Snow joke: Iditarod dog sled race disrupted by Alaska's warm winter
FAIRBANKS, Alaska -- The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race is about to write one of the odder chapters of this brutal winter.
Alaska's world-famous dog sled race was supposed to start in Anchorage but couldn't since the city has had little more than 20 inches of snow all winter, its second-lowest total ever.
Compare that to Boston, which is about half an inch away from its all-time snowfall record of 106 inches -- nearly 7 feet of snow more than Anchorage.
The ceremonial start in Anchorage Saturday morning was more slush than mush. Parts of the legendary 1,000-mile course to Nome, Alaska, looked more like the desert Southwest this year, brown instead of white.
Since Feb. 1, Anchorage has received less than 2 inches of snow. Boston has had nearly 70 inches. Folks in Alaska want their snow back.
"They took our winter," said Dave Monson, who's raced the Iditarod three times. His late wife, Susan, is a race legend, who won four times.
"My daughter in Connecticut is freezing, wants her parka sent from Alaska to Connecticut," Monson said with a laugh. "That's how bad the East Coast is. I went, 'Holy mackerel.' She's wishing she was here to warm up."
One rookie musher, Sarah Stokey, had to withdraw from the race because even after driving thousands of miles, she couldn't find enough snow to train her team.
Officials finally had no choice but to move the start of the iconic race away from balmy Anchorage to Fairbanks, in Alaska's interior.
It's not the first time the Iditarod has been moved further north in search of better snow. It has happened once before. But even the conditions in Fairbanks -- roughly 200 miles from the Arctic Circle -- aren't as snowy as Boston.
That thin snow means more danger, and less comfort, according to Monson.
"It's very, very hard on the musher because you don't have any of the cushioning that the snow would bring," Monson said. "And so your knees, all your arms, everything like that, are getting beat up all the time because there's no cushion, there's no shock absorber."
That's in the places that have snow. At a festival in Anchorage, snow had to be trucked in for an annual sculpture competition.
A nearby fur gallery hoping for a few cold tourists is seeing very few, owner Melanie Hausinger said.
"We'll have to maybe start selling fur bikinis instead of fur hats," Hausinger joked.
Or ship those pelts to Boston.
