the bird food. Looking up at the stars in amazement, as if they had just suddenly appeared in the heavens. All of a sudden, you discover the love of history, something that you may have detested during your school years. It is different now because you can relate to it. There are so many things to enjoy, like giving your dog a good massage or brushing, not just a pat on the head.

Then of course, anytime you get two people similar in age together, there are always the hot topics to discuss. For some reason, health is one of those topics. I normally shy away from this subject however do not get me on the subject of weather. I love weather and normally check my arsenal of weather gauging data at a minimum of a dozen times a day. I readily admit, there is nothing that I can do about it, but at least I may be prepared for something that might not happen. Weather is important, you need it to plan your day.

One of my favorite data recorders to see if I am going to have to plow snow in the next 24 hours or in the summer if I can go fishing without a raincoat, I check my Doppler Radar Site. As you can see from the picture posted, it is snowing on the west side of Cook Inlet, westerly of my location. Go to the next radar site out of Illiamna, that will scare you because there is allot of snow showing. Fortunately it looks like it will go west of Anchor Point and hit Los Anchorage.


To see if I should put on a extra pair of long underwear, I refer to this site. This is a cloud temperature site. As you can see by the graph colors, a good cold front is moving in from the Bristol Bay area, right behind the heavy snow from the Doppler Radar. However, I am prepared, tomorrow I pick up a load of firewood for the Hole In the Wall. I would divert the load of wood to my house but I do not have a wood stove or fireplace. Having a wood stove would have a negative impact my "senior citizen energy allocation" from the local electric and fuel oil distributors. (I wish there was such a program)


Of course, no good weather bureau could operate without a satellite picture of the Pacific Region and those fronts that are moving in which could impact the temperature and Doppler site. I use this site to verify these sites. As President Reagan said about the Russians, "trust, but verify", I feel the same way about weather, don't rely on just one site and especially television weather reports.


This winter, I have one additional site to keep an eye on. Redoubt is always fun to check on, the web cams are great when it is not snowing or during the dark period of the day. But the center is doing a good job in keeping information posted. They are driving the national news media crazy, they want to see a big explosion so they have something to report on. I am sure that it will eventually do something, until then the merchants are loving it. They have had face masks sitting in their inventory for the past five years, now they have sold out. Redoubt has been a great "stimulus package" for merchants.

Ever need a local weather report, feel free to contact but please do not attempt to contact me between 2 PM and 4 PM, that is my nap time. Also between 4PM and 7 PM, that is my news time. On typical days I am also hard to reach between noon and 2PM because that is my "coffee clutch" time. The "golden years", I love them!

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U.S.S. Alaska (CB-1)