Monday, October 24, 2011 by Dick.

The squirrels think it may be a mild winter this year. The geese have been flying north this week. The National Weather Service says it may be a mild winter this year.

That must be why the National Weather Service announced yesterday that Winter Weather Awareness Week begins today in North Puffin.

Believe me. No one in North Puffin needs a reminder of winter weather.

Except research shows that about 70 percent of the ice and snow related fatalities occur in automobiles, and about 25 percent of all winter related fatalities are people caught off guard, out in the storm.

The best awareness plan, then, is not to drive; stay inside with your feet next to the wood stove.

Today, the National Weather Service will offer tips on ways to prepare for winter hazards.
I have a winter car kit in each vehicle, the wood stoves and generators have all passed their test run, and I obsess over the weather forecasts.

The harder part of living in the frozen north is the lack of a single planning checklist. That surprised me. In South Puffin, every television station, every radio station, every newspaper inundates us with Hurricane Preparedness guides.

Not here. I found the public information statement from the National Weather Service-Burlington at the Victoria Advocate. (At 165 years old, the Victoria Advocate, is Texas‘ second oldest newspaper. The Advocate can be found exactly where it has been for 62 of those years, on East Constitution Street in downtown Victoria, exactly 1,998 miles from North Puffin.)

A family emergency plan and an accompanying emergency kit is a good thing. This season is a good time to over warn and over-react: “Prepare for the worst. Pray for the best.” I distilled the best advices I could find into a Winter Preparedness Guide on my business site, harperco.net.

On Tuesday: What to do if stranded on the road during a storm.
Reality check. We are all far more likely to be stuck in a parking space than stuck in a snow drift off the Mountain Road. 90% of what you’ll find on the Winter Preparedness Guide will help even if you are in your own driveway. And the other 10%? Why not finish the test so the real test doesn’t finish you?

On Wednesday: Protect yourself from the wind and cold.
Take a look at how skiers, ski patrollers, and your highway guys dress. Take a lesson.

On Thursday: Winter flooding and ice jams across the North Country.
Almost freezing water on your floor? Flooding can come from broken pipes or a broken roof just as easily as it does from the lake or river near your house.

On Friday: Winter weather terminology. What exactly does “A winter storm warning is in effect” mean?
See my better plan below.

On Saturday: Review preparedness activities for winter.

Americans live in the most severe-weather prone country on Earth, so I have a better plan.

Posted in Weather, Seasonal, Politics & News, Random Access | 5 Comments »

Thursday, June 23, 2011 by Dick.

Again. The Obamanation announced it will release 30 million barrels of oil from the strategic reserves and has another 30 million barrels pledged by our energy partners. Two million barrels per day for a month. And they can do it again next month and the month after if prices don’t drop enough.

It is to “make up for Libyan oil,” administration officials say.

Bwahahahahahahahahah hah ha. And hah.

It’s not a hail Mary to jumpstart the economy.

It’s not to fill in the gaps in our oil supply. There is plenty of oil.

It’s not even to ease the summer driving season.

But it is to drive speculators out of the market. See, if the price at the pump drops for 90 days, the third quarter Cost of Living calculations look flat again.

At the beginning of June, I said the Obamanation would try to get gas prices down to $2.47/gallon for July, August, and September, the “window” for Social Security’s 2012 COLA calculations. Artificial Cost of Living Adjustments are a free tax on the back of American seniors and the gummint needs more money. Way to go, Mr. Obama.

Posted in Taxed Again, Throw Da Bums Out, Seasonal, Politics & News, Random Access | 3 Comments »

Sunday, May 8, 2011 by Dick.

Loverly day in North Puffin today. It’s not going to rain.

We’ve gotten over 9 inches of rain since April Fools Day, which is three times the normal rainfall for the period. The not-quite-great-but-still-pretty-darned-good Lake Champlain is more than three feet above flood stage and has broken the all time record for high water by more than a foot.

There was supposed to be patchy fog around this morning but not here. It will be at least partly sunny all day. The temp should be in at least the lower 60s and the 10-15 mph north winds all along the lake will tend to push the water back into the lake and slow the drop, but it ought not drive too much more onshore.

Last night’s report did show the water level draining down a couple of inches from the record high of 103.2 feet above sea level Friday afternoon.

Buying flood insurance never occurred to Bill Stapleton in Underhill. At least not until flood waters swept away 70 feet of his driveway. That cost him $2,000 to fix and temporarily stranded Stapleton and his wife, St. Albans Town Manager Christine Murphy who just approved our concert budget for Bay Day. There are 13,834 structures in the state in high hazard flood zones, and just 2,355 have flood insurance.

