How timely that we received an Emergency Preparedness brochure in our mailbox today!
Why timely? Well this morning there were two big earthquakes in the southern end of the Yukon Territory, one a 6.2 and another 6.3 and there have been close to 100 aftershocks since.
Sadly for my loyal blog readers, I felt none of them, and have no good stories to tell. Whitehorse was shaken pretty good though!
We get our excitement other ways though.
Klondike River
Last night when we were on our walk we noticed that the Klondike River, that had broken earlier in the day, was forming a pretty decent ice jam just before it converges with the still-frozen Yukon River. We watched the fire department assess it, and noticed a group of Canadian Rangers assembling near by. If an ice jam blocks the flow of a river, swift flooding can occur behind the jam.
Fortunately the water is still flowing through the ice blocks, so no houses are in any danger. Here’s what it looked like last night around 9pm:
We had pouring rain on Saturday, so that extra water, combined with the break up of the Klondike, mean the Yukon River breakup won’t be long now! I’m leaving for a work trip to San Diego on Sunday, and now I’m building hope the river will break before I leave town!
Fishing Hole
On Saturday we visited Flat Creek again to see if it was melting enough for fishing. The ice not only started to thaw this week, the river broke up!
The ice was jammed when we got there and was quickly overflowing the banks. Then all the ice started shifting so I got this video before the ice got stuck and stopped moving again: