Bogieblog

In Like a Lamb, Out Like a Lion

Well, March was interesting. We had a mild February and March seemed to be more of the same - until the 2nd half of it. Last weekend, was a mess. I received about 6" of snow, then several inches of sleet/rain, then a couple more inches of snow. Other areas, got more than 2' of snow (no ice/rain).

A lot of people lost power and in both my town and surrounding areas, a large amount were without power for 3-4 days. Between the heavy snow and wind, trees were coming down left and right taking down power lines, poles and blowing transformers. Didn't help that the weather forecast didn't call for nearly as much ice accumulation, so the power company didn't stage as much material or out of state manpower as they normally would. Oh, and temps went down to the teens so everything froze solid

It was such a mess that I actually paid someone to plow the berm at the end of the driveway that evening. I hadn't done any clean up of the driveway or paths - although I did have the foresight to clear the gate fences. So, the next couple of days, I was chipping away all the ice from the driveway. Getting my truck bare of snow/ice took over an hour - and I use a windshield cover, so that was the easy part.

Icy trees the morning after the storm (3-24-2024)

Despite a bright, sunny day after the storm, at 5:30 pm the trees were still iced up

And look, here come a Nor'easter for Tuesday into late Thursday (from New England Weather Guy FB page)

Keep in mind that I am more likely to receive what the color coating states (12-16"). But higher terrains may get a couple of feet. Of course it is always possible I could be in those higher ranges too, just unlikely.

 

Spring Starts with Winter Storm

Spring snow isn't unusual for NH. This year we've had a dearth of snow storm, especially those of any decent productions, and the ski areas shut down early and I haven't used a snow shovel in about a month (and the snow blower only a couple of times the entire winter. Now this is blowing in courtesy of a western system and southern system joining forces.

Depending on the source, I'm due for anywhere between 4" and 12" of snow.

From our local station

 

But then Cloudboy puts me at 4-8"with this little disclaimer (I'm the far north Monadnock region)

Then late morning/early afternoon I'm set to get 4-5 hours of sleet/mix, then maybe more snow after dark as the storm wraps back around. It will certainly be a mess.

On another note: A couple of weeks ago I attached several pictures of the cats, and couldn't figure out why 1 of them was repeated and the one of Big Boy was left out. I discovered if I try to upload more than 1 photo at the same time, it just uploads the first photo several times (even though it shows the various photos in the upload box - I even positioned them in a different order). So, let's see, now that it has been fixed that I can actually upload photos on the first try, but can now I can only do so 1 at a time or it loses its mind. The ways they figure out how to mess up my blogging experience over the past year or so is amazing. At least I'm not getting the error that won't allow my to post anymore, so I'll take it.

Curious Going ons Next Door

Last Monday we had a rain system move in. It dumped anywhere from 2.5" (at my place) to 6+" up north. This was bad news as the ground is frozen so the rain had nowhere to go. But it was especially bad up north where they had a good snow cover, which melted from the warm temps and rain. There were a lot of road wash outs and housed flooded, as well as some bridges taken out. In this video, you can see a water truck being washed down a river (ironic, I know). I also saw videos on FB of huge propane tanks floating away - I think there were 3-4 of the tanks in total.

Tuesday I noticed that the builder of the house next door (at the former swamp) visited for a short while. That house is still empty, but I just figured they were finishing up a couple of things as the inspection had taken place the week before. The builder left the light over the garage on, as well as the basement light for the room where the regular door is situated. I was grumbling to myself that it was shining in my kitchen bay window. A short time later, I heard the backup beeping of a truck. Well, there came a uhaul backing in. It was a smaller uhaul, so couldn't hold much. A SUV I'd never seen was also there.

I figured the person for whom the house was built was moving in and the small uhaul was just to get them in for the night. BUT, I haven't seem or heard any more moving vehicles. And curiously, the SUV stays parked outside, not in the garage, which is big enough for the vehicle. Thursday, upon hearing a backup beeper, I saw that the cable company was there and hooking up service.

I put 2 and 2 together, and came up with perhaps this person is someone using the house because they got flooded out for now. That may or may not be the case - only time will tell.

And, BTW, NH did not get as hard as Maine did, where nearly 400,000 were affected by power outages. After getting NH all set, Friday morning 12 volunteer power crews went to ME to help out getting things up and running. I personally know someone in ME who just got power back yesterday and their town's small grocery store got completely washed out. He said he knows people that still don't have power (as of last night) and have no way of leaving their houses because of road conditions.

