Posts Tagged ‘winter weather’
Order Restored
What a difference a new weather system makes. The travesty of rain-ravaged snow cover and meltwater flowing in the ditches has ended for now, replaced by frigid temperatures and two days of tiny, flying flakes of snow.
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Order has been restored as far as winter conditions are concerned. Order has also been restored regarding the rabbit population around here. After a few years of seeing very little evidence of the busy little bunnies, it appears they have succeeded in recovering their numbers.
The residual spilled senior feed around the horses’ placemats seems to be a real attraction for them. There is a rabbit super-highway from brush piles in the trees to the corner of the barn overhang.
On a walk yesterday afternoon, Asher and I came upon Light and Mia foraging together along the fenceline of the large paddock. I was happy to see Mia looking engaged and hanging out with Light. As I was spending time visiting with them, my presence attracted Mix’s attention. Soon, all four horses made their way past where I was standing into the back pasture, where Light hooked up with Swings to do a little frisky trotting around together, and Mix stayed back with Mia.
Upon our return from a stroll around the north loop, Asher and I found all four horses had moved out to the hay field and were congregated near the fence. It looked like order had been restored among the herd. Almost.
Poor Mia still wasn’t looking like she was feeling very inspired about life. I was really pleased to see her connecting with the other three again, but the energy she was displaying did not end my concern that she’s not feeling her absolute best.
The extreme cold bearing down on us won’t be a pleasant situation for her to endure if she’s at a low ebb.
Cyndie is away for a few days, so it will be up to Asher and me to make sure we are giving Mia extra attention, making plenty of hay easily accessible for her under the overhang. When it gets really cold, we toss out loose flakes of baled hay that they don’t need to work through a hay net to eat.
Hopefully, my energy isn’t dragging Mia down. Her sad appearance presents an opportunity for me to compartmentalize my gloom over the ongoing threats to residents in Minnesota from Federal ICE agents (and now, potentially, military troops) so it won’t bleed over to the horses. They deserve to have me show up with a clear head and peaceful, loving energy in their presence.
If I can find a way to achieve that, it will be beneficial for all of us.
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Icier Still
Hydrostatic pressure pushing water to flow in the dead of winter remains a mystery to me. It doesn’t seem like liquid water should be able to make its way to the surface of a frozen landscape.
When we delicately make our way to the paddocks with temperatures in the single digits (F) in the morning, it surprises me to see new evidence that overnight water moved downstream in the typical routes it flows all summer, but it is somehow doing it as a glacier of flowing ice.
Did I mention that it’s like we live in a science lab?
We didn’t receive enough new flakes of snow yesterday to offset the loss of ice occurring through sublimation along the edges. It definitely didn’t provide an improvement in traction on the slippery surfaces.
The next weather system offering chances of new precipitation arrived overhead while we were tending to the horses.
I hauled a few loads of dry firewood in preparation for snuggling in front of the fireplace in the next few days. That’s one of our preferred ways of enjoying the sight of falling snow from our cozy indoor perches. I’m hoping to find fresh snow on the ground when daylight arrives this morning.
Asher spent much of his outdoor time yesterday gnawing on the dessicated carcass of a rabbit he found. It didn’t take long for Cyndie to decide he needed to be done with that pursuit, which led to us scraping up the furry bits that remained stuck to the icy snow to be bagged and disposed of in the trash.
To his credit, Asher didn’t fret too much over the cancellation of that fun and quickly turned his attention to the Jolly Ball with a frozen rope through the middle, ever-present in the yard. He played long and hard with me until finally bailing on the ball and racing around in zoomies mode.
He knew Cyndie was in the barn and kept checking in that direction while we were playing. After his last pass of zooming, he sprinted as fast as I’ve ever seen down the driveway, getting out of my sight for just a moment. I immediately began walking after him, noticing he was no longer on the driveway. I scanned left and right, but figured there was no way he could have made the sharp left turn at the speed he was moving.
I kept walking along the driveway, wondering if he was around the hay shed. Then I noticed the door to the barn was not fully closed. It seemed unlikely that he would have been able to slow down enough on that ice to make his way around to the open side of the door before I would have been able to see him, but he was nowhere else to be found.
Checking with Cyndie, I heard her confirm he was in there with her. You’d think by now I’d realize how much faster he can move than my sense of time and space perceives as possible.
PS: It is not lost on me that we are having ice problems at Wintervale at the same time the Twin Cities metro area is inundated with ICE agents in their masked cosplay costumes of military tactical gear. ICE goons give our ice situation a worse reputation than it really deserves.
