Turbulence

With today's warm temperatures - the mercury reached 56 degrees at the Ithaca airport - much of the remaining snow melted away.  Naturally, the creek was running high.  I went out to check on it late this afternoon - about quarter to five - and the waning daylight was shimmering off of the rapidly flowing waters.  As a result, the turbulent eddies in the water as it passed over and next to the dock were more visible than usual.  I hope the whirls and swirls as the water passed by are evident in the photos below.

Back to Grass

I see London, I see France.
I see the backyard is made of grass!

Sights Around the Yard January 12

Most of the snow has fallen or melted off of the roof.  The gutters are still choked with ice, so the meltwater is gushing out of them, as above.

Many of the icicles have melted away or fallen off.  The ones on the ground above...well, I knocked them down...

The snow has completely melted away in patches, especially along the side of the house.

There are still a few icicles hanging on.

I found this hole carved out in the backyard.  I wonder if this is the groundhog's home for the winter.

The dock was still covered with quite a bit of ice.  I trudged down there and very carefully cleared most of the ice off.  It was pretty slippery!

No ice on the creek's surface, as you can see!  We're heading for a high of about 47 this afternoon.

The creek is running a bit high with all of the meltwater, plus about 0.1" of rain that fell last night.

A better view of the ice on the dock.

After I cleared the ice off and kicked it into the creek, it floated away downstream.

This bit of ice and debris wasn't going anywhere.

I managed to get the big chunk of ice mostly off the dock, but the water was too shallow to absorb it.  It should melt into the creek over the course of the weekend.

A look back up the dock's stairs...you can see my footprints in the virgin snow.

One of the many deer trails through the yard.

Tiddlybits

The temperature has been gradually climbing all week, and as a result, the icicles have been melting and snow has been sliding off the roof (making an eerie creaking noise as it does so).  The temperature will peak over the weekend, with a high around 50 tomorrow and well into the 50s on Sunday.  As a result, I'll be able to get out for an extended walk around town and take pictures for the next edition of the Freeville Tour series, which should appear sometime next week.  I also have an appointment to meet with the village's historian on Sunday afternoon, so the Freeville History series will resume next week as well.  I have some more posts lined up, including a couple that have been on the docket since November or so that I've never finished.

For today, I want to point out an article that I found via a friend on Facebook.  On Lake Baikal, Russia, the deepest lake in the world, some locals have discovered a patch of ice that resonates when it is played like a drum.  They've created some "lake drum" music, and this article contains a video of it.  Click over to the article and scroll down to the bottom to see the video.  I hope you enjoy!
 

Forging a Path

As the waters of Fall Creek spill into Beebe Lake, the man-made small lake (or large pond) on the Cornell University campus, they forge a path through the relatively calm waters of the lake.  When the creek is full of water and sediment from a recent heavy rainfall, it's easy to trace the new water as it pushes its way through the old.  Similarly, when the lake is more-or-less ice covered, as it's been for much of this week, the warmer water coming from the creek forges a path through the frozen surface of the lake.

I mentioned yesterday that we're in dire need of a major revolution in how we use energy.  The world around us is crying out for change - look at the arguments over steroids in baseball, over guns in our communities, and over politics and budgets in Congress.  It's time for each of us, in our own way, to recognize the ties that bind, the things that bring us together, and to use these bonds to overcome the challenges that we have shoved aside in recent decades.  Now is the time for us, like those waters spilling into the lake, to forge our own path.

I'm Melting!

The Snowy Creek

2012 Warmest Year on Record

 Source: Northeast Regional Climate Center


The numbers for the year 2012 are in, and it's not pretty.  2012 has surpassed 1998 as the warmest year on record, by a full degree Fahrenheit, in the U.S.  To add insult to injury, 1998 was a notorious El Nino year, meaning that the Pacific was warmer than normal, while 2012 was not.  This makes the record all the more remarkable.  Here in the Northeast, temperatures ran about 3-4 degrees above normal, with isolated pockets that were even warmer...Burlington ended the year about 6 degrees above normal.  Closer to home, Syracuse, Scranton-Wilkes Barre, and Binghamton all experienced their warmest year on record.

