Don't Come Knocking Cause We're CLOSED!

Well when I woke up at 6am to let the dogs out the wind was still howling. When I opened the door the qanichuq (storm shed) was full of snow. I let the dogs do their thing and hurried back inside. Yesterday afternoon, after looking at the weather report, I decided that if it looked like crap this morning I wasn't going to work and the boy wasn't going to school. After the storm last Friday I'm all done trying to get around in blizzards. Six days after the last big blizzard many of the roads in Kotzebue are still only one lane wide canyons carved into the snow drifts. This storm is filling those canyons back in.

So I went back to bed, secure in my decision that we weren't going anywhere. Then the phone starts ringing, first it was a delayed opening for school til 10am. Then they called back and cancelled. I turned on KOTZ Radio to see what other cancellation there were. I thought there would be one or two. I started writing as the announcer read them off, both schools closed, school district closed until further notice, KIC closed, Wells Fargo closed, airlines closed, City office closed, NANA closed, AC Store closed til further notice....I quit writing because I realized that EVERYTHING was closed (except of course essential services such as the water/sewer plant, KEA Ops, PD/FD and the hospital. This rarely happens, even during bad storms most of us still get up and slog our way to work...but after all the storms we have had in the last three weeks I think we are tired of fighting the wind and the snow. Some of these business say they will re-evaluate at 1pm whether or not to open back up. They can re-evaluate all they want, I'm not going anywhere.

So for the majority of Kotzebue, here's your mental health day. Enjoy....that is until you have to tunnel out of your houses again.