Never a good time of year for this sort of thing to happen, but I'm sure it hit those affected especially hard being Christmas time.

Very Wet Summer

I haven't talked about rain in a while as it has really slowed down in the last couple of weeks. On the local news last night, they broke it down:

Concord, NH, although having a wet summer (note - meteorological summer is June thru August), it was only the 13th wettest on record. Here is the article/video if interested (which is where I got this screen shot from).

However, other places got much more. Sunapee is a lot closer to me than Concord, but I'm pretty sure I didn't get quite that much as the last couple of big rain-makers missed me. (this pic taken during the TV broadcast).

Mount Washington definitely had it's all time record this summer. The previous record was broken back on August 9, at a bit less than 39".

My guess is that I got right in between Concord and Sunapee totals, so around 20" during those 3 months.

How's that Forcast Working Out for You?

I find this somewhat funny. I'm not a climate change denier. I just happen to think that climate changes all the time all by itself. There are a lot of factors involved, including those outside of Earth's atmosphere - and most of those factors we don't even understand on an individual scope. I don't doubt that mankind affects the climate to a degree, but to what degree and how we would go about reversing it (or if it is worth it in socio/economic sense) is a different animal.

So anyway, this post isn't to debate climate change (and I won't, so please don't bother commenting if you just want to argue your position). This post is about how difficult it is to actually predict what is going to happen in the near term (relatively speaking). The other day the local weather guy was telling us how NH has had a fairly cool summer. One point in case is that we haven't had a day over 90 yet this August, which is unusual (sorry, you have to watch a short ad to see the video).

We have had a very wet, dark summer. that has kept the solar gain to a minimum (ask my solar array - the peak performance was in May, before this weather pattern got stuck in place). Anyway, I happened to run into this forecast put out by NOAA (thru NPR) in May

 

They completely missed the mark for New England (or at least northern New England - IDK about the southern portion). They may have expected the jet stream to act one way, and it acted differently. They may have been going off of ocean temperatures at the time - IIRC, the coastal waters off NH were way warmer than normal in May (average is in high 40's and I think it was in the high 50's at the time).

Although production from my solar arrays has not been as good as expected after seeing May's numbers, I am happy that NOAAs prediction for this area was off. I haven't run the mini split much, which offsets the reduction in energy production. I am still exporting plenty of power - except this past Friday, I actually used more than I made because I had to use the clothes drier a couple of times.

Windy Summer 2023

NH gets tornado warnings a couple of time a year on average. There were 4-5 a couple of weeks ago, but those were just radar indicated and nothing materialized. This past Thursday, there was a tornado warning that started in the southwestern part of the state and then continued along a straight line as the cell barreled due east from that point. At the time, it was radar indicated.

Shortly after the tornado warning was put out, a trained weather spotter reported a tornado in the Keene/Swanzey area. Shortly after someone took a video of a rotating wall. Later in Dublin there was a path of destruction that took down trees and wires, shutting down the rt 101 corridor for hours until crews could get it cleared. I had assumed that it was a microburst or straight line winds.

By last night it was confirmed that it was an EF1 tornado. The funnel was the same as had hit the western part of the state, it just didn't stay on the ground so skipped some areas. I also heard it was 200 yards wide, although that isn't in the article.

The article has drone footage of the damage in Dublin. Fortunately no one was hurt, but around the Dublin school there is plenty of damage (not to the buildings), and someone shut down a solar station before it got hit (quick thinking).

Weather and Flora

The weather over the last month has been wacky and affected a lot of the outdoor plants. First we had a freeze (not a frost) the middle of May or so. The Japanese Maple got bit hard as did some other pants. The Rose of Sharons and Burgundy Bell maple were just getting leaf buds, which were totally destroyed (they are starting to leaf out again though). Japanese maple then Burgundy Belle pictures taken 5/22/23.

Then, last week we went from being in the 60's to two days in the 90's, which caused stress to hostas, lupines and other pants. Doesn't help we didn't get any measurable precipitation for nearly 3 weeks.

We got wild storms Friday night where 5 buildings and a person were hit by lightning in the general vicinity (2 of those happening in the adjacent town of Antrim) and there was also a brush fire started by lightning. Unfortunately, we only saw about 1/8" of rain out of it. (following is from SWNH FB page)

But, I took pictures of flowers that were not affected by the freeze on Friday afternoon just before the storms hit. First are the Rhodies at their peak. The purple ones out fron are again stunning. I manipulated the red rhodie pic to more accurately show the color as phones/cameras want to make them pinker than they truly are.

