Moving too fast!

Whew!  I did not intend for Roundtop Ruminations to sit idle for a week.  Sometimes life moves so fast, I don’t know where it goes.  I do have a good excuse for one day of my idleness—a power outage when the outside temperature was 16 degrees.  Fortunately, my little fireplace kept me warm enough until the power returned. 

My second excuse is one I shouldn’t have, given my age and years of experience I have dealing with it.  Somehow, every year I still find myself in a similar pickle.  The shortened hours of daylight make it difficult to get photos.  It is dark when I get home from work.  And though it is light enough to see by when I leave the cabin in the mornings, the light isn’t very good.  This is evidenced by today’s photo, which is further worsened by a morning fog that was only just starting to dissipate.

Around the cabin, I am dealing with the roller coaster ride that is November. Record lows to record highs. Repeat.  Then add snow for Wednesday.  Perhaps a good bit of snow. Not Buffalo type snow but a lot of snow considering that today is above 60 degrees.  One day I hibernate among the cuddling animals, the next I am outside in my flipflops.  I have used so many coats this week—everything from my heaviest down parka to an unlined rain jacket.  Even for November these changes are extra extreme this year.  And now, I’m going to go dig out one of my snow shovels...

Pardon my anxiety

Some much needed August rain is drenching the mountain here at Roundtop this morning. The forest is the deep green of later summers. After eight days without rain, local farmers were starting to worry about fall crops, but today’s rain has come in time to see them through for another week or so.

So far, August has brought fairly moderate temperatures in what is normally a very hot and dry month. That’s a good thing, but I must confess to a vague feeling of anxiety, too. A nice August frequently means a hot September, and with that idea rattling around my brain, I’m finding it difficult to fully and completely enjoy this nice August. I would rather deal with a hot August and a normal September than to have the beautiful month of September diminished by a late heat wave.

Cool mornings, crystal clear days, nights descending towards a chill—September is a month that suits me, a welcome respite after surviving another summer. Were I still a child, I wouldn’t have these memories of hot Septembers following cool Augusts ripping through my consciousness. I tell myself not to curry trouble, especially trouble that hasn’t and may never happen, but people search for patterns in life, and the pattern of hot Septembers after nice Augusts is rising into my awareness.

I will try to ignore this thought and simply enjoy these cooler days. Pardon my anxiety. I didn’t mean to cloud anyone else’s day.

Warm

What is so rare as a nice day in June?

This year, they were pretty rare. Rain, humidity and high temperatures marked the month, not those warm, clear days with the puffy cumulus clouds of sonnets. After a colder than average start to the year, I am not surprised that June was one that was warmer than average. In this part of the country, the long cold spell of this past winter was an exception: typically, I don’t go for so many months in a row that are either colder or hotter than average. I’m just hoping that June’s warmer than average temperatures don’t stretch for five months in a row, the way the colder than average months of winter did.

Here on the mountain, I am frequently spared several degrees of temperature that marks a day nearer the cities. I am not spared the humidity, though, so sometimes those cooler temperatures don’t feel a bit cooler. Several days of June were like that.

Unfortunately for me, the month ahead will likely be even hotter than June. July usually is. While I enjoy winters, I would be just as happy if the summers were cooler than average as long as the winters were no worse than average. I don’t really wish for warm winters; I’ve had too many of those already.

With this year’s colder winter, I was hoping that some of the nastier insects would be in shorter supply than usual. I can’t say I’ve found that to be the case so far. Mosquitoes are still plentiful. I’m not sure about the stink bugs yet. Ticks might be slightly less than average, though the difference isn’t large, assuming it’s not just my own fancy that I’ve pulled fewer of them off the dogs or me. And they could still appear in larger numbers later in the summer. I’d like to think that won’t happen.

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.

Wacky weather

Nature's Christmas tree

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday.  Mine was fine, too, thanks, once I finally got ready for it.  The snow the previous weekend hit at exactly the wrong time as far as Christmas preparations go.  So the weekend before the holiday was spent doing all the things that would normally take two weekends.  That made for a very hectic time, but it’s over now and winter life will soon return to normal.

The last snow melted in a December heat wave but was soon replaced by more yesterday.  The heat wave itself was interesting—record-setting heat for one day or perhaps one and a half days.  Then rain.  Now back to normal cold weather again. That one day of heat was enough to take December 2013 from the coldest on record to one that is thoroughly average over the past 70 years, if still below the range of the more recent averages.

The temperature on December 22 hit 70 degrees in Harrisburg, though at my cabin it was a good 5 degrees below that.   The Harrisburg high was more than 30 degrees above average and 5 degrees higher than the previous record.  Two days later the temperature was below normal again, and a day after that, the temperature was 52 degrees colder.  No wonder I have three different coats populating the backs of my kitchen chairs.

