Category: weather

snow

The dead might wake into a world like this,
And know its white lost ecstasy their own.
I am a stranger wearing flesh and bone,
Peering beyond my dusty chrysalis.
No scent or sound invades the integrity
Of peace beneath the ermined thatch of pine.
Nor whir of wing, nor quick heart-beat of mine
Shall spill the cradled silence from a tree.
No God of Sinai shatters the timeless pause
With “Thou shalt not.” But from each holy bush
Love speaks, articulate in this white hush.
Here life and death may meet, obeying new laws,
And mingling as easily as flake with flake.
Into a world like this the dead might wake.–Emma Gray Trigg

Providence


Visiting my wise stone white man chum, Roger Williams. Polar Roger. Girl at the grocery store said that growing up she and her contemporaries called Roger “the snitch”. Why? The position of his hand, pointing, ratting someone out….
No, not Roger.

How, he asked, could the Puritans claim the land by “right of discovery,” when it was already inhabited?–Grinde & Johansen

Need a modern writer to animate Roger, David McCullough? (This a color photo, no manipulation. The weather performs the function which Photoshop normally supplies, stripping out the color.}
Roger in better weather.

rain


I am a weather water streams nerd, product of growing up in the streams, rivers and estuaries of this state, Virginia.
This year, I introduced 80 yearling trees to the Chesapeake Bay watershed and the weather took a xeric turn.
I am so happy to see rain falling.
Good places to observe and quantify precipitation:
Doppler radar storm total.
iMap
Weather Underground personal weather stations
USGS stream flows

To the end that the people have clean air, pure water, and the use and enjoyment for creation of adequate public lands, waters and other natural resources, it shall be the policy of the Commonwealth to conserve, develop and utilize its natural resources, its public lands and its historic sites and buildings.

Further, it shall be the Commonwealth’s policy to protect its atmosphere, lands and waters from pollution, impairment or destruction for the benefit, enjoyment and general welfare of the people of the Commonwealth.–Constitution of Virginia

rain


the rain gauge in my back-yard reads 2.2 inches. The first significant rainfall this month.

The gauge at Palmyra, downstream from CHO pulsed. It will be interesting to see the change in the community’s reservoir water levels tomorrow.

Acer saccharinum

robin on her nest during a thunderstorm
We had a severe thunderstorm in Charlottesville last Thursday. It snapped power poles, uprooted trees.
The robin made this nest in a 120 year old silver maple. The dread silver maple.
Outlawed by municipalities around the country. Experts say it is a weak wooded, weedy, infrastructure trashing tree.
Sure enough, this tree lost limbs, is that weak wooded or smart?
Instead of hanging onto all its limbs and blowing over in one beautiful piece,
it dropped a few limbs and lived.
Sister robin protecting those youngsters. Mommas all right.

thunderstorm

sycamore leaning with the wind
We had a storm yesterday afternoon, cold air falling six miles down out of a cumulonimbus, making for a straight line Dorothy Gale experience. Busted many trees. These trees lean with the wind.
ht ferron, night
here in the hinterland we run our utilities in the air. It is the cheapest way. Akin to keeping our inventory of used motor parts in the front yard. After a wind, some trees fall on electric lines. The solution? Cut down the trees? We are cheap. If we could run the sewer lines in the air we would...

utilities

Blessed darkness. Night at night. Nary a streetlight in my part of town. Power lines down. The rise in the distance, Monticello. View from Sunrise Trailer Park.