Liquid sunshine

Wrangell, the third-largest city of the United States by land (not by population – only about 2000 people live in Wrangell!), is wet – albeit not quite as soggy as Sitka, the largest city of the United states (by land), which gets even more rain – about 3 metres. By way of comparison, the annual rainfall in Cologne is about 1 metre. The two towns of Sitka and Wrangell are located in South-East Alaska, amidst an untamed temperate rain forest. As the name rainforest suggests, there’s plenty of rain here – after all, it’s not a sunforest.

We made our way up to Wrangell and Sitka from Misty Fjords, which also nicely lived up to their names. A fjord is a kind of crevice cut into the rock by an advancing glacier, leaving behind deep, narrow inlets into the mainland with steep cliffs on either side. Misty Fjords get their name from the fact that they are are usually misty, with candy-floss clouds decoratively draped over the trees that grow on either side of the inlet.

Moisture is ever-present in the area: The warm waters of the Alaskan Gulf heat up the cold arctic air, which leads to rain clouds building up and then watering the whole coastal strip of the country. But the rain tends to be light, showery, and speckled with sunshine. A good Alaskan doesn’t even refer to it as rain – they refer to it as „liquid sunshine“.

I love that, and that’s how I’ll define rain in future.

Having said that, I think liquid sunshine is the perfect weather for Misty Fjords: The clouds don’t just make it misty. They make it mystic.