Solstice Light

Web Cam History

Is this evidence of global warming? Or perhaps of polar warming?

The web cam has been diligently uploading images most days since April 2000. Admittedly it doesn't have the most exciting or dynamic view--rarely are passing cars actually captured in the web cam image, people walk past but they hardly ever appear in the images. However, the web cam does provide a window into the weather and seasons. It is located a few miles north of Palmer, Alaska at about latitude 61. In 2000 I manually saved, indexed and annotated images of spring -- and this year (2005) I'm keeping an online journal of the seasonal changes. For instance, in 2000 green grass appeared about May 10, this year (2005) green grass was visible in the web cam image on May 1. Similarly, the cottonwood and birch trees leafed out about 10 days earlier in 2005 compared to 2000 (see the hourly web cam images from April 29, 2005 through May 4, 2005).

Images are added every six hours at about 2:00AM, 8:00AM, 2:00PM and 8:00PM Alaska Time. Alaska is on double daylight saving time so 2:00 AM is roughly the equivalent of midnight sun time and 2:00PM is about noon sun time. (Note: multiple images with the same time for June 3 resulted because of the lightening strike that took out phone lines and Internet access.)

hourly images for April 29 through May 4     Summer Solstice & Double Daylight Savings Time

Web Cam Image Archive:

May 2005   |  June 2005   |  July 2005   |  August 2005   |  September 2005   |  October 2005   |  November 2005   |  December 2005

January 2006   |  February 2006   |  March 2006   |  April 2006   |  May 2006   |  June 2006   |  July 2006   |  August 2006   |  September 2006   |  October 2006   |  November 2006   |  December 2006

Current Month's Images (Click on a thumbnail to view the original web cam photo.)