Red sky before snow

A few inches of snow fell yesterday. It was the light powdery kind of snow that soon starts to compress under even that slight a weight. So this morning the snow already looks less than it did last evening. I am harboring a cold, which makes me want to huddle next to the fire, wrapped in a blanket and sipping a cuppa hot tea. Unfortunately, the puppies want to run full tilt through the snow, noses buried, back and forth for hours. We have not yet found a compromise that suits us all.

 

In addition to today’s snow photos, I also am posting a photo of the sunrise of the day before the snow. That red-sky-at-morning thing is really true. And as long as the sailor’s-warning part of the old rhyme doesn’t turn out to be something really awful, the red morning skies can be appreciated simply for their beauty.

Thus far, the January here in southern Pennsylvania is turning out to be colder than average and could end up in the top 15 of coldest Januarys. It won’t touch the infamous 1994, of course, when the coldest ever temperature recorded in this area was reached at a bone-chilling -16 and the day before at a -12 or so. Two days like that skewed the entire month that year.

Although 2014 was the warmest year ever on record, in my area the temperature was one of the few areas of the globe that registered below average. That may explain why some people here still aren’t convinced of climate change. To them, if they don’t see it where they are, it doesn’t exist.

Approaching summer's end

Red sky reflection

Summer must be almost over. Here I thought I had one more week of adventure camp after this one, and instead I find that tomorrow’s camp is the last one for the year. If camp is over, summer’s end can’t be far behind. I am fine with this as long as the upcoming fall lasts "forever."

On some level, I know that summer is not yet over and will in fact officially last another six and half weeks. Theoretically, summer weather can now last more or less through the end of September. This is a far cry from the days of my youth when you started school a few days after Labor Day in fall clothing. It was a big deal to have summer weather last through the first week of school so we could wear summery clothing instead for a few days. No longer, of course. Now, you wouldn’t even have to buy fall clothing until after school starts, let alone before.

But still, the end of camp is a sure sign that the end of summer, official or otherwise, isn’t far away.

This morning I had another red sky sunrise, which at the time I thought was odd since the last forecast I heard didn’t include the possibility of bad weather. However, I soon learned that the forecast now includes thunderstorms and showers, which certainly seems likely since the sunrise warned me about that before I heard the forecast.

Who's a cuckoo now?

Abundant sunshine, a gentle breeze with temperatures not too hot and not too cold.  That was my weekend on Roundtop Mtn.  I was outside as much as I could be, nosing around, looking here and looking there, just seeing what I could see.  I was rewarded with more than a few good sightings.

For the first time in years, I actually got to see a yellow-billed cuckoo! Cuckoos are never common, but each year I hear one or two residents, calling from all around the mountain.  Often I think it’s one cuckoo, traveling from one tree to the next around the cabin.  Cuckoos are notorious for being hard to see, partly because they don’t bounce around like some other birds and partly because they seem to make an effort to stay under cover.  That’s a bad combination for someone hoping to see one, instead of just hearing it.

On Sunday on one of my many forays out the door, I suddenly heard the call of a very close cuckoo.  I didn’t have binoculars and wasn’t about to rush inside to find mine.  Instead I stood in front of the cabin, trying to locate the source of the call.  I could tell the call was coming from one of the tall white oaks behind the cabin but that covers a lot of trees.  After a few more calls I was sure of the cuckoo’s general area but without binoculars (and perhaps even with them), locating a cuckoo in that mass of greenery was impossible.  But then the cuckoo flew and for a brief second or two, I saw it as it headed further up the mountain to find another vantage point for its next round of calls.  It’s always a banner day when I can see a cuckoo!

Red sky again this morning and storms are heading my way.  It's a summer kind of thunderstorm, though the temperature is more modest than the thunderstorm weather of midsummer.  That's not much consolation as the storm itself is just as severe as those of a month or so from now.

Did anyone get up/stay up for the meteor shower this past weekend?  I set my alarm and got up, loading a lawn chair and Baby Dog into the car for the brief run up to the north parking lot. In my corner of the sky, the meteor shower was a bust--I didn't see a single one in the hour I was out.  I did hear other areas of the country fared better and got a nice show.  Ah, well, it will be time for the Perseid shower before I know it.

Red sky at morning...

Sailor’s warning?  So does orange count as the sailor’s warning?  I suspect it might, if not perhaps quite as soon as a truly red sky.

I would call this a sky of building trouble or trouble nearby if not right atop me.  The old sailor’s warning holds true, though it also leaves a lot unknown.  A sky that looks like this might be a storm that’s still hours away, perhaps no to arrive until overnight, or perhaps not even until tomorrow.  This same sky could also mean that someplace nearby, say within 20-25 miles, is in for trouble and “my” sky is telling me I’m on the edge of that.

What I do know for sure is that I won’t know the answers for some hours after I see a sunrise like this.  It’s the kind of sky that tells me to keep an eye to the sky to see which way of my two possibilities this sky will turn out to mean:  storm overhead but hours away or storm nearby but not overhead.

Either way it makes for a beautiful sunrise, but one to watch out for in the hours ahead.