Mountain Weather predictions

Our forecast for last night and this morning showed snow tapering off and done by 2:00 - and temperatures tomorrow in the 40's.  Accordingly, around 3:00, although it was still snowing, we decided we could scrape a little of the snow off the driveway to help the melting process tomorrow. (the photo has an interesting texture because I took it through the screen)

We measured around 4-4.5 inches on the driveway - which doesn't really say how much snow we really got, just how much we were pushing.

If you looked at the radar for this area any time today, you would not see any precipitation, and our forecast has been cloudy and dry all day.

But all the cleared areas of the driveway now have a new coating of white and the stuff is still falling at 5:30.

Winter Storm Jonas

Just before noon on Friday, so someplace in the middle of the dire predictions for record snowfall here in the mountains, and we're not very impressed.

Those are my foot prints, heading out to the edge of the driveway and back. We might have had 2.5 or 3 inches of snow over night and into the early daylight hours, but - and this is pretty much right as predicted - it switched to a "wintry mix" just before 9:00 and now it's simply raining.  Between the rain and the occasional weak bits of sunshine, our streets are clearing themselves.

Right now, the scariest thing is the weight of the wet snow on the evergreens, like the juniper in the middle foreground of this photo.  You can see the black asphalt ribbon of our street on the far right.

Norris spent a long day yesterday, his first as a part-time employee of the City of Asheville FD, in the midst of emergency management preparations.  We are wondering what our friends in other parts of the area are seeing.

Icy morning in the mountains

Beech Community Center and ice on Little Snowball Mtn on the left and possibly Craggy on the right.

Winter Too Early?

On Friday, we had our windows cleaned by a local service. One man using our well water, processed through a "deionizer" on the company truck pumped through a very long hose, stood at ground level and reached all the way to the peak - all told close to four stories up. I didn't get a picture of him working on the top windows. The whole job took him maybe two hours at the most.  He was assisted for the interior washing - he had to use a ladder inside since the deionized water can't just run down the walls inside. 

We think we're happy with the job they did - it must be an improvement - but we haven't been able to tell how clean and streak-free the glass is because on Friday, we did not have much sunshine. I took a few photos of our fall views.

 

 We really do enjoy our tree-top windows.

The leaf colors were pretty on Friday, but it rained all afternoon.  I took the pictures because, as predicted, sometime after midnight, the rain changed to snow.  Norris took these yesterday morning -

 

Please note the birds on the feeder in the picture just above, because on Friday evening, while we were in the studio with Moki, we heard a very strange noise.  We went outside with a flashlight and found this (photo taken yesterday morning)

That's our other bird feeder hook, minus a very nice (and rather expensive) squirrel proof feeder, bent over to the ground.  The squirrel baffle is actually visible - its the smooth gray mass sticking out of the snow in the upper left corner.  Norris went out looking for the feeder, but the bear (and it had to be a bear to bend the pole like that) had removed it somewhere else to break into the sunflower seeds.  We had stopped feeding the birds the last few years because of the bears, but this  year we had not seen a single one. There's a house under construction on our side of the ridge that had discouraged them. 

Norris came in and said that's the end of our feeding the birds.  But then he saw all the birds frantically looking around in the snow for food, so the second feeder went back on its hook.

We remembered to bring it in last night. We were evidently revisited by the bear - that hook was also found bent like the first, but there was nothing tasty at the top this time.  Norris' footprints from his missing feeder search yesterday along with all the clumps of snow falling from the trees have obscurred the bear's tracks from last night's visit that might give us a hint where to look for that feeder.  One that was stolen a couple of years ago disappeared without a trace.

Spring has sprung

We got up this morning after 3.5 inches of rain overnight and had to unclog our backyard drainage system. Norris wore tall boots and unclogged the storm drain while Cheryl broke the logjam that had formed around the stepping stone bridge.  The overflow design our landscaper engineered did the job and we have only some erosion under the deck to repair, with no water threat to the basement windows. A couple of hours later when the sun was out, we took a few photos - this is the swale that runs down the mountain right outside our kitchen.

This evening the flow is much smaller, but we are expecting more rain tonight.

While Cheryl was out of town last weekend, Norris finally filled the hummingbird feeder which had gone dry even though no hummers had been spotted.  Eventually he saw at least one male, and today we have seen possibly three coming and going.

After being in Chicago, I can't help but notice our spring is much father along.  This picture was taken in an attempt to capture the hummingbird sitting on the wire of the deck railing, but it's nice just to show how beautiful the new green leaves are in the fading evening light.

Power of Pax

Winter storm Pax struck our region on Wednesday morning with light snow showers that kept up all day. It was only an hour or two late to follow the predictions, and picked up strength late in the afternoon.  We shoveled the upper area of our driveway twice Wednesday evening while the snow was light and fluffy.  That worked well for us because that night, the snow turned to an icy mix and the additional accumulation was wet and heavy.  The icy stuff continued to fall yesterday morning and into the afternoon, with big gusts of wind as the storm finally petered out, so we didn't get a measure of the total snowfall depth. This morning, our table is holding about 7 inches of snow.

This was a rare time when the combination of snow and ice caused a partial television signal failure. We only noticed it after dark, so clearing off the dish waited until daylight.

Our weather station is still functioning for wind direction, but it won't tell you anything about the speed or gusts.