Baby Dog doesn't notice the weather too much, unless it's raining buckets (she doesn't like to get wet).  The chickens, on the other hand,  refuse to exit their coop if snow covers the ground.  They just don't like it. I don't like it when the ground is half-covered with ice and snow.  Either I want to wear my Yak-trax or leave them at home.  I can't easily put them on once I'm outside or in the middle of a walk. So it's all or nothing with them, and often it's icy or snowy around the cabin when it's clear beyond the edge of the forest. It's all much easier if the ground is completely snow-covered. Or not.

Just another day in March

March is a month of wild variations in weather here on Roundtop and around Harrisburg. Even before climate change, historical March temperature averages often varied 10-12 degrees from year to year. In 1945, for example, the average temperature that March was 51 degrees and the year before in 1944, the average was 37 degrees. So no matter what this March brings, it won’t tell much about the area’s climate, let alone be an indicator for more widespread changes.


One day March brings snow, the next day comes close to being t-shirt weather. The closest thing to a constant in March is the breeze, which rarely subsides. If not exactly roaring like a lion, it’s still strong enough to make whatever the temperature-of-the-day is feel about 10 degrees colder.

I do know that it’s cold enough to silence the spring peepers at the moment. And the one phoebe that announced its presence a few days ago hasn’t reappeared either. It has probably moved north and is not going to be one of the ones that summers here.

The landscape still looks barren and cold. It doesn’t take many warm days for grass to turn green, and I haven’t yet seen any sign of that yet. At night I still get occasional flurries, even on days when midday verges on being warm. In other words, it’s a typical March here so far.

Welcome 2013 and Happy Perihelion

Belted Kingfisher

Happy perihelion! In case you’ve forgotten or hadn’t thought about it, today is the day when the earth is closest to the sun, proving it’s the earth’s tilt of 23.5% degrees that produces our seasons and not how far we are from the sun.


As is my own personal New Year’s Day tradition, I always try to sneak in a little birding around my family’s tradition of gathering for pork roast, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. This year emphasized a “little” birding that was limited to my own feeders and a brief trip to nearby Pinchot Lake. The number of species I found was low and not helped at all by the overcast sky and flat light. The weather looked as though a freezing rain or a wet snow would fall any second, but it never did. Birds were mostly few and far between, at least where I was looking. Sometimes the light was so poor I couldn’t tell a blue jay from a cardinal, and I gave up trying to identify sparrows. The little devils wouldn’t let me get close enough for a decent look, and the poor light didn’t give me a chance at the distance where they were.

But no matter, January is only just getting started, and I should have a good many more chances for brighter days to find a few of the smaller birds. The only photo I took on my mini-expedition was of this distant and too-dark belted kingfisher.

Finding a kingfisher on January 1 means that lakes and ponds have open water, as does Pinchot Lake right now. And that open water is a result of December 2012 being 5 degrees warmer than the most recent 30-year normal. In my area, that translates to an average of 38.8 degrees for December, against the normal of 35.43.

I have taken to fussing a bit every time I hear a forecaster say a temperature is warmer or colder than “normal.” They rarely explain that their version of normal is only taken from the past 30 years. If you think today’s temperatures are just a bit warmer than normal, you should compare them to the past 70 or 100 years or whatever number of years records are kept in your own area.

And I have done that for December in Harrisburg so you can better understand why I’m fussing.

Here’s the breakdown:
2012 December average – 38.8 or 3.4 degrees warmer than “normal” temperature of 35.43
1971-2001 – 34.8 - .6 degree lower than current range
1961-1990 – 34.21 - .6 degree lower or 1.2 degrees lower than current range
1951-1980 – 33.21 - 1 degree lower or 2.2 degrees lower
1941-1970 – 32.73 - .5 degree low or 2.7 degrees lower

In other words the difference between December 2012 and the oldest normal range is 6.1 degrees, even more extreme than the 3.4 degrees calculated using the current “normal” range.  I know we're not supposed to think about climate change this locally and that global temperatures have to be looked at. I’m just saying.

Last one

The first week of rifle deer season is over. I’ve seen hunters and heard shots on most days this past week. I also saw evidence of one buck being killed on Roundtop land late on Friday. A flock of crows led me to the gut pile that wasn’t there in the morning. Given when the offals were, I believe the buck was one of decent size but not much of a rack that ran with a herd of doe in the grassy field across one of the parking lots.

That group is usually out in the field just before dark, though they were all suspiciously absent Saturday evening, and I didn’t have a chance to look for them yesterday. Today I should be able to check.

