It's only November!!

The fall weather in Tuktoyaktuk is, in a word, schitzophrenic.  It can be cloudy and dull for days on end.  By cloudy, I mean the deepest and thickest clouds I have ever seen!  The light hardly gets through because the clouds are so dense!  Every now and then a hole forms in the clouds and you can see how far the clouds extend up into the sky, and there is a patch of blue poking through.  I look at the sky longingly, and wish for brighter days.

Then there is the wind.  I wrote about this before.  When the wind picks up and blows in off the Arctic Ocean it can be windy for days, and when it is that windy, the wind chill makes temperatures dip.  A few days ago it was -22C with the windchill.  What month is it again?  Only November?  Sigh.  When the wind blows like this, it shakes the house and makes the lights flicker.  It gets so damp and cold that all you can do is shiver.  I wear two sweaters, one on top of the other, and my hand-knit wool socks over top of my regular socks, and we all enjoy a snuggle underneath our Gramma afghans when we are sitting at home.

Charlotte running to check out the ice on the ocean.

Down at what they call 'the point' you can see the ice shaped waves, as the ice formed over the wavy water.  The lakes and the ocean are beginning to freeze up and it's a daredevil kid thing to go walking or snowmobiling over the thin ice on the lake.  Last year a younger community member broke through the ice on his snowmobile and drowned. It was very tragic. Already this year, two snowmobiles have cracked through the ice and into the harbour! Luckily, both people survived. The locals don't think that it's very cold outside right now, but that water temperature is low enough for hypothermia to set in pretty quickly!

And the snow and cold temperatures!  Did I mention the snow and cold?  It began snowing on and off by the first week of October, and now the snow is permanent.  There is actually an Inuvialuctin word for 'the first layer of crispy snow that falls in autumn".  Great!  Nobody has any idea how many more layers of snow we can expect, but after a while when it gets so deep and cold, who cares?  Did I mention the cold?  Currently, every day we are observing temperatures of -10C, unless the wind picks up, and then it gets colder.

Then there are days like today.  The schitzophrenic weather provided a spectacular day today filled with sunshine and blue skies that made the snow sparkle on the ground and put a spark in our eyes!  Oh, to see the sun shining and lighting up the darkness!  It was wonderful!

We are wearing all our winter outdoor clothing now, and one of the things about the lake freezing over is the anticipation of skating!  Charlotte is very excited about this prospect!  We have ordered our winter parkas which are rated for extreme weather conditions, and our boots are all temperature rated to -70C, so we are ready to take on the winter.

The locals are very happy to be able to use their snowmobiles, and caribou hunting season is about to start, which has a lot of boys in Greg's class very excited.  Another thing the locals are excited to be doing is fishing because the whitefish are what they catch right now, and they are supposedly really delicious.  We were speaking with one gentleman and he said he was going out on the land to go fishing this week and hopes to catch about 300 fish to get his family through the winter.  Amazing, huh?  The reason the locals are excited about fishing right now is that this is the time of year for roe, which apparently is a delicacy.  See below for the definition of roe, for those of you who don't know it.

1. Roe (/roʊ/) or hard roe is the fully ripe internal egg masses in the ovaries, or the released external egg masses of fish and certain marine animals, such as shrimp, scallop and sea urchins. As a seafood, roe is used both as a cooked ingredient in many dishes and as a raw ingredient.

Yeah.  Well, I guess every person to their taste.  My idea of a delicacy is a perfectly cooked lasagna...with the correct balance of ground meat to cheese ratio.  Now I am craving my sister-in-law's lasagna.  

The other day while it was super windy out, Greg and the other intermediate teacher were taking the Grade 7s and Grade 8s on a walk to the local dump, which is about 3.5 km out of town.  There was someone there to talk to the students about how they are going about picking a location for a new dump and what considerations one takes in choosing such a thing.  That day it was -22C out including the windchill.  Greg dressed in his winter coat, a sweater, a hat, and some gloves plus his super warm boots and he was toasty warm.  The students teased him for dressing as he was.  They were wearing coats that were in no way warm enough by Southern Ontario standards, and some of them had light gloves and hats; however, they were toasty warm by Tuk standards.  Maybe we'll feel that way once we're on the other side of winter when early spring comes around and we rise out of the polar temperatures and back to the temperatures we are experiencing now?  It will be interesting to see how we feel once we're on the flipside.....in April.  Or May.  You never know.

Another interesting thing that has been happening here is the tardy sunrise, or at least daybreak on a cloudy day.  Here is a picture I took just as I was taking the Senior Kindergarten kids out for morning recess at 10:00 a.m. last Wednesday.  Notice how the lights are still on inside the buildings and the streetlights are still on?

The playground at Mangilaluk School at 10:00 a.m. just before sunrise.
The sun actually rose around 10:30 that morning.

  When we wake up now in the  morning, it is pitch dark and remains so until almost 11:00 a.m.  The sun set this evening at 6:24.  We know this because today it was sunny outside the whole day! The skies were blue and the snow was sparkling on the ground like diamonds! It was definitely a day for sunglasses outside, and the sunset at 6:24 p.m. was extraordinary! As Greg was walking into school this evening for an hour of planning in his classroom, he realized that when he left for school 12 hours later it would still be dark outside.  Pretty soon we will be experiencing a small amount of daylight in the mid-afternoon without an actual sunrise or sunset, and then total darkness for three weeks.  Luckily, we are going to be in Ontario with all of our friends and family during two of those three weeks.  

Here are some beautiful pics of the sunrise and the lights shining off the Arctic Ocean this evening.  It was such a boost to see the sun today!  I can't begin to tell you how lovely it was to breathe in the crisp cool air and look up and see that gorgeous blue sky!  I guess we had better enjoy it while it lasts!

While we have settled in to life in what we consider right now to be winter cold temperatures, we are looking forward to our time in Ontario over Christmas.  We are still waiting for some backpay that is owed to both of us before we can book the final leg of our trip home, but we will be doing so soon, and then we will let you know when to expect us at your doorstep!!  Now isn't that a frightening thought?  Good thing it's Hallowe'en coming up soon!  Hallowe'en is another subject altogether up here, and I will be blogging more about that later this week, once the finishing touches have been made to our costumes.

In the meantime, as you enjoy the last that the fall colours have to offer, and go to the pumpkin patches for your Hallowe'en needs, think of us in the North and smile.  We are with you in spirit!