Why people in Alaska pay such close attention to this contraption each year
For the 105th consecutive year, the residents of one small town are fixated on this tripod with a red flag on top -- just waiting for it to move ever so slightly.
By
Zachary Rosenthal, AccuWeather staff writer
Published Apr 19, 2022 10:55 AM EDT
|
Updated Apr 21, 2022 8:18 AM EDT
For more than a century, Alaskans in the small town of Nenana, about 55 miles southwest of Fairbanks, have been competing in the Nenana Ice Classic, a guessing game run by a non-profit charitable gaming organization of the same name, where people all over the world take bets on when the ice on the Tanana River will break up.
Now, anyone in the world can submit a guess on when the ice will begin to melt for just $2.50, and an increased number of bettors caused last year's jackpot prize to reach an astounding $233,591, according to The Associated Press. Those who enter the lottery have to guess when the ice will break down to the exact day, hour and minute.
According to Nenana Ice Classic Manager Cherrie Forness, who recently announced that she is stepping down from running the contest, the long-standing tradition started in 1917 when a group of railroad engineers who were constructing the Mears Bridge, the railroad bridge that crosses the Tanana River, began placing bets on when the ice in the river would break up. The bored railroad men cobbled together $800 in bets, and the rest is history.
"As time went on, they kept doing this and pretty soon word spread around the territory that this was going on and so other communities wanted to participate as well," Forness told AccuWeather.
In this April 12, 2012 file photo, a red flag is whipped by wind on a tripod sitting on the frozen Nenana River in Nenana, Alaska. The tripod serves as the basis for Alaska's biggest guessing game, with people buying tickets to guess when the ice will give out and the tripod will fall into the river. Some states have a lottery. In Interior Alaska, it's the Ice Classic, the annual guessing game of when the Tanana River ice goes out. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen, File)
The time that the river breaks up is determined by when a tripod that is placed on the river moves 100 feet down the river, at which point a clock attached to the tripod trips, locking in the exact time that the river breaks up.
The system for measuring when the clock trips is complex, with a wire running from the top of the tripod all the way to a watchtower, where a guard is posted at all hours of the day. Once the wire is taut and the tripod starts moving, alarm bells ring out, letting the people of Nenana know that the tripod's movement downstream has begun.
From there, a complex system of ropes and pulleys goes to work, with the process ending when a knife slices through a rope once the tripod is 100 feet downriver, triggering a timer that logs the official time for the contest.
Last year, the clock was tripped at exactly 12:50 p.m. on April 30, with 12 winners splitting the jackpot, each taking in $19,465.92, according to the Anchorage Daily News. This year, comedian John Oliver brought more attention to the contest after featuring it on his HBO program, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
Ice blocks are seen floating on the Tanana River in Nenana, Alaska, US, Sunday, April 14, 2019. In 2019, early ice melt provided a record finish to an annual Alaska guessing game that's been going on for 102 years, officials said. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
"We decided to place exactly one bet on this year’s competition, for April 26th, 2022, at exactly 2:17 p.m. Why? I just have a really good feeling about it," Oliver, who sent his old friend Marshmallow the Polar Bear to deliver his official guess in person, said on his show.
Oliver added that if his guess happens to be the lucky winner, he will donate the entirety of his prize money to the Food Bank of Alaska.
"Well we're just very grateful that John Oliver decided to pick our little contest," Forness said, adding that the organization has not yet been able to tally the number of entries or the jackpot for this year. "It really did help us. I'm sure once we get all the numbers in - we're not gonna be able to track it by how many came from his show - but what we're seeing come in is incredible."
People from all around the world can enter the competition without sending a person dressed in a polar bear costume to Alaska by simply mailing a list of guesses, and $2.50 per guess, to the Nenana Ice Classic. Tickets are sold every year from Feb. 1 to April 5, so would-be-guessers will need to mark their calendars for next year's contest.
The earliest that the ice has given out since the competition began was just three years ago in 2019, when the ice melted at 12:21 a.m. on April 14.
A graphic showing every recorded spring ice breakup on the Tahana River at Nehana since 1917. The graphic shows that the average break-up date is getting earlier. (ACCAP at International Arctic Research Center at UAF).
“It wasn’t just earlier by three hours, either. It was the earliest by over six days,” Rick Thoman, a climate specialist with the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy, told Outside Magazine. “But the larger significance, of course, is the pattern that that fits in. Five of the 10 earliest breakups have occurred since 2010—in a century-long record. It’s hard to argue with that data.”
The contest has been an important source of climatological data, measuring the exact time of the river breakup each year since 1917.
“It’s almost as perfect a climate record as you could get,” Thoman said, noting that the consistent location of the tripod, the fact that there are no dams upstream, the river being a single-channel river, and the isolatedness of the town make for extremely consistent measurements.
This year, it's looking like the ice won't be melting early, at least according to Forness, who is personally forecasting the ice will not break until May.
"We've had a cold, really cold spring, I mean two weeks ago we were still getting [temperatures] 8 below. So it's just been a really different spring, and we still have a lot of snow and it is melting but it's pretty slow," Forness said.
High temperatures have climbed into the 40s recently in Nenana and are forecast to reach the 50s in the coming days, at which point the melting will begin in earnest.
So while there's still a chance for John Oliver and Marshmallow, it's looking like their guess might end up being wrong. However, even if they lose, the show will donate at least $10,000 to the food bank, along with the added benefit of all the extra funding and attention their segment generated for one of the United States' wackiest contests.
For the latest weather news check back on AccuWeather.com. Watch the AccuWeather Network on DIRECTV, Frontier, Spectrum, fuboTV, Philo, and Verizon Fios. AccuWeather Now is now available on your preferred streaming platform.
