From Green to Bare, From 60 to 30: Fall in Fairbanks

Oh, no, don't you blink, or you might miss it! "What?", you ask? Autumn in Fairbanks, of course! It lasts precisely 4 weeks sometime between the end of August and the end of September.

So the story goes like this: sometime during the last week of August you notice that birch leaves are starting to turn yellow. The next day you wake up and realize that many more have done just that, and a few even have given up and fallen to the ground. Two weeks later you realize the birch trees are half bare, and your yard is blanketed with what was shed. Two weeks after that, the birch tree in front of your house looks positively winter-ready. Also, you go from temperatures in the mid-sixties (18 C for you Europeans) one week to mid-thirties and below the next ( 2C).

Kids went from shorts to coats and hats / gloves virtually overnight. Winter is here. The slide show above chronicles this process via the annual death of our birch tree at the end of the driveway. The first photo was taken on August 28 (very few yellow leaves) and the last on September 25 (bare branches).

And now the harvest moon can no longer hide behind the veil of foliage. Brrr...