Posts Tagged ‘weather’
Wonky Weather
When you woke up today, did you realize it was the last day of November? Our weather took a step back toward October yesterday. That served to complicate my assessment of what day and in which month we find ourselves at the moment. Of course, that confusion rides on top of the daily challenge one experiences when living in retirement and not having anywhere one is required to be on any particular day.
Warm sunshine was a welcome change and reduced our snow cover significantly.
Only the areas shaded from the afternoon sun retained evidence snow has already fallen this year. 2023/24 is an El Niño winter year for us, meaning many storm paths will shift to our south. We still may get some snow, but it is predicted we will see more occasions of mixed precipitation or even rain. Not my favorite scenario.
Yesterday’s pleasant weather made it comfortable for the farrier to trim the horse’s hooves. The horses were relaxed when I showed up to put on their halters but by the time the trimming got underway, it was precariously close to their usual feeding hour. With each passing minute, they showed an increasing impatience for feed pans to be delivered and a decreasing interest in standing around calmly for trimming.
Life’s an adventure.
My adventures with Asher were a little different. He was confined to a leash all day but I tried to give him freedom to choose his path. Unfortunately, all he wanted to do was revisit the very same off-property places that got him in trouble the day before. We’d walk a while until I stopped at the limit of our property line and then he’d do a little tugging and redirecting until he gave up and then the same thing would happen further down the line.
It wasn’t very rewarding for either of us, but at least I was able to prevent him from running off. That was a win for me.
My brain is not able to tell that 29 days of November have already passed. Maybe I should be putting an “X” on each day in a calendar as they become history to help my perception. The wonky weather sure isn’t helping me out.
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Global Weirding
The warming of planet Earth does not necessarily mean everywhere just gets warmer all the time, but unusual warmth does tend to happen with increasing frequency.
In our region, the middle of November is not usually a time when we would see someone out mowing their grass. On Tuesday, that is exactly what we saw. November is also not a time most of us associate with dandelion blossoms, but that is what’s showing up in our yard.
It was mid-60sF warm around here yesterday and once again mind-bending for the glimpses of spring-like blossoms showing up at the same time that the woods look like the farthest thing possible away from spring.
It all seems just plain weird. It’s gotten hard to remember we’ve already been completely blanketed by snow for a time earlier this month. That’s become a distant memory now.
The weather forecast for next week hints that it won’t continue to be weird with temperatures predicted to drop into the mid-teens(F) over a few nights in a row.
That will feel downright Thanksgiving-ish.
Between periods of weirdness, it makes sense that we experience a little normalcy every once in a while.
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Misjudged Amount
I thought it was going to be a small amount of slushy snow coating the grass but I guessed wrong. Our first snow of the season covered everything with around three inches of windblown snow.
As ready as we thought we were for winter to arrive, this snow landed on plenty of things I intended to move. Cyndie’s door table in the woods. The furniture on the deck. Potted plants all around the house. Chairs out in the yard.
It’s all stuff that can still be moved without too much trouble. Temperatures are expected to warm up well above freezing in the next few days, but there’s no guarantee how much of the snow will disappear. I’m gonna make another guess and combine it with some hope that almost all of it will vanish.
By the weekend, it looks like a chance of some rain, which would go a long way to finish off any patches of snow that might last that long.
Cyndie landed the first appointment for surgery today, so we are heading out the door before dawn and hoping to have her back home in the recliner by mid-afternoon. Just depends on how quickly she comes to her senses, breathes on her own, and eats a little something.
We are well familiar with the routine.
While she convalesces the next few days, Asher and I can be outside putting away deck furniture. I’m sure he’d love to help me.
When we first met Asher, his foster mom told us he loves snow, so we’ve been looking forward to witnessing it firsthand. His reaction didn’t disappoint. His aura radiated “FUN!” the whole time he was romping around in the white stuff.
Thank you to all who have offered encouraging messages to Cyndie for her metal removal today. We appreciate your support! I’ll provide a full report tomorrow about how smoothly everything went.
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Rain Waves
I picked a good day to go to the movies yesterday, and not just because of the discounted tickets on a Tuesday. Overnight Monday we received such a thunderous downpour I fully expected to find washouts left and right. That didn’t turn out to be the case but then the wave after wave of sometimes frightfully heavy downbursts interspersed among periods of really rainy rain all day had local dry creeks flowing like rivers by the time I returned home.
I drove to Hudson on my own to see, “Killers of the Flower Moon.” The ticket cost me $5.50. A medium bag of popcorn costs $6.25.
On my drive to the theater, I found myself getting closer and closer to a wall of heavy rain ahead. Making my way inside before the heaviest rain fell, I headed directly to the restroom after purchasing my ticket. This movie is 3 hours and 26 minutes long. Need I say more?
The quality of the film lives up to the skill and experience of the people who created it. It feels wrong to find myself appreciating a film about such diabolic events in U.S. history. I’m glad the true story of multiple murders to steal the wealth of an Osage family who profited from oil on their reservation at the turn of the 20th century is getting told. Hopefully, it will keep alive a historical truth that plenty of people would rather not acknowledge.
There was a point during the movie when the roar of the deluge outside pounding on the roof of the theater briefly wrenched the audience’s attention from the cinematic world and then another time a little later when dramatic thunder claps didn’t seem to fit with the action on screen. It took some thinking to separate the two events going on at the same time.
It also takes thinking to comprehend the violence occurring in the world today is tragically similar to countless human casualties perpetrated throughout time. It seems hard to believe the human race hasn’t been able to grow more enlightened than what is represented by deadly conflicts that continue to exist to this day.
Those of us beaming waves of love to the world are going to need to up our game somehow to create hope that a tide can be turned with unprecedented global results toward ending human atrocities.
Imagine beams of love that rain down in waves able to wrench our attention from killing “others” and overflow hearts with visions of peace.
Amen.
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Home Happy
I’m still thoroughly enjoying being home again but last night’s dinner of grilled pork chops left over from one of our fantastic meals up at the lake gave me a moment of hesitation as I mentally revisited the greatness of those days.
It’s a rough comparison since my day yesterday was spent sweating over pulling weeds, running the power trimmer, and mowing grass in the tropical heat wave of the hottest July on record. Who wouldn’t prefer to be back up at the lake?
Well, I’m pretty happy being able to sleep in our usual bed with the conveniences of a bedside table. I really like our shower. I’m spoiled by how much room there is, allowing for soaping up just beyond the spray of water. My regular routine of charging my phone and laptop works best with my home setup.
I like having the manure compost under daily control. Once every week or week and a half is just too much work all at once to get piles cooking efficiently again. Getting grass mowed before it gets too long is also a preference.
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After dinner, we walked the trash and recycle bins down to the road with Asher at our sides, making it back with time to spare before the first wave of thunderstorms arrived overhead. That weather came in with an ominous-looking cloud line and a dramatic burst of tree-bending wind.
The brief duration of the heavy downpour was a bit anti-climatic when that ended up being all that happened.
Not that I was looking for weather trouble. Quite the contrary. We already have the makings of a small canyon in the paddocks where draining rainfall has washed away the lime screenings into the main drainage swale. The battle against gravity and moving water is never ending in my quest to best manage runoff.
I’m afraid it’s time to extricate the back blade from the depths of the shop garage for attaching to the diesel tractor to scrape gravel back “upstream.” I was relatively successful the last time I tried doing that but the exercise remains on the fringe of skills I have acquired on the big tractor. It always feels like I am on the verge of making things a lot worse instead of better.
Regardless, we are home and that is making me as happy as it always does.
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Oops, Snowy
You’d think I would know better. In my post yesterday I gushed about the fact we had dodged the snowfall that places north of us were getting. Sure it was a day of messy, wet precipitation with temperatures hovering so close to freezing it felt challenging to set foot outside. But, at least it wasn’t snowy, I wrote.
Such a naive suburban fool. (Tim Curry lyric, Paradise Garage, 1979.)
Reality was hard to ignore this morning.
Thank goodness, Cyndie offered to allow me to stay in bed while she did horse chores this morning. This is the first time she has taken on the morning routine all by herself since she broke her ankle last November. I’m experiencing a feverish reaction to my shingles vaccination shot administered yesterday morning.
On Thursday, I received notice via email that it was time for my annual health checkup with my doctor. Using their online system, I found an available appointment for the following day and filled out all the questionnaires remotely in advance. I was in and out with ease in about 45 minutes but walked away with a jab in each arm. One was to draw blood for my glucose and cholesterol level checks and the other was the first of two shingles shots.
I am thoroughly impressed by the efficiency of our clinic. They sent notice before the day was out that my test results were already available to view. Blood glucose and cholesterol numbers continue to run a little high, which is normal for me, but I am pleased that all of the cholesterol readings had improved since a year ago. My methods are slow but progress in the right direction serves as validation that my good habits are paying off over time.
Knock on wood.
I don’t want my choice to write about the good fortunes of my health status to go the way of my rejoicing over not getting more snow in April.
Who knows what tomorrow might bring? How about we visualize sunshine and warmth for a little change of pace for a few days. And continued good health, too!
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Temporary Reprieve
Yesterday morning’s wintery start was a bitter pill to swallow but the afternoon arrived with just enough sunshine to make the snow nothing but a memory.
We get a day or two of reprieve from a threat of more snow until the chances go up again by Friday. Ooh, I can’t wait… said no one ever about more snow in April.
Last week I pulled the inserts out of my insulated work boots and transferred them to my non-insulated boots. I didn’t switch them back just because of one little snowstorm and wore my summer boots to feed the horses at the start of the day. It proved to me how well my insulated boots work in keeping my feet warm. It didn’t take long for me to get cold feet in the non-insulated boots.
If you look closely at the fence in the image above there are clues of a spring project that is high on my priority list. The fence in the foreground is leaning from what I fear may be the weight of horses leaning into it to scratch their itches. In the board fence near Light in the distance, there is a high post that needs to get pounded down. Actually, there are a lot of posts that deserve to be pounded down. They get pushed up by the freezing and thawing cycle.
I’d love to have the ease of simply pressing on the posts with the weight of the loader bucket on the diesel tractor but the ground is too soft for driving that heavy machine around. It would do more damage than good. That leaves the task of hand-pounding with the tool I customized for just this purpose. All I need is a yardstick, a step ladder, and a spotter to read the pounding progress on the ruler.
As long as the post keeps moving, I keep pounding until we reach a target height. If it stops moving beneath my pounding, I need to save my energy and not waste effort that isn’t producing results. Some posts have moved easily in the past and others not so much.
Upper body workout ahead. Arms day is a-comin’.
It’s a great feeling when fence posts are all re-seated before the ground dries out and becomes rock hard again. Not that different from how it feels to have growing things trimmed and shaped prior to the spring growth spurts.
Everything in its time.
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Weather Whiplash
We had been warned but I just didn’t want to believe the weather would swing as far as forecasts suggested. From almost 90°F to a blizzard of blowing snow in a matter of days. It was bad enough that the snow finally began to get the upper hand and cover everything white yesterday but the startling blasts of intense wind gusts last night had us flinching even though we were witnessing it from the comfort of being tucked under blankets in our bed.
At least the drizzly rain we received on Saturday was quickly bringing our green grass to life before it got covered in snow.
The white stuff started to stick in the woods first.
When it gets hot, it gets too hot. When it gets cold, it gets too cold. When it rains, it rains too hard. Every day we aren’t being pushed up against one of these extremes is a day we should celebrate and cherish. With abusive weather getting more oppressive, there is an increased importance for us to take full advantage of calm days when we have that chance.
Especially, when the swings between extremes are happening more often and with shorter pauses between.
There wasn’t a lot of good news to be had in the two PBS Nova episodes we watched last night about extreme weather and Arctic sinkholes. Ruh-roh.
No melting permafrost feedback cycles happening at our house. The structure suffered some scary creaking under the gusts of wind overnight though. I’ll need to do an inventory of the deck furniture that I recently put out on the deck when it was as hot as a day in July last week.
My brain feels whiplashed just thinking about the quick weather switches between extremes. I will wholeheartedly welcome the next span of boring weather days that arrive after this latest wintery blast. Bah, humbug.
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Weather Related
Just in case you didn’t expect me to write about the weather today, I put it in the title to give you a warning. Where would I be if I didn’t have the topic of the weather to resort to when nothing fantastical happens worth telling? If you ask Cyndie, she’d say we need to get another dog. I find myself in hesitation mode about making that commitment again.
Speaking of the weather, I would like to present “exhibit A” as a photo to show how the increasing angle of the sun is having a visible impact on our snowpack even during the last few days when we experienced single-digit temperatures that felt ripped right out of January:
The right side of the driveway receives a direct blast of sunshine on blue-sky days while the left side does not.
Another phenomenon we are witnessing is the growing icy mounds where flowing meltwater, under pressure from the terrain, pushes up and re-freezes into surprising-looking high spots of particular hazard to hoofed navigation.
The area beneath the old willow tree in the small paddock has melted down to the dirt but the snowpack glacier a short distance beyond is currently getting thicker as melting occurs uphill and flows down to re-freeze right in front of a gate opening.
The horses wisely refrain from venturing out onto the icy surface.
Much less wise was Light’s decision to bolt in an unnecessary panic to get past me and away from Mix when Swings decided to walk over to the other side of the overhang. Swings had been successively switching sides as she waited for me to finish my housekeeping work before serving up feed yesterday morning. Light had made it a mission to follow along with Swings each time.
That meant I was frequently needing to work around their feet as they intruded on and then evacuated from the space where I was trying to scoop manure. On the last iteration of this dance, Light suddenly decided she needed to hurry to keep up with Swings. Light torqued to avoid me by about an inch but that put her off balance as she was passing through the narrow space of the single fence section that is opposite the swinging gates.
I watched with alarm as the weight of her body pushed against the fence boards, flexing them dramatically –I prepared for them to give way, but they held– before her leg slammed into the post at the other end, jolting her a bit as she continued beyond it. That brought her free to stop behind Swings who was by then standing idly.
It all happened so fast that there was nothing I could do but stare in shock over the spectacle. I noticed Light pick up her front leg and bend the joints in a way that I interpreted as her saying, “Damn! That hurt!”
I fully expected to find remnants of her hide stuck to the post after that but I didn’t find any visible damage on her or the post.
When the footing improves in the rest of the paddock spaces, I think the horses are going to be very happy to spend more time away from the close quarters under the overhang.
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Obvious Evidence
Based on all the mice caught in our traps throughout the winter, it should come as no surprise that they navigate the harsh elements as well as long-legged wildlife, but I am always intrigued by the obvious evidence rodents are burrowing beneath the snow.
Despite the frigid overnight temperatures greeting me bitterly at each morning feeding the last few days, it appears one little critter was busy making tracks.
There is also obvious evidence of the increasing angle of sunshine and its growing influence by way of melting that is occurring despite the chilly air temperatures. That will prove to be a benefit when it comes to the threat of spring flooding. There is a deeper snowpack now than we’ve had in many years and if it were to melt all at once, flooding would likely occur.
There is an additional aspect that could dramatically influence whether we have any troublesome flooding this spring or not and that is the amount of rain that will fall in spring storms. Based on a recent video released by our county’s historical society, flooding from heavy rain can happen at any time of year. In 1942 there was a flooding rain that happened in September.
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When I saw this video the first time, I realized I would quickly blame the extent of warming of our planet if this kind of flooding rain happened today. In my lifetime, I’ve never seen rain of the intensity described by Dr. James Vedder happen in the fall. But it did happen back in 1942.
Flooding rain fell in July of 1879 and washed away a mill and flooded my great-great-grandfather’s house a little over ten miles south of where we live now.
To me, this is obvious evidence that the steep ravines and many rivers of the “driftless region,” of which our county is included, are susceptible to flooding from heavy rain.
I wonder how many mice survive that kind of extreme weather.
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Relative Something 