On Saturday afternoon I was decorating the house for Christmas and I was a little damp-eyed as I set up the little Christmas tree that always sits on the kitchen table, where Sally always slept underneath it. Whisps of her hair were still wrapped around the base of the tree. Man I miss that sweet gentle soul.

Suddenly there was a message from Jeff from down in Pelly Crossing (3 hours drive south of here) where he was teaching firearm safety courses this weekend:

“Major earthquake just hit here”

What!? I didn’t feel a thing! I immediately looked it up and saw there was a 6.7 (upgraded to a 7.0) just inside the Yukon – Alaska border in the southwest of the territory. Jeff said when it hit, he felt like he was passing out, and so did other people in the room, where he was teaching, until they realized it was an earthquake. He said there was major movement for two minutes.

Some people here in Dawson felt it. Even my neighbour right next door said her old windows were rattling.

Here, nothing. I feel so left out!

Our house is on cribbing and our windows are new, and our house feels like it is moving often enough anyway (like every time the washing machine is spinning) so I just didn’t feel a thing.

Since then, there has been at least 200 aftershocks around the same area. It’s right near Mount Logan (Canada’s largest mountain):

There is an app called Alertable that you can put on your phone that lets you know about emergency alerts and warnings in your area. I liked it when I was travelling this summer because it gives you the alerts in your geographical area. I had every kind of alert enabled, so all day yesterday, there was one after another earthquake notification flashing on my phone. Exciting!

Jeff was okay, everyone seems to be okay, with no damage reports. Earthquakes in that area usually cause avalanches and landslides but there was a blizzard around there all weekend so no one has been able to see any yet. It’s in a pretty remote area and the highway nearby was closed for avalanche possibility on Saturday and Sunday.

Here are a couple of detailed write-ups from the seismologists in Alaska about the event:

• December 6 Magnitude 7 Near the Canadian Border
• 2025 M7.0 Hubbard Glacier Earthquake

Meanwhile, it’s quite cold here! It’s -40 right now and is forecast to be -47C/-53F by Thursday night. We have a “Cold Warning”.

Hank and I bundled up and watched some Christmas movies while I was decorating the house. We’re having company next week!! Who is crazy enough to come to the Yukon to visit!? You’ll have to wait and see!

Here are a couple of pictures of our walks this weekend when it was only -30C.

Have a great week!