This column is provided as a public service by the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, in cooperation with the UAF research community. Ned Rozell , is a science writer at the institute. Sometimes it seems a little odd to curse the sky for being cloudless, but I do.
Some organisms living in Alaska have greater concerns with a lack of snow than trashed ski bottoms.
Snow's insulating capacity allows some life forms to survive life in the north. Pat Holloway, an associate professor of plant sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, lists lowbush cranberries and bearberries as examples of Alaska plants that need snow to make it through an Interior winter. She's frosted low bush cranberries in the lab and has found that they die when the temperature drops below about -12 degrees Fahrenheit. Since 12 below could easily be the high temperature during an Interior winter day, lowbush cranberries wouldn't survive without a warm blanket of snow. Some trees have the ability to stand naked amid 50 below temperatures without dying.