Now we are waiting for a normal snowfall that's predicted to start later today.

Just what we needed, more water...

Yesterday, our landscapers came and repaired the damage from the big rain last week and made some improvements to our drainage system.  This afternoon we got another big storm: this one has dumped three inches of rain so far (it's still coming down).  The first inch fell in about 20 minutes. Unfortunately the ground above us is still saturated from last week's rain, so the usually dry swales on the slope behind the house quickly started carrying water from up the mountain through our yard.  The mulch that the landscapers put down yesterday quickly washed down the slope and clogged up the newly uncovered drain (until yesterday, we had a large flat rock covering the drain for esthetic reasons).  So the waterfall ran over the top of the clogged drain, under the stairs, and then washed out most of the repairs that had been done yesterday under the deck.  In this first video, we have just discovered the water from the swale on the east is going where it isn't supposed to.  As the camera looks to the right of the stairs, the drain is invisible since it is covered by the flowing water.

After Cheryl and Norris both took turns standing in the rain while scooping the mulch away from the drain, the drain started carrying the water like it is supposed to.  In this video you can see the water is mostly going down the uncovered drain. Tomorrow our landscapers will be back to come up with a different solution that will probably mean a dry stream bed for the back of the house so the water will avoid all the mulched areas.

The water coming around the other side of our house was not causing any problems, but in this video you can see how much water is flowing down several different paths and converging just at the bottom of our stone stairs.

The last video shows the flow of water as it exits our underground drainage pipe and enters the dry stream bed in front of our house.  This video was taken after the rain had slowed down so most of the water is staying in the dry stream bed, but during the height of the storm, water had fanned out all across our front yard.

More water than we needed

These pictures are mostly for Cheryl, who is in Chicago visiting her family, but I have thrown in some background for other blog viewers.

A strange winter storm (named Iago, the weather channel says) has been dumping rain on us for four days now.  As of this afternoon, the four-day total is about 6 inches.  Our normally placid Reems Creek (for which our valley is named) has been running high with white water since the rain started.  This photo was taken Tuesday, but the creek is much more swollen now than when this shot was made two days ago.

When we built this house, the builder sited the house between two natural swales which looked like they had carried rain water in the past.  We have not seen any water flowing in either of these swales since we moved here, but that all changed this week.  This is the waterfall that has sprung up in the western-most swale, which runs along our driveway.  Although a lot of water is pouring down this swale and making a roaring noise, the water is being harmlessly funneled down to the street.  This photo is looking up from our driveway.

This is the water as it flows alongside the driveway, headed to the street.  No problem here.

This is the smaller waterfall that has appeared in the swale on the east side of the house. The water from this swale is supposed to flow into a large catch basin on the side of our house (where it mixes with the downspout water) and flow through two culverts down to the dry streambed in front of our house.  

The intake to the catch basin is under the large flat rock to the left of our deck stairs.  The water is actually flowing over the top of and around the stone.  We're not sure if the flow is exceeding the capacity of the catch basin and culverts, or if they are now blocked by the flow of debris into the basin.  The water in the photo is up to the level of the top of the bottom step, but at times is running higher than that.  After passing the stone, the water is cutting two gulleys into the dirt beneath the deck.  The gulleys are about a foot deep and eroding a fair amount of dirt.  The light under the deck wasn't good enough to take pictures, but one of the gulleys was running right up next to the house and threatening to run in the windows of Cheryl's studio.  Norris grabbed a shovel and started rerouting the gulleys to move the water further away from the studio wall.  So far the diversion is holding up and no water has come into the house.

Here is where the water emerges from under the deck.  A still photo just doesn't capture the effect of how much water is flowing here and how fast it is moving.  The water is cutting a fairly deep gully into the slope of the front yard 

The water that goes into the catch basin is supposed to exit the culverts about where the yellow grass ends and go into a rock-lined dry stream bed to the left of the photo.  Some water is still flowing in that path, but most of the water is now creating a new stream bed to the right.  Fortunately the rain is supposed to turn to snow and end by midnight.  Next week we'll have to assess the damage and see what we have to do to correct the drainage issues.

Frankensnow

Although we are a long way from Hurricane Sandy's landfall, its spinoff moisture collided with the big cold front to bring us more than 5 inches of snow overnight (as measured on the deck table).  Fortunately the ground temperatures are warm enough to keep the snow melting in the streets (it was 75 degrees here a few days ago).  This is an exceptionally early snow for us.  We are thankful that the forecasted 50 mph winds never materialized here.

Since it's a wet snow, its sticks to the trees in that photogenic way.  But the weight of the snow has prematurely brought down a lot of our leaves.

It's still snowing lightly and we are supposed to get more snow overnight.

Weather Station On-Line

This posting may only be of interest to one blog reader (Dorry), but that's good enough reason to do it.

Norris decided to add some hardware and software to his weather station so that the weather data can be displayed in a number of different ways on his computer screen.   The weather data is also sent to a weather site on the Internet.  The hardware addition was a data logger module and cable that connects the weather station console to the computer.  The software being used is the Virtual Weather Station (Internet version).  The on-line weather data is posted every 3 seconds to the Weather Underground website.  Weather Underground (also known as Wunderground) is a network of thousands of home weather stations