Kodiak residents take stormy Crab Festival in stride - Anchorage Daily News
Within days there was green everywhere. It started along the edge of the road, budded on alders and salmonberry bushes that were soon waving starry pink blossoms, and crept up the mountains toward shrinking patches of snow. Even the birds passing through to breeding grounds on the mainland seemed to extend their stay, puttering like vacationers around the beaches at Women's Bay.
On our second sunny day, I counted 16 cars waiting at the drive-through car wash. After a week of sunshine, we were a different town. We soon felt entitled to this perfect weather for the annual community clean up, the start of the Kodiak King Salmon Derby and the entire summer. We skipped socks for flip-flops and displayed pale legs and arms. Teenagers watched softball games on couches they had shoved into pickup beds. Our 2-year-old, Liam, learned to say "bumblebee," "motorcycle" and "I help grandpa garden."
In Kodiak sunshine causes memory loss. It only took a few weeks of blue sky to forget last May, when 14 inches of rain made it the wettest May on record. We forgot that the total precipitation last year was 87 inches. And we forgot that it almost always rains during the Crab Festival held over Memorial Day weekend.