Ebbie, your beautiful description of Junea, Alaska, (in a temperate rainforest) has just blown all my ideas of what Alaska is like..

its great reading about the hot & cold in all these places.. just had coffee with a neighbour who has just driven back to sydney from Victoria (further south) - they drove through 60k of snowfields from Yass to Goulburn in NSW - so Thats why we're so cold here!