
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 28, 1990                   TAG: 9003280273
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: PETER MARKS NEWSDAY
DATELINE: ANCHORAGE, ALASKA                                LENGTH: Medium

EVEN THE MOOSE ARE CRANKY AS ALASKANS ENDURE WINTER

Buildings flattened under the weight of a near-record snowfall. Streets encrusted with ice and carpeted in gray ash from a volcano that erupts about twice a week. Hunger-crazed moose, their normal food sources buried under the heavy snows, attacking city dwellers in their own back yards as the animals scrounge for nourishment.

Ah, Anchorage in the spring.

The Northeast has basked in 70-degree weather and is tickled by intimations of summer, but here on the sprawling frontier between Siberia and the Yukon, the arrival of spring is just another checkpoint along the tortuous route of a seemingly endless marathon called winter.

This season, the marathon has been particularly grueling, even by Alaskan standards. By last week, according to the National Weather Service, 101.8 inches of snow had fallen in Anchorage, the most the city of 250,000 has seen in 25 years and the fifth-highest accumulation on record.

The snow has been so heavy that the roofs of several city warehouses and schools have collapsed in recent weeks, and a record 600 moose - in search of clear ground on which to forage - have been struck and killed along the tracks of the Alaska Railroad. Police have reported several attacks by moose on dogs and people. In the northern part of the state, the subzero weather has been so intense that the entire water system for the city of Kotzebue, on the western Chukchi Sea, froze for two weeks.

Although Alaskans are a hardy bunch - short-sleeved shirts are not uncommon sights when the thermometer climbs to 25 degrees - this has been a winter to try the most well-insulated soul. It has left many Alaskans more impatient than usual for any landscape with a trace of color in it.

"It just gets on your nerves after a while," a woman from Minnesota who has lived in Alaska for five years said as she sat in a house overlooking Cook Inlet, which was choked with ice chunks. "The winters are just so long and the days are so dark. It really gets to you."

In Alaska, winter ignores the dictates of the calendar. The snows arrive before Halloween and end just before Memorial Day. Midwinter is a spooky affair this far north: around Christmas time, Anchorage daylight lasts only five hours. And in Prudhoe Bay, 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle, the sun does not rise for 54 days.

Winter takes such a toll on some people that experts have identified a psychological condition for depression in the north: "Seasonal Affective Disorder."

Dr. Aron Wolf, an Anchorage psychiatrist and an expert on the disorder, said that about 10 percent of Alaskans suffer from SAD, a condition characterized by excessive sleep, rapid weight gain and a general sense of gloom. The disorder, he explained, is triggered by the lack of sunlight.

"Everything feels gray to them. It's a kind of interminable, quiet sadness," Wolf said.

But as the days get longer and the symptoms of SAD subside, Anchorage is beginning to sense a change in season. On heavily traveled highways, asphalt peeks through the ice and slush. On the cross-country ski trails that traverse the city, the snow is a bit wetter and looser than a month ago.

The changes are signs that the Alaskan event called Breakup, when the snow and ice literally begin to break up, cannot be too far off. Which means, of course, that it is once again time for the Nenana Ice Classic.

The ice classic is a symbol of how important Breakup is to the Alaskan psyche. Each year, a non-profit group in Nenana, a town of 500 people south of Fairbanks in the Alaskan outback, runs a statewide pool, at $2 a shot, to guess when the ice will break up in the Tanana River just outside town.

Last year, four people out of the 176,000 who bought tickets came up with the correct time - 8:14 p.m. on May 1 - and shared a $135,000 purse.

The ice on the river is now 38 inches thick, a sure sign, said Jan Blair, one of the administrators of the classic, that Breakup and the real Alaskan spring can absolutely, positively not be any more than, say, five weeks to two months away.

"It's still winter," conceded Blair, an Australian who came to Alaska in 1974. "Last night, the temperature outside my door was 20 below."

by CNB