We’re in the midst of our usual mid-winter cold spell here in Alaska. Up in Fairbanks it is a lot worse than here – temperatures are hovering between -40 and -50F. No matter how you slice it, that’s pretty cold… But not really all that unusual for January.

Tonight, all around Alaska, people will wander out into the biting cold. Bonfires will be lit, and fireworks fired. For today is our birthday.

More correctly, it is the 50th anniversary of Alaska’s admission into the Union. On January 3, 1959, Alaskans set bonfires to celebrate their admission to the Union, and will do so again tonight.

It has been a tumultuous but happy 50 years. We’ve suffered great earthquakes and tsunamis. We suffered the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Now we’re dealing with the creeping but real effects of global warming. But at the same time, we’ve grown to about 650,000 people… Our land and water is as beautiful as ever, and when it comes to the creative, ingenious and individualists of our society, Alaskans are still the benchmark.

Times have changed a bit, though. Plans for bonfires across the state ran afoul of clean air standards in places like Juneau, where air quality is often a problem in the Mendenhall Valley – because of wood-burning stoves! And in Wasilla, celebration planners have have postponed the celebration for a week because of the cold weather.

Here in Anchorage there have been events and celebrations for the past week, including a banquet last night at the new Den’aina Center. There will be live music and performances all day at a number of venues, and of course, the fireworks this evening.

It is cold out… but I will be there. It will be a little Alaskan ingenuity and some pre-planning that will keep us warm. A thermos of hot cocoa, good friends, and some fireworks.

Here’s to fifty more!

UPDATE: Here are some photos from last night’s fireworks. We found the perfect perch, on top of the J. C. Penney parking garage.

Town Square Park, just before the start of the show.

Fireworks with the Atwood Building. Notice that the fireworks are in front of the building – they were very low!

More fireworks in downtown Anchorage

And we’re whiners, too.

Since the end of October, we have had an almost unprecedented streak of sunny and clear weather. One of the things that comes with clear weather is falling temperatures. We’re getting about 17 to 18 hours of darkness at this time of year, and between the clear skies and several inches of snow that has been here since our last snowstorm back before Halloween, each night’s low temperature is a bit cooler than the night before. Cloudy skies and snow generally mean warmer weather with temperatures in the 20’s or even 30s. But for now, we’re suffering with the severe clear. Yesterday we added a new weather feature to the mix: wind.

The complaints were almost universal. Nobody could walk into a building without commenting on the biting cold, with temperatures in the single digits and 40 mile per hour winds. It was actually very unpleasant, but this is Alaska, and all in all, cold is the norm in the winter. This isn’t the usual Alaskan weather, but we certainly get a few days of this every winter.

So yesterday morning I was in one of the local convenience stores, and the manager was commenting to me about the weather, and I said to him that I could go for a little snow right about now… and he immediately shot back that he was glad that it wasn’t snowing, because he didn’t have to have the parking lot plowed. I thought to myself, “Which is it? Is it too cold, or too snowy? You can’t have them both!”

Not everyone is complaining about the clear weather. My friend at Talkeetna Air Taxi was loving the clear weather, but lamenting the lack of flying customers. Clear weather is something of a rarity in November, and any opportunity to fly is a good one this time of year.

Here is where the lying part comes in. If we were enjoying day after day of snow and 28 degree weather, we’d be complaining about that, too. Alaskans don’t really dislike the winter weather, they prefer to complain about it instead. So when you hear one of us talk about the wind, or the snow, or the rain, the proper response is, “You’re a lying whiner! You like this, and you like the alternative, too!”

That is when they’ll insist that they don’t.