Cliff Mass, our Pacific Northwet weather guru, posted this tidbit on his blog today: “During the last few days we have experienced an early and unusually sustained atmospheric river event that has dropped 1-4 inches over the Northwest.”
When a river of moisture occurs in cooler weather here they are inaffectionately known as a Pineapple Express.
Whatever you call them, they are very wet and from a meteorologist’s perspective, look like this:
The first day of autumn brought us a traditional gift, just over one inch of warm rain to wake up the chanterelles and begin to refill the ponds.
which version of this photo do you prefer, A or B?
A:
B:
Chico and I returned to one of our favorite places today, the recently created South Fork Park. We did a long easy stroll along the perimeter of the park’s open field, noting the many game trails, as well as signs of beaver activity along the Nooksack.
There was a lot of controversy about the creation of this park. Some of the locals and long-time residents were up in arms, warning that the park would attract all kinds of mischief makers and evil doers. Fortunately there are calmer heads in our Park Department and the measure went through.
I’ll be writing more about the South Fork Park but for now I wanted to give you a brief glimpse of one corner of it, a small movie taken with my Canon Powershot SX210 IS.
We’re having an unusually dry and mild winter, with rather long stretches without rain. A few days ago Lorena began weeding her flower beds, an annual ritual-chore that requires many hours of patient, detailed plucking. As you can see in the photo, she uses a chair to ease the strain on her back.
This gallery contains 4 photos.
I’m experimenting with various video editors and formats but haven’t yet found a satisfying (or simple) way to edit and publish short clips. This one, for example, looks washed out, even though I adjusted the color, contrast and saturation.
A short walk with Chico through the “Dark Woods” on the northern loop of our Sasquatch Trail.
Because our water comes from a spring about half a mile away, on the side of the mountain, we have to leave it running 24/7 to avoid a freeze-up. Rather than just run a hose on the ground I prefer to spray the water over a clump of willows in front of the cabin. This creates an ever-changing ice sculpture, one that sometimes grows to many tons of ice and lasts for several weeks.
This morning Lorena threatened to publish a photo of my ice sculpture on her own Homestead blog, so to avoid being scooped, here it is.
Sasquatch ice sculpture 2013
We left the cabin and walked north on the Truck Trail for less than half a mile, then crossed the creek on the east side of the Trail and began climbing into the woods. The conditions in this second-growth of hemlock and fir seemed very good for mushrooms but after half an hour I came up completely empty-handed. Continue reading
We woke this morning to find that about six inches of damp snow had fallen during the night. Chico’s reaction reminded me very much of how excited Poco and Cuca got when they first encountered snow.
To add to the thrill, Chico slipped on the narrow footbridge to the island and was completely submerged in the pond. He came up sputtering, wide-eyed and covered with slush. I had a hard time dragging him out, as he now weighs at least 20 pounds when dry, but a lot more when soaked.