Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Snow - ice - sleet - rain

For the moment, the forest is snow covered. I say for the moment because I am in the middle of one of those snow/sleet/ice/rain storms that is a staple of southern Pennsylvania winters.   Even for here, this storm is extreme.  Yesterday morning was 4° and today the temperature will be in the 40’s! Yesterday I was dripping the faucets to prevent the water pipes from freezing, and today I am worried about flooding!
The feeder birds are feeding heavily. I still haven’t seen anything unusual here so far this winter, unless you count a sapsucker as unusual, which I don’t.  Not a siskin, not a redpoll, not a purple finch can be found.  The winter finch forecast was not encouraging, but it didn’t sound as though I’d have none of them, just fewer.

So “today’s” photo was actually taken on Sunday, when the snow was still lovely and not icy or water-logged. It may be the last photo of nice-looking snow for a while.  I took the photo from the kitchen of my family’s farmhouse, looking over to South Mountain. I never get tired of this view.  The mountains look different nearly every day of the year.

5 comments:

Pablo said...

Keep it. We're getting into the 70s this weekend!

Scott said...

It's in the 50s here today (Tuesday), Carolyn, and we had a tremendous rainstorm this morning that melted nearly all the remaining snow from the January 23rd storm. Yeah! Before the snow disappeared, there was a 2-inch layer of disgusting slush. I've had it with winter--really.

I had a Fox Sparrow under my feeder on Saturday and Sunday, but that's the most interesting bird to report of late.

Carolyn H said...

Scott: Currently I have snow and ice but managed to avoid flooding. Before I even had coffee this morning someone got stuck trying to come up the lane to pick up the neighbor's girl for school. I pushed her out three times; she got restuck each time. Finally, help arrived and two of us could push her out. The snow is off the trees, now, and there's much less of it, but everything looks better than I expected. Even my chickens decided to lay eggs this morning!

Carolyn H said...

Pablo: I'm not ready for 70 degree weather! I want to hang onto the snow a while longer, though I'm not a fan of the ice.

Pablo said...

Got to 73 degrees here today (Thursday). Heading to Roundrock this weekend.