The deer that hang around my cabin, all doe that I see, are still there. I often wake them up in the mornings when I walk Dog or Baby Dog. Some mornings they don’t even stand up as we walk past. I walk with a headlamp, so I can see their eyes shine down low to the ground. Sometimes, I can just see when they raise their heads to watch us pass. I believe they think I don’t see them. I can’t quite imagine they would lie in their beds so calmly if they thought I knew where they were. Perhaps the headlamp confuses them, but the dogs’ scent never seems to roust them either, and I have a tough time believing the wind is always in our favor.

By my reckoning, November was about 3 degrees below average here, a pleasant surprise after months of above average readings in 2012. December is starting off quite a bit warmer than average, but that will only last today and tomorrow. Still, as warm as these two days will be, it will take a lot of cold weather the rest of the month to compensate for them, so I’m not expecting a similar result this month. 

December ain't what it used to be

Early December sunset from the cabin

Though December is barely started, already I can say that my warmer than normal November is turning into a warmer than normal December. The forecast for the next week or so continues that trend, though several upcoming days appear to be headed more towards normal than above normal. The result of the temperature and the rain forest-like precipitation experienced at Roundtop this year is that the forest around my cabin doesn’t look much like December. If I was being especially curmudgeonly today, I’d say it barely looks like late October.

Of course, that would be the late October of 20-30 years ago, not the late October of the past 5-10 years. Taking more recent history into consideration, I’d say the forest looks like almost mid-November. Still, I finally have back my full view out the western windows to gaze on all winter. Sometime in May, the woods will grow so thick that I won’t see a sunset again until roughly this point of the year. I actually have more sunlight in winter than in summer, despite the fewer hours of daylight now.

With one week of deer season gone and the second just starting, so far the semi-tame doe and her two fawns have survived. I saw all three of them this morning, safe at the bottom of my lane for the night. The problem is that they don’t stay where they are safe. They wander out on the abandoned ski slope to graze, but so far the hunters have ventured deeper into the woods and the trio has been safe.

Hunters seeking venison for the winter tend to get less picky about the deer they will take as the season progresses. At first, they want that good-sized buck, by which they normally mean a big deer with a big rack of antlers. If, after several days of hunting, such a creature does not materialize, they downsize their expectations to any sized buck with a legal rack. If that one doesn’t play out, by the end of the season they have doe season for several days, where just about anything goes. So this white-tailed family has a ways to go before the toughest thing they will have to deal with is the upcoming winter.

What worries me is that their tameness could be their undoing. Deer are curious, and these are no exception. It’s their curiosity that has caused them to become half-tame. I wouldn’t be surprised if they would walk right up to a hunter or a tree stand, just to check it out and see what it was. Normally, I don’t pay much attention to deer, mostly because it’s hard to tell one from another. I have watched this doe and her fawns all summer, from when the fawns were tiny, spotted things, just testing their feet for the first time on a dirt road and watching me walk by with the dogs. I think of them as neighbors now and hope they remain so.

Sunset through forest

When a forecast in my area calls for a “wintry mix,” you can be sure that up on the mountain I will see the wintry part of the precipitation. With some regularity, I will encounter rain down in the valley, and as I am driving up Roundtop Mtn., I can watch the temperature drop and then suddenly, the trees will be ice- or snow-covered. This usually happens about 200 ft. below my cabin, though I’ve seen it happen as few as 50 feet below. Often, someone looking up can even see the line across the mountain where the changeover took place. Whenever I see that line, I can bet my cabin will be above it.

The latest storms predicted for tonight and tomorrow probably won’t be much, though when precipitation falls as ice, it doesn’t take much to make everything treacherous.

Yesterday, the sky gave no sign of an impending storm. By sunset, when I took today’s photo, there wasn’t even a cloud in the sky. At first light this morning, I could already see the cloud shield covering about half the sky, moving slowly but inexorably, hiding more of the blue sky by the minute.

Up here on the mountain, where I am surrounded by forest and sky, watching weather patterns moving in and out has become something of a hobby. I often think about the time, not very long ago, when the only “forecasts” came from old sayings by sailors or farmers. Many are true in large measure. “Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.” Yep. “Dew on the grass, no rain will pass.” Yep. And for this one, the opposite, no dew, often presages rain.

But even though they are usually true, these little weather sayings don’t give much warning time for bad weather ahead. Last evening is a good case in point—not a cloud in the sky. This morning, I can tell there’s a storm ahead, but if I was a sailor or a farmer, a few hours notice wouldn’t give me much time to prepare. For that, today’s modern radar is a very good thing.