Although most lupine plants were badly wilted from the lack of rain, this one managed to bloom. And, with cooler temps and the little rain we did get, the other lupine plants were looking better onsaturday.

Columbine

Variegated Weigala (I cannot get the pink to stand out as it does when personally viewing

I have been impressed by  "Fruit Punch pinks" in the south side garden. I bought and planted them in early May and they have been blooming non-stop - even shrugging off the freeze and the fact that I haven't watered them since planting.

Yesterday the high was 61 - at 12:01 am. The daytime temp was 51-53 and heavily overcast so no solar heat gain. The main floor pellet stove ran once yesterday afternoon and is running right now (5:30 am). It will be cool and heavily overcast for another couple of days, so it will most likely run  a few more times before it is time to put it to rest for the season.

The baptisia is just starting to flower so should come into its own in a week or so .I also saw a miniature root beer iris bloom yesterday, but failed to get a picture.

So despite the wild swings in weather, it seems that I am having a fairly good year for color in the gardens.

Nor'Easter March 2023

The northeast got slammed by a nor'easter that started late afternoon of 3/13 and ended early morning of 3/15. The power went out at 11:30 am on Tuesday and was out until at 11:15 am on Thursday (just shy of 48 hours). Then it went out again at 12:30 am Friday morning, and was restored 9:30 am the same day. So a total of 57 hours without power.

Not only was power out, but my cell phone had no phone calls or texts from 5:30 pm  Tuesday until about 4:30 pm on 3/17. That is not entirely accurate as there was one point on Wednesday that I could text my sister and let her know I was alive on Thursday (but some texts didn't send so it was a very short window). Interestingly, I still had FB and other apps, although they did run fairly slowly. However, all I really wanted to do was keep up on the town FB page in case I could offer help to others - plus keep the 71-73 people that were on my particular outage area apprised of how it was going.

The outage started at the pole in my yard, so I always knew when the line workers were there. Pic from the second outage where they had to replace the transformer (first outage had 4 trucks there - 2 big and 2 small. 2nd outage there were 8 trucks). The power company claimed that both outages were caused by tree limbs, but as you can see, there are no trees even close (they had come out 2 months ago and cut down any trees that were there). Nor were there any limbs when I went out to look prior to the workers getting there. My bet is the transformer had just reached its lifespan.

I endured the outage pretty well with a Ryobi power station that I bought last fall. It ran the P43 for about 4 cycles before batteries gave out. The house bound elderly neighbor across the street, who I help with snow clearing, groceries and picking up meds, had power throughout the ordeal (yay), so I was able to recharge the batteries when needed and keep the main floor warm. I was feeling genius for getting the power station since the 800w gas generator that I bought way back in 2014 (and never been used) would not start. I had been planning on using the gas generator for the downstairs stove and/or hot water, but that obviously didn't happen. I will say now, that I sorely missed the old water heater since it didn't need electricity to run. At the same time, even a replacement water heater (instead of combi-boiler) would have required electricity per the new codes, so it is what it is.

I ended up with 30" of snow. A person I know in the next town over (and higher in elevation) received 35" of snow and I've heard reports from others that received 40-44" of the white stuff. Before (3/12) and after (3/15) of the north side. That bank is about 4' tall in the first pic

The west side

The south and east sides

Ski areas and snowmobilers are happy anyway. Yesterday got into the 50's and somewhat windy, so there was some meltage, but today is supposed to stay near freezing. Then a gradual warm up thru the week. I'll take it since that will keep the melting slow so keep flooding down or non-existent.

Iditarod 2023 - NH Team Competes

A New Hampshire team is in this year's Iditarod. Team Bailey (Iditarod link to bio)is from Milan NH, and is a father/son team (not counting the dogs of course) (link to local TV station article and video)

Local Agway Changings Coming

Achilles Agway, is being sold to Minnesota based Runnings. Agway is a farm and garden franchise and a local family owns 6 of them (Keene, Milford, Peterborough, Hillsboro, Walpole and Brattleboro, VT). This is not to be confused with Agway franchise holdings by other entities (such as Osborne's Agway in Concord). The Hillsboro Agway has been a go-to place for my gardening, wild bird feeding and select pet needs since moving to this area way back in the late 90's.

This could be a good thing if Runnings puts some money into it and expands the offerings. But, it could also be disappointing if they don't do anything and just get rid of the local staff. Guess we'll find out.