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Freeze Dried
There are days when a walk outside on our property feels like we are living in a high school science lab. Whether it’s Physics or Chemistry, the atmospheric conditions pretty much dominate everything. We intimately witness the emphatic difference between dead calm and gale-force winds, a transition that can happen in a startlingly short span of time.
Evidence of cold contracting materials and heat expanding them becomes an auditory experience with our log home as it creaks and groans, snaps and pops as the wood reacts.
After our most recent January thaw, the air made a swift swing to a hard freeze. Snow that was mushy on top and soaking wet at the base became a solid block overnight.
Around the edges of anything icy, we get to see one of my favorite winter phenomena: sublimation. The H2O molecules skip the liquid phase and transition from solid to gas, expanding invisibly into the cold, dry air above. Surfaces that appeared to be soaking wet during Tuesday’s meltdown froze solid overnight. By yesterday afternoon, a majority of the driveway had been freeze-dried. The same applies to most of the shingles on the roof and the boards of the house’s deck.
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We put blankets on the other three horses yesterday afternoon in advance of expected precipitation today, to be followed by a reasonable cold snap.
Each blanket has straps on the inside that get routed around each of their back legs to hold the sides of the blanket in place. A week or two ago, Cyndie reported finding a stray strap lying in the snow. It looked like one of those side straps to me. We both assumed that one of the horses had managed to ‘toss’ it from their blanket.
Here is one of life’s little mysteries that keeps things interesting, and yes, it is related to “assuming.” The last blanket we put on was Swings’ and when I didn’t find a side strap on my side, I asked Cyndie to bring me the strap she had found in the snow, assuming the puzzle was solved.
Imagine my surprise when I reached up under the blanket, trying to locate the D-ring to clip the strap to, and found there was already a strap connected to it that I hadn’t noticed. The strap had gotten hung up over her back instead of hanging down like the rest of the straps to be attached.
So the question remains, where did the strap Cyndie found in the snow come from? We have no idea.
It’s a good thing we are only caring for 4 horses. I can’t imagine trying to keep track of things for a larger herd, given the number of times things get confusing with just our quartet of mares.
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Winter Wonderland
Well, it looks like we got the upper end of the predicted snowfall depth range. I know what I’ll be doing all day today. We postponed a lunch date so we can focus on clearing snow around here and avoid dodging snowplows clearing the rural roads.
Asher is in his glory over all the snow.
“Are we going outside yet?”
“How ‘bout now?”
We envy him his natural coat that allows immediate departure into the elements. He waits (mostly) patiently for us to don all our gear. When the door opens, and he hears permission granted, he bolts through it and leaps off the steps to race into the snow.
His favorite yard toys are Jolly Balls with rope strung through the middle of them. I guess the appeal is that he can both chase after it when we’ve heaved it as far as we can, and he can entice us into a battle of tug-of-war when he brings it back.
While we were out on a morning walk, before the snowstorm reached us, I spotted a single snowflake floating down out of the sky, triggering these curiosities:
- Does this also happen in the summer? Are there ever single raindrops that drop out of a cloud?
- Is it atypical for one snowflake or one raindrop to fall before any others in a precipitation event?
Eventually, a lot of flakes were falling at the same time.
With the base layer already in place, this new snow is going to make it look like a winter wonderland around here. I will need to wear snowshoes to pack down a path for walking Asher on all of our trails.
In the short time I was down at the barn feeding the horses in the afternoon, my bootprints on the driveway provided a reference for how fast the snow was accumulating.
I suspect those will be barely noticeable this morning. When Cyndie took Asher out for one last pee before bedtime, it was hard for her to push the storm door open against the snow piling up.
That tells me I’ll have my work cut out for me plowing it all.
This will not be one of the winters with concerns about whether or not we will have a white Christmas.
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Snow Maybe
It’s close. We can see it on the weather radar. Our county is under a Winter Weather Advisory today as a snow system is slowly making its way across our region from west to east. It appears that the bulk of the impact will be to our south, which puts us in the “maybe” category regarding the amount of accumulated snow we will need to shovel or plow.
Just in case it piles up, I spent some time yesterday pulling the plow blade from the back of the garage and getting it mounted on the Grizzly.
It took ‘some time’ because the long arms of the mounting frame, combined with the weight and width of the blade, make it rather unwieldy to maneuver.
The real problem lies in the fact that I can almost move it sufficiently all on my own, so I am too often inclined to try. Yesterday’s effort bordered on ridiculous and held potential for several troublesome failures as I wrestled it around a variety of obstacles to get it to the front of the ATV. Ultimately, I accomplished it without incident.
Once there, I needed to envision a creative way to connect the hook and winch cable that lifts the blade, since the cobbled method from last winter proved to be ill-advised. I’m not confident that my latest iteration will be adequate, but it’s a start.
If history serves as a guide, I will be forced to revise the setup when it fails in the dark, when it is cold, and I am in the middle of a huge plowing effort. That’s always a great time to work on kludged solutions.
Since yesterday’s weather was a perfect calm before the storm type of day, I decided to move a fresh batch of bales from the hay shed to the barn. Upon opening the big door of the hay shed, the aroma of moldy hay was becoming too prominent to ignore.
Our several-year-old ploy of leaving old bales as a base layer on which we stack new hay needs a change. Cyndie swept down cobwebs while we contemplated the effort it will take to remove the nasty bales.
The first challenge will be that the twine will likely have degraded to a point of failure when we try to pick up the bales. The second challenge is where we will dispose of the moldy mass. I may or may not dabble in the project while beautiful flakes are floating down this afternoon.
Light was keeping an eye on the distant horizon between mouthfuls of her feed this morning. The insulating property of her winter growth is visible in the snow that doesn’t melt on her back.
She looks so gorgeous, it’s hard to fathom how skinny she was when rescued as a starving momma in a kill pen in Kansas years back. The tips of her mane look like she has them colored at some fancy salon.
These horses deserve to be fed the best hay we can find, and to keep it stored in a way that keeps it fresh until the last bottom bale is reached.
Cleaning the hay shed today will be a labor of love.
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Adjustment Time
It looks like we have reached the point in our change of seasons where the temperature will drop below freezing and stay there for a while. We have had almost two full winters of temperatures frequently rising above freezing, and it’s reached the point where it’s become my expectation. I’m going to need to adjust my mindset and acclimatize my body for something closer to old-fashioned winters real quick.
When the temps stay below freezing day and night, lake ice finally gets a chance to become thick enough for skaters and ice fishing fans. The ground will begin to freeze, and without snow cover to provide insulation, it will freeze deeper and deeper into the dirt. Then, when we finally do get a decent snowfall, it won’t start melting from the bottom up.
It just might make me feel like a kid again.
Yesterday, I updated the braided bale twine we wrap around one of the posts supporting the barn overhang. Can you tell the difference between the old and the new in the photo?
The horses have proven they like to rub against it. Covering the wooden post protects the horses from getting splinters and keeps them from chewing on the wood. Finding this creative use for the twine cut from hay bales keeps the polypropylene out of the waste stream.
I decided to do the wrapping while the horses were being served their feed for the afternoon, but I started before the feed buckets were brought out. They showed a healthy curiosity about what I was up to. Light seemed to think the new braid I brought out was for them to chew on.
After Cyndie served up their buckets, she helped me with the exercise of going around and around in what felt like an endless number of circles to tightly stretch the braid on every corner.
Now the horses can rub against a wider span of the bumpy braid when the rain blankets we just put on them again become bothersome.
Rubbing against the posts is a much better option than against the hay nets that Mix was trying to use. The metal clips on the blanket were getting snagged in the netting while we were standing there, and unfortunately, they don’t rely on finesse to get themselves out of such situations.
Hopefully, the horses will adjust quickly enough to the cold temperatures that we can remove the blankets when the current bout of precipitation moves off to the east.
Accumulating snow can’t be far off in our future. It would be great if the next batch of precipitation coming our way wouldn’t start as rain.
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It Snowed!
Around the time we headed out to feed the horses in the late afternoon yesterday, it was beginning to drizzle. By the time we finished, the precipitation was changing over to sleet. After our dinner, snow was beginning to collect on the ground.
When Cyndie took Asher outside for one last pee, she said the snow was pelting them and it was very sticky underfoot.
I turned on the barn camera to check the view:
Those flakes were falling straight down.
A couple of hours later, the snow was floating around a little more:
At bedtime last night, there was already about an inch piling up on the deck railings. From the way the radar looked at that time, I’m expecting we will have received the upper end of the predicted 3 to 4 inches by this morning.
It was even snowing up in Hayward, where we will be this weekend. Another week after that, the annual American Birkebeiner ski race will happen. It has been significantly modified in length and route due to the snowless winter.
It’s not like a real winter but with any instances of accumulating snowfall, it sort of rhymes with winter for a short time.
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Conditions Soften
The winter months this season have been about as soft as I’ve experienced in this region compared to all the years my somewhat feeble memory has retained while living in what is described as the upper midwestern United States. The previous week has been the only period of dramatic cold temperatures and that bone-chilling Arctic blast has already begun to release its stinging grip.
The relaxing of the horses’ energy is palpable. They are stoic beasts in the face of the worst weather that nature manages to conjure up. They may display a bit of shortened patience while we stumble around to complete our tasks in minus thirty-degree (F) wind chill, but they stand firm and resolute against the oppressive pressures of extreme cold.
When the temperature climbs back to positive numbers, we can feel the release of tension their bodies have been holding in defense against the elements. That’s when I noticed the same thing was happening to me this morning.
I can breathe without frost forming on my whiskers, bolstered by the knowledge a January thaw is on tap in the days ahead. The only catch with the arrival of above-freezing temps is that any precipitation that might show up at the same time could fall as rain, my absolute least favorite winter condition.
Winter rain just leads to winter ice. Yuck. And the horses agree with me on that assessment.
I’ve had the pleasure of enjoying fancy winter lighting in the sky recently.
Always remember to look straight up in the sky to capture some great views.
I don’t know how to find a pot of gold at the end of that rainbow, but it was a treat watching the light play in the wisps of clouds in the sky.
A day or two later, an unexplained streak of cloud (remains of a contrail?) caught my eye because of the fiery refraction of sunlight at the end.
Something tells me the warmer air moving in won’t offer daytime light shows like the icy skies just did.
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Brutal Weather
Have I mentioned how much I detest rain in winter? Yes. Yes, I have mentioned it. Yesterday, we got everything the weather forecast promised. Starting with a freezing drizzle that was barely perceptible, beyond the fact the handles of my tools were developing a slippery coating. That transitioned into plain old sleet which then magically turned into a brief spurt of rainfall. Just enough rain to make a mess of everything.
Might as well top that off with some heavy snow, eh? You know, that 1-2 inch-per-hour rate stuff. Luckily, we caught a break as the system spun and our region only received a short amount of that snow before we were graced with a few hours in the eye of the storm, void of any precipitation.
If you were a horse in this kind of weather, what would you do?
After a few days without blankets, I covered the horses back up on Monday while they were dry to give them some protection from the wetness that arrived yesterday. Now, just because they have blankets on, that is no reason to become heedless of the elements.
Apparently, the chestnuts, Light, and Mia, figured they would be protected beneath the bare branches of the dying willow tree in the small paddock.
I have no idea if they noticed it wasn’t doing much toward keeping them dry.
I don’t know what Mix was thinking.
So close. Maybe, once she got her head out of the falling ice/flakes/raindrops, she figured that was good enough.
If I were a horse, I hope I would choose the option Swings smartly relies upon for comfort and well-being.
Dry as can be, which is quite a feat in the kind of weather giving us the business yesterday. The kind of winter weather that conjures up the word brutal in my mind.
Plowing and shoveling was a bitch. It’s heart-attack snow. It’s hurt your back shoveling kind of snow. It is “slip while trying to shovel” conditions. It’s just. Plain. Brutal.
How many days till spring?
Not that I’m counting, or anything. When I was younger, winter was my favorite season.
When I was younger, it didn’t rain in the winter.
When I was younger, brutal just meant a LOT of snow, maybe a little drifting wind. Sometimes really cold. Since I wasn’t responsible for plowing or shoveling as a kid, winter storms were all fun with occasional cold wrists in the gap between my mittens and the sleeves of my snowsuit.
Getting old can be brutal.
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Ventured Out
Apparently, the horses were just waiting for nightfall to venture out into the deep snow covering the hay field. Their meandering trails made for an interesting pattern beneath the colorful dawn sky yesterday morning.
It was around -5°(F) but the horses appeared unperturbed by the cold, even though there was frost on some of their whiskers and eyelashes. By noon, it had warmed to the mid-teens and their attitude had noticeably changed.
They showed a much greater interest in stuffing themselves with hay at noon. That preoccupation was a helpful distraction, allowing me to put blankets on all of them in advance of extreme weather coming in the days ahead. I think they were wise to the threat and were stoking their furnaces in advance.
Probably why they were so accepting of my fumbling around to get the blankets on them. They seem to sense what lies ahead in the weather department.
I got the barn and hay shed loop plowed yesterday and it was just as tricky as I suspected because of the depth of the snow. By taking it slow and moving half-plow-blade amounts of snow at a time, I accomplished my goal. After parking the ATV back in the shop garage, I headed down to clean up the edges with a shovel and was surprised to find the feed delivery van parked at the barn, unloading bags.
They showed up a day early to avoid making deliveries in wild weather.
It’s a good thing I ventured out to plow when I did. This incident encourages me to not let things wait until the last minute. If I had waited any longer to get that part of the drive plowed, those 50 lb. bags of feed would be piled in the snow at the edge of the driveway and I would have been carrying them down to the barn by myself.
Sounds like winter is going to come in like a lion this year. There’ll be no worrying about whether or not it will be a white Christmas around these parts.
Ho, ho, ho.
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Relative Something 