The flooding may continue for weeks and will continue to impact homes and camps through the spring and into the summer. Roads and people who are underwater now will be underwater for weeks to come. It usually takes 20 days per foot of drop to drain according to the National Weather Service. That means 60 days — well after the 4th of July — just to get back down to flood stage. If it doesn’t rain more.

Everybody’s talking about Memphis these days. In terms of water in your house, it is NOLA all over again here on the tenth largest lake in the United States and nobody has noticed.

Posted in Local Issues, Seasonal, Politics & News, Random Access | 3 Comments »

Monday, April 11, 2011 by Dick.

This is what a 70° day can look like in Northern Vermont. Yes, that is Lake Champlain. Yes, that is snow on top of the ice on Lake Champlain.

Looking southerly:

Looking west (that speck in the distance may be what’s left of a fishing shanty):

Looking northerly:

Posted in History, Seasonal, Photography | 5 Comments »

Monday, March 14, 2011 by Dick.

Not U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Not the Internet Communications Engine.

Not criminally beautiful jewelry.

Not rocks.

Diamonds are forever but frozen water may last only until the Summer sun comes up.

Ice is simply water frozen into a solid state. Simple.

Except it is one of our more complex phenomena. It can be strong enough to drive a truck across and fragile enough to break under the weight of a twig. It is the only non-metallic liquid that expands when it freezes. It is slippery when wet. And it can be wet at most winter temps.

Ice is slippery because the surface ice molecules can’t bond properly with the molecules of the rest of the ice so they act just like liquid water. The lubrication they offer is nearly as effective as the 5W-30 in your car engine.

People all over these United States have complained about the ice this year. Here in Vermont, we’re in the middle of the third snowiest winter on record, thanks to the third largest snowfall that fell just last week. Here in North Puffin we added about 20 inches to our base; Jay Peak added feet. Snow is just puffy ice and when it hunkers down, that ice has stalled plow trucks and utility crews and made walking to the University Mall a trial. My own feet went out from under me once a few years ago as I carried a load of firewood in.

• Black ice is nearly invisible on macadam roads.
• Harbor ice crushes boats and stops commerce.
• Ice can change aircraft wings and control surfaces and puncture the fuel tanks of rockets.
• Ice can slow or stop a jet engines.
• Icebergs didn’t actually sink the Titanic (hubris did) but we know now a little frozen water can pry the bottom off a surface ship and the top off a submarine.
• Icing blocks the supply of air to a carbureted or fuel injected engine and cause it to fail.

My great-grandfather cut ice on Westtown Lake. He stored it through the summer in sawdust and ashes in a ten-sided ice house he built of cedar planks on a terrace above our home. That is the same technology Persian engineers used in 400 BC in the middle of the desert summer. Refrigeration made the cooling tunnel he built to store and separate milk — and ice collection and delivery — obsolete.

People around the world love ice, and not just to cool drinks or cool home made ice cream makers.

• Ice as a fire starter: carve it into a lens to focus sunlight on kindling.
• Ice as a musical instrument: ice drums are all over youtube; don’t lick your lips before blowing an ice horn though.
• Ice in medicine: it will decrease blood flow which reduces swelling and pain.
• Ice as a road: frozen rivers and lakes were once the easiest form of transportation; now they can be the only way to move supplies in the Arctic.

North Puffin sits directly on the shores of the no-longer-Great-but-still-pretty-darned-good-Lake-Champlain. Hard water out there, still. Ice is crucial to Vermont. Visitors come from around the world for our ice skating, ice hockey, ice fishing, ice climbing, curling, broomball and bobsled, luge, and skeleton racing. Not to mention skiing and boarding. And sugar on snow.

Burlington Harbor was still iced in as of Saturday evening but I saw open water in the Missisquoi River (upstream of the ice jams, of course) over the weekend. The plowed driveway here is largely clear and the only plowed lawn path that still has ice is the one at the bottom of the dooryard hill alongside the porch. It may not melt down in this cycle since melt water collects there and will freeze again and again and again.

Arguably the most famous ice in Vermont is the ice that isn’t. Joe’s Pond is still frozen today in West Danville but it will melt sometime in the next month or two.

Jules Chatot started the Joe’s Pond Ice-Out Contest as a cabin fever palliative in the 1980s. Mr. Chatot’s family and friends would “use his camp there as deer camp in the dead of winter, or spring break in deep snow with howling winds and muddy roads.” Sooner or later anyone there would start betting on when the ice will go out? at Hastings Store. Mr. Chatot kept track of the guesses in “a little notebook he kept in his pocket.”

A few hundred people bought tickets the first year. A couple of years later, a database replaced Mr. Chatot’s little notebook. The game has grown steadily; more than 12,000 people all around the world bought tickets last year. Ed Bird from West Danville won the first year (April 26 at 12:31 p.m.). April 16 has been the earliest and May 6, 1992, the latest. The Ice-Out Contest underwrites the free Independence Day Fireworks display.