What does this mean?  Well, it means that we can't ignore climate change any longer.  Most of the warmest years in the past century have occurred in the past 20 years.  The warming trend is undeniable, and the cause is also quite well understood: us.  Greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide and methane, mostly - are at their highest levels and milennia, and they limit the Earth's ability to cool itself by absorbing outgoing radiation.

What can we do about it?  Well, we can support alternative energy sources - solar and wind, among others - and we can pressure energy companies to do the same.  But the problem will not be solved without a scalable, cost-competitive replacement for fossil fuels.  Scientist Nikola Tesla, one of the most brilliant minds in all of history, invented a wireless power transmission tower - much like our modern-day cell phone towers, it transmitted energy through the air - but funding for the project was pulled by financier J.P. Morgan before the project was completed.  It just so happened that Morgan owned a monopoly on the copper used for electric, telegraph, and telephone wires.  The bad news is that still today, there are vested interests that prevent Tesla's technology, or an even more advanced version of it, from being implemented.  The good news, though, is that the technology has been in within our capability for over a century now.

After last year's record warmth, not only in the U.S., but across the globe, it is time to implement these free energy technologies.  Imagine the good it will do for those who currently live in poverty without electricity or running water!


Neat Video Showing Global Temperature Trends

NOAA Climate Watch Article

 CNN Article

Australia Article

Blue Skies

After over a week of cloudy days beginning around Christmastime, the skies finally parted yesterday.  I saw pure, blue sky for the first time this year.  I started this blog, in part, to help me get through the long, cold, dark, dreary days of winter, but yesterday and today are days to celebrate the sun.  In honor of that, here's the lyrics to an old standard, from the Rodgers and Hart musical Betsy.


Blue Skies, by Irving Berlin (1926)

I was blue, just as blue as I could be
Ev'ry day was a cloudy day for me
Then good luck came a-knocking at my door
Skies were gray but they're not gray anymore

Blue skies
Smiling at me
Nothing but blue skies
Do I see

Bluebirds
Singing a song
Nothing but bluebirds
All day long

Never saw the sun shining so bright
Never saw things going so right
Noticing the days hurrying by
When you're in love, my how they fly

Blue days
All of them gone
Nothing but blue skies
From now on


[2]
I should care if the wind blows east or west
I should fret if the worst looks like the best
I should mind if they say it can't be true
I should smile, that's exactly what I do

Icicles

With snow and cold temperatures that we had between Christmas and New Years, huge icicles formed off of my roof.  

It looks like it's going to warm up this week, though, so the icicles may not be around for long.

Sounds

Howdy folks, sorry for the lack of posts so far this year.  It's been a hectic start to 2013, but things are calming down.  I ran across an article a week or two ago about people's favorite and least favorite sounds.  Earlier today, I heard quite a few gunshots outside...I guess it was someone with his/her hunting rifle.  This was a new experience for me, after growing up in suburbia.  It didn't make me uncomfortable to hear gunshots, but it was a bit surprising.

What are some of my favorite sounds?  Well, music is probably at the top of the list.  But as far as sounds in the everyday environment go, I have to agree with many of those on the list.  I also like the whirr of a lawnmower, as long as it doesn't wake me up first thing in the morning.  Do you have any favorites that were left off the list?


TOP 10 MOST LOVED SOUNDS
1.Waves against rocks
2.Rain against the windows
3.Treading on snow
4.Baby laughing
5.Birds chirping
6.Crackling open fire
7.People laughing
8.Leaves crunching beneath your feet
9.Cat purring
10.Church bells in the distance

TOP 10 MOST HATED SOUNDS
1.Nails on a chalk board
2.Someone being sick
3.Car alarm
4.A dentist's drill
5.Someone spitting
6.A yapping dog
7.Screaming baby/children
8.Someone talking with their mouth full
9.Someone grinding their teeth
10.Someone's knife grinding on a plate

Full article

Looking Back and Looking Ahead

As we flip the calendar to a fresh year, it's as good a time as any for me to stop and take stock of the blog...where it's been and where it will go in the future.  It started with a ton of ideas and lots of energy.  My first few posts were literally in the "picture is worth a thousand words" mode (go ahead and count), but this pace quickly proved unsustainable, and after the first couple of weeks of experimenting with different things, the blog settled into its current form.  The main threads of the blog include gardening and taking care of the yard; local history; a tour of the local area; and the weather.  I try to schedule the posts to go up at noon, but occasionally things go awry and they don't get up until later.