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News / Winter Weather
Why people in Alaska pay such close attention to this contraption each year
For the 105th consecutive year, the residents of one small town are fixated on this tripod with a red flag on top -- just waiting for it to move ever so slightly.
By Zachary Rosenthal, AccuWeather staff writer
Published Apr 19, 2022 10:55 AM EDT | Updated Apr 21, 2022 8:18 AM EDT
For more than a century, Alaskans in the small town of Nenana, about 55 miles southwest of Fairbanks, have been competing in the Nenana Ice Classic, a guessing game run by a non-profit charitable gaming organization of the same name, where people all over the world take bets on when the ice on the Tanana River will break up.
Now, anyone in the world can submit a guess on when the ice will begin to melt for just $2.50, and an increased number of bettors caused last year's jackpot prize to reach an astounding $233,591, according to The Associated Press. Those who enter the lottery have to guess when the ice will break down to the exact day, hour and minute.
According to Nenana Ice Classic Manager Cherrie Forness, who recently announced that she is stepping down from running the contest, the long-standing tradition started in 1917 when a group of railroad engineers who were constructing the Mears Bridge, the railroad bridge that crosses the Tanana River, began placing bets on when the ice in the river would break up. The bored railroad men cobbled together $800 in bets, and the rest is history.
"As time went on, they kept doing this and pretty soon word spread around the territory that this was going on and so other communities wanted to participate as well," Forness told AccuWeather.
In this April 12, 2012 file photo, a red flag is whipped by wind on a tripod sitting on the frozen Nenana River in Nenana, Alaska. The tripod serves as the basis for Alaska's biggest guessing game, with people buying tickets to guess when the ice will give out and the tripod will fall into the river. Some states have a lottery. In Interior Alaska, it's the Ice Classic, the annual guessing game of when the Tanana River ice goes out. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen, File)
The time that the river breaks up is determined by when a tripod that is placed on the river moves 100 feet down the river, at which point a clock attached to the tripod trips, locking in the exact time that the river breaks up.
The system for measuring when the clock trips is complex, with a wire running from the top of the tripod all the way to a watchtower, where a guard is posted at all hours of the day. Once the wire is taut and the tripod starts moving, alarm bells ring out, letting the people of Nenana know that the tripod's movement downstream has begun.
From there, a complex system of ropes and pulleys goes to work, with the process ending when a knife slices through a rope once the tripod is 100 feet downriver, triggering a timer that logs the official time for the contest.
Last year, the clock was tripped at exactly 12:50 p.m. on April 30, with 12 winners splitting the jackpot, each taking in $19,465.92, according to the Anchorage Daily News. This year, comedian John Oliver brought more attention to the contest after featuring it on his HBO program, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
Ice blocks are seen floating on the Tanana River in Nenana, Alaska, US, Sunday, April 14, 2019. In 2019, early ice melt provided a record finish to an annual Alaska guessing game that's been going on for 102 years, officials said. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
"We decided to place exactly one bet on this year’s competition, for April 26th, 2022, at exactly 2:17 p.m. Why? I just have a really good feeling about it," Oliver, who sent his old friend Marshmallow the Polar Bear to deliver his official guess in person, said on his show.
Oliver added that if his guess happens to be the lucky winner, he will donate the entirety of his prize money to the Food Bank of Alaska.
"Well we're just very grateful that John Oliver decided to pick our little contest," Forness said, adding that the organization has not yet been able to tally the number of entries or the jackpot for this year. "It really did help us. I'm sure once we get all the numbers in - we're not gonna be able to track it by how many came from his show - but what we're seeing come in is incredible."
People from all around the world can enter the competition without sending a person dressed in a polar bear costume to Alaska by simply mailing a list of guesses, and $2.50 per guess, to the Nenana Ice Classic. Tickets are sold every year from Feb. 1 to April 5, so would-be-guessers will need to mark their calendars for next year's contest.
The earliest that the ice has given out since the competition began was just three years ago in 2019, when the ice melted at 12:21 a.m. on April 14.
A graphic showing every recorded spring ice breakup on the Tahana River at Nehana since 1917. The graphic shows that the average break-up date is getting earlier. (ACCAP at International Arctic Research Center at UAF).
“It wasn’t just earlier by three hours, either. It was the earliest by over six days,” Rick Thoman, a climate specialist with the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy, told Outside Magazine. “But the larger significance, of course, is the pattern that that fits in. Five of the 10 earliest breakups have occurred since 2010—in a century-long record. It’s hard to argue with that data.”
The contest has been an important source of climatological data, measuring the exact time of the river breakup each year since 1917.
“It’s almost as perfect a climate record as you could get,” Thoman said, noting that the consistent location of the tripod, the fact that there are no dams upstream, the river being a single-channel river, and the isolatedness of the town make for extremely consistent measurements.
This year, it's looking like the ice won't be melting early, at least according to Forness, who is personally forecasting the ice will not break until May.
"We've had a cold, really cold spring, I mean two weeks ago we were still getting [temperatures] 8 below. So it's just been a really different spring, and we still have a lot of snow and it is melting but it's pretty slow," Forness said.
High temperatures have climbed into the 40s recently in Nenana and are forecast to reach the 50s in the coming days, at which point the melting will begin in earnest.
So while there's still a chance for John Oliver and Marshmallow, it's looking like their guess might end up being wrong. However, even if they lose, the show will donate at least $10,000 to the food bank, along with the added benefit of all the extra funding and attention their segment generated for one of the United States' wackiest contests.
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For the latest weather news check back on AccuWeather.com. Watch the AccuWeather Network on DIRECTV, Frontier, Spectrum, fuboTV, Philo, and Verizon Fios. AccuWeather Now is now available on your preferred streaming platform.
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