The climate of this region is thoroughly arctic in character, the mean
annual temperature being 8° F., ranging from 65° to -52° F. Such
temperatures as the last mentioned are, however, rare, the ordinary
winter temperature being between -20° and -30° F., rarely rising
during December, January, February, and March as high as zero, and
still more rarely passing beyond it. The winter merges insensibly by
slow degrees into summer, with occasional “cold snaps,” and frosty
nights begin again by the 1st of September.
The sun is entirely below the horizon at Point Barrow for 72 days in
the winter, beginning November 15, though visible by refraction a day
or two later at the beginning of this period and a day or two earlier
at the end. The midday darkness is never complete even at the winter
solstice, as the sun is such a short distance below the horizon, but
the time suitable for outdoor employments is limited to a short
twilight from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. There is, of course, an equal time in
the summer when the sun is continually above the horizon, and for
about a month before and after this period the twilight is so bright
all night that no stars are visible.
The snowfall during the winter is comparatively small. There is
probably not more than a foot of snow on a level anywhere on the land,
though it is extremely difficult to measure or estimate, as it is so
fine and dry that it is easily moved by the wind and is constantly in
motion, forming deep, heavy, hard drifts under all the banks, while
many exposed places, especially the top of the sand beach, are swept
entirely clean. The snow begins to soften and melt about the first
week in April, but goes off very slowly, so that the ground is not
wholly bare before the middle or end of June. The grass, however,
begins to turn green early in June, and a few flowers are seen in
blossom as early as June 7 or 8.
Rain begins to fall as early as April, but cold, snowy days are not
uncommon later than that date. There is a good deal of clear, calm
weather during the winter, and extremely low temperatures are seldom
accompanied by high wind. Violent storms are not uncommon, however,
especially in November, during the latter part of January, and in
February. One gale from the south and southwest, which occurred
January 22, 1882, reached a velocity of 100 miles an hour. The most
agreeable season of the year is between the middle of May and the end
of July, when the sea opens. After this there is much foggy and cloudy
weather.
Fresh-water ponds begin to freeze about the last week in September,
and by the first or second week in October everything is sufficiently
frozen for the natives to travel with sledges to fish through the ice
of the inland rivers. Melting begins with the thawing of the snow, but
the larger ponds are not clear of ice till the middle or end of July.
The sea in most seasons is permanently closed by freezing and the
moving in of heavy ice fields from about the middle of October to the
end of July. The heavy ice in ordinary seasons does not move very far
from the shore, while the sea is more or less encumbered with floating
masses all summer. These usually ground on a bar which runs from the
Seahorse Islands along the shore parallel to it and about 1,000 yards
distant, forming a “barrier” or “land-floe” of high, broken hummocks,
inshore of which the sea freezes over smooth and undisturbed by the
pressure of the outer pack.
Sometimes, however, the heavy pack, under the pressure of violent and
long-continued westerly winds, pushes across the bar and is forced up
on the beach. The ice sometimes comes in with great rapidity. The
natives informed us that a year or two before the station was
established the heavy ice came in against the village cliffs, tearing
away part of the bank and destroying a house on the edge of the cliff
so suddenly that one of the inmates, a large, stout man, was unable to
escape through the trap-door and was crushed to death. Outside of the
land-floe the ice is a broken pack, consisting of hummocks of
fragmentary old and new ice, interspersed with comparatively level
fields of the former. During the early part of the winter this pack is
most of the time in motion, sometimes moving northeastward with the
prevailing current and grinding along the edge of the barrier,
sometimes moving off to sea before an offshore wind, leaving “leads”
of open water, which in calm weather are immediately covered with new
ice (at the rate of 6 inches in 24 hours), and again coming in with
greater or less violence against the edges of this new ice, crushing
and crumpling it up against the barrier. Portions of the land-floe
even float off and move away with the pack at this season.
The westerly gales of the later winter, however, bring in great
quantities of ice, which, pressing against the land-floe, are pushed
up into hummocks and ground firmly in deeper water, thus increasing
the breadth of the fixed land-floe until the line of separation
between the land-floe and the moving pack is 4 or 5 or sometimes even
8 miles from land. The hummocks of the land-floe show a tendency to
arrange themselves in lines parallel to the shore, and if the pressure
has not been too great there are often fields of ice of the season not
over 4 feet thick between the ranges of hummocks, as was the case in
the winter of 1881-’82. In the following year, however, the pressure
was so great that there were no such fields, and even the level ice
inside of the barrier was crushed into hummocks in many places.
After the gales are over there is generally less motion in the pack,
until about the middle of April, when easterly winds usually cause
leads to open at the edge of the land-floe. These leads now continue
to open and shut, varying in size with the direction and force of the
wind. As the season advances, especially in July, the melting of the
ice on the surface loosens portions of the land-floe, which float off
and join the pack, bringing the leads nearer to the shore. In the
meantime the level shore ice has been cut away from the beach by the
warm water running down from the land and has grown “rotten” and full
of holes from the heat of the sun. By the time the outside ice has
moved away so as to leave only the floes grounded on the bar the
inside ice breaks up into loose masses, moving up and down with wind
and current and ready to move off through the first break in the
barrier. Portions of the remaining barrier gradually break off and at
last the whole finally floats and moves out with the pack, sometimes,
as in 1881--a very remarkable season--moving out of sight from the
land.
This final departure of the ice may take place at any time between the
middle of July and the middle of August. East of Point Barrow we had
opportunities only for hasty and superficial observations of the state
of the ice. The land floe appears to form some distance outside of the
sandy islands, and from the account of the natives there is much open
water along shore early in the season, caused by the breaking up of
the rivers. Dr. Simpson[N12] learned from the natives that the trading
parties which left the Point about the 1st of July found open water at
Dease Inlet. This is more definite information than we were able to
obtain. We only learned that they counted on finding open water a few
days’ journey east.
[Footnote N12: Op. cit., p. 264.]