For 2013, I'm not planning anything substantially different in the format of the blog.  The rest of the winter will be heavy on posts about snow and cold.  In the coming weeks, I'll start doing some research for the garden and sharing that here.   I'm looking forward to meeting the village's historian later this month, and I'm hoping to be able to share stories of old and maybe even some old pictures to go with them.  The Freeville tour will continue when the weather is conducive to walking around outside, and later in the year, a new series will start that looks at the many natural areas around the county.  As the snow melts away and the days get longer, the blog will have much more garden content, and the history series may fade away for a while.

There's a lot to do in the garden and the yard in 2013.  The planter boxes in the garden, though snow-covered, are cleared of weeds and ready for plants in the spring.  I'll have to add some grass seed to the parts of the yard that have been torn up over the years.  I'm still in the process of clearing out some thorny plants, but what they'll make room for is still to be determined.  I need to do something with the wildflowers on the side of the yard; right now, they're being trampled by the deer.  I'm looking to make the yard an attractive place for birds, and I need to figure out what to plant - that won't be gobbled up by the deer within two weeks - to bring them over from the nature preserve across the creek.  I also need to find some plants to put in the planters in front of the house and next to the patio.  I'll be adding a weather station and will be better able to report on what's going on outside (jokes about looking out the window aside).

To close the post, I'd like to highlight five posts from 2012 on Acorn Place...in no particular order.  If you haven't seen them, I hope you enjoy!



First Post: Inevitability

Freeville History: What's in a Name?

Things Grow

Freeville Tour: Groton Avenue Park

Clearing the Weedy Garden: A Photo Series

Measuring Snow

I did a little post-Christmas shopping on Friday to pick up some things that I've badly needed.  The big acquisition was a camera...now I can stop taking crappy pictures with my iPhone, use a real zoom feature, and even take pictures at night.  I know how to press the shutter, adjust the zoom, and turn on the flash.  As far as I'm concerned, that's all I need to do.  The photos from this post are the first ones from the camera to make it onto the blog.  I also picked up a little threshold rug so that I can trample in and out of the back door without tracking snow all over the place, and I picked up a cheap white foam board so that I can measure the snowfall regularly.

A path to the snowboard.

The stick marks the spot.

I have a spot marked in the backyard where I keep the snowboard.  It's in the middle of the yard to avoid drifting near the house and under-accumulation near the trees.  I've shoveled myself a little path to get out to it, and it's marked by a stick that's now just barely sticking out over top of the snow that's been piling up.

Take a few menasurements.

When I measure the snow, I take a few measurements on the board and average them.  Even within the space of a few inches, the snow depth can vary by up to half an inch.  After I'm satisfied that I have a representative measurement, I reach down and pull up the board.  I clear it off, smooth out the snow where the board sits, and plop it back down, ready to receive more snow.  Now that the snow has piled up over a few days, I'm also measuring the total depth of the snow on the grass - not just the new snowfall.  For the record, we had 6.3" of new snow on Wednesday, an even 4.0" Friday into yesterday, and another 2.7" of lake effect on top of that last night into today.  We're in a weather pattern where we're looking at the potential for some light accumulations due to lake effect (likely less than an inch) through mid-week.

Pick up the snowboard and smooth out the snow.

Plop the snowboard back down, and it's ready for new snow.

Lazy or smart?

My house sits back from the road, so I have a pretty long driveway.  Rather than shovel the whole thing, I just dig out a path to the end of the driveway and keep the car parked by the road.  It works for now, but I might have to re-think this strategy if I have house-guests.  At least it works for now...  So...am I lazy or smart?