That said, I’ll just be glad when I don’t have to warm my underwear in front of the fire before I put it on.

Posted in Heating Issues, Seasonal, Science (real), Random Access | 5 Comments »

Monday, February 7, 2011 by Dick.

I figure I can drive anything with wheels. The fleet right now includes a pickup and an 18′ flatbed trailer, the (topless) (white) car, a more traditional sedan, and a John Deere 2210 diesel tractor with a front end loader, mid-mount mower deck, and a 3-point snowblower. The bucket, mower, and blower are all 54″ which is a convenient width. I also have a five-foot brush hog and a five-foot swivel blade, but that’s another story. We’ve sold the race cars but in years past, I have manhandled a twin-stick Mack, lugged barrels and boats with a twin-boom fork, and shepherded race cars with and without fenders. Rufus is annoyed that I can tuck a trailer into a blind alley with 6 inches of clearance.

I’m still getting the hang of filling the tractor bucket, though. Dumping it is easy peasy but filling it while leaving nothing on the ground is still a trick.

I’ve had a chance to practice this past week.

Schools across the county had all cancelled Wednesday’s sessions before the 6 p.m. newscasts Tuesday evening as the biggest snowstorm of the season rollicked across Southern Vermont on its way to North Puffin. I had cleaned up all the open spaces just before dark so the drive was as ready as it could be. In fact, I even opened a new path to the woodshed as well.

I don’t have brine so I have to plow the old fashioned way: out in the elements, sitting high on my tractor, pushing and sometimes lifting the snow with the front end loader bucket.

Did I mention that I haz a tractor?

“Plowing” with a bucket means pushing the snow ahead of the tractor with the bucket until you either (a) fill the bucket or (b) get to the end of the driveway. In either case, the technique at the end of the run is to lift the overflowing bucket of snow high onto a mountain of snow somewhere out of the way and deposit same. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Did you remember my tractor has a snowblower?

Unfortunately, that snowblower is buried at the very back of the garage, behind all the materials for the new porch construction that were supposed to be out of the way (meaning back where they belong) by Fall.

I figured then it would be OK. After all, we don’t get many big snow falls and I didn’t blow any snow at all last year. Right? Right.

Ten inches of snow by the time I plowed the third time around 5 p.m on Wednesday. I measured another three inches at bedtime and it was still snowing lightly, small, sparkly flakes. The land is really quite pretty. Weather radar shows the majority of the storm had passed us by then.

SIXTEEN INCHES.

Lordy Lordy™

And it could have been worse.

My running total, with the Wednesday night-Thursday morning’s four inches, was just 14 inches total but the undisturbed, undrifted roof of the Mercedes told the real story on the yardstick. 16 inches. Shoveled the walk. Dragged a shovel’s width out from the south door of the porch portico so that door can open if need be. I have plowed and plowed and plowed and plowed. I moved all the new snow out of the driveway and then cleaned up the edges. I also opened up the walkway we use to get to the woodshed but still needed to plow up to the barn.

On Friday, I plowed the new snow, neatened up everywhere, opened up the woodshed again and the dooryard and made a path to the barn. Even ran the Camaro for a while to circulate the juices and charge the battery. On Saturday, I made another little path so we could get to the pile of locust since that particular wood was running low in the woodshed. I like it for overnight burns.

And then it started snowing again. Overnight.

Recall that plowing really means pushing and lifting. That’s easy when the snow is two or three inches deep because it takes most of the driveway to fill the bucket. Plow down, lift, dump. Plow back, lift, dump. Much more than that couple-three inches, though, and the lifting/dumping cycle happens with greater frequency.

I plowed Sunday in sunshine. And plowed. And plowed. Eleven inches of fairly heavy, wet snow. I had to move a lot of it by the bucket full. The lift/dump cycle for eleven inches of fairly heavy, wet snow turns out to be every ten feet or so of driveway.

27 inches of snow is more than enough. And it looks like it’s about to start. Again.

I have absolutely used up every convenient place to put snow but one and that one, at the head of the driveway, is convenient only for the circle at the head of the driveway. It’s tough to bring snow all the way there from anywhere else.

And that was kind of the point.

I can drive anything with wheels but Anne has never had much reason to. Oh, she drives pickup trucks and station wagons and garden tractors but she isn’t very good at backing up a trailer and had no “heavy equipment” experience at all.

It did snow in December and January while I was out of state. I came back here to neat piles of snow where there should be piles and no snow where there shouldn’t. The sight lines at the road were clear. And there was plenty of room for the next storm and the next. She had mastered the plow/lift/dump cycle beautifully and she did it on her own.

I wonder …

Posted in Global Warming, Seasonal, Random Access | 6 Comments »