So the country has switched over to Daylight Saving Time (save Arizona), and spring season is here… in name, anyway; it’s Maine. The clouds parted on Saturday, and it’s been blue ever since, until this afternoon. The geese have appeared here or there; but they may have figured it’s still too cold to migrate back yet.
Not a great subject for hard focus. (Mar 16 1:44 p.m.)
There have been some fierce, pushing-your-car-door-closed winds, and branches have fallen. But the sunlight has been noticeably strong.
Heading into late winter, some sprouts and buds have been popping up in Maine.
(Mar 4 12:01 p.m.)
…All of which are now, I’m sure, under a coating of snow.
(Mar 7 5:40 p.m.)
And I’m sure it’s worse in other parts of the northeast. “Thundersnow” — a combination of a thunderstorm and a blizzard. Reportedly, there are of tens of thousands without power for a week, in winter (cold) weather. (But I can’t imagine it being nearly as bad as what Puerto Rico continues to go through.) …But here?
So, we’re well into the new year. Storms have come and gone, and the kids are back in school again. (None mine, lol.) 2017’s wildfires paved the way for mudslides, and… it’s like my fingers would begin to hurt how much I’d be crossing them hoping this year will be better. There are, however, always good and balanced parts to reflect on.
Library stool. (Jan 19 2:17 p.m.)
2017 wasn’t exactly a great year for subjects. But it was the first whole year I had a modern iPhone. An iPhone SE camera doesn’t sound like much, but, with the right software, it’s enough to experiment with, and reflect on my small world, here in Maine.
So it was a relatively warm day, the third day into the new year. 22°F. Still cold, yes, but not bitter cold; walking outside wasn’t painful. I still had the idea to put on gloves, since yesterday, due to the low humidity with the cold; a few fissures have formed on the back of some of my fingers. (Some spots of blood.)
It seems the warmth contributed to how I slept for maybe 9 hours. (Not that my memory or thinking is sharp.)
Thick ice on a railing. (Jan 3 1:56 p.m.)
It had been around zero Fahrenheit for days, and it shows.
(Jan 3 1:57 p.m.)
The icicles in this photo would be longer if we weren’t breaking them. I spent some time removing ice and snow from tree branches hanging low due to frozen water weight; one branch around back was up to around head level after I was done with it. The small porch tree also has its share of ice, as you can (partly) see above.
Branch debris. (Jan 3 1:50 p.m.)
A larger tree along the path had already lost enough ice and snow thru melting to be well over our heads. The weather (and our own actions, moving branches out of the way) left a lot of small debris.
(Jan 2 11:54 a.m.)
Tuesday was still a cold, droopy Winter mess scene.
(Jan 3 1:51 p.m.)
Icicles had been forming all over the place; Wednesday, I found that some have dropped.
All this warmth, of course, isn’t going to last. There is a winter storm approaching. Meteorologists call what has been forming a “Bomb Cyclone.” Much of the world is hot, while north America is cold. There’s snow in Florida. A frozen switch (or the confusion of one) in Savannah led to a train derailment. This storm weather comes almost exactly 20 years after the 1998 ice storm that left millions without power for days upon days and cost billions of dollars in damage.
Yeah, from the looks of it, it seems impossible to enter. (Dec 29 2:37 p.m.)
So… soon people in the northeast (including me) are going to be seeing more of this stuff and then some.
Diffuse sun during light snow. (Dec 29 2:37 p.m.)
And less of the sun…
Last photo taken for the year. (Dec 30 4:51 p.m.)
…and the moon. And no, I didn’t bother to take a photo of the January 1 supermoon; it was way too @%!#ing cold for that.
(Dec 29 3:05 p.m.)
We’ll see, about the storm, how bad it will be for us.
(Dec 29 2:04 p.m.)
Wish us luck! 🙂
Well, that’s it for now. I have more December photos to share, but it’s now 3 in the morning, and I would like to get something up before the power potentially goes out.
It was the greatest Christmas present Maine could offer: a snowstorm. (It would also be noted that ‘great’ can mean ‘greatly bad.’ …And also we weren’t the only state to be hit with snow; Pennsylvania just got 53″ over two days.)
But I’ll start with the more peaceful aspects of the past few days.
It wouldn’t be winter in Maine without more accumulation in March. And maybe April.
(Mar 14 3:32 p.m.)
The blizzard moving through the northeast hit Maine Tuesday morning. And according to a recent forecast, our county is apparently one of the few in the state to get the most snow. And so, after being in bed until about 3 p.m. (I needed the sleep), I began taking photos, and shoveling, and measuring, first measuring with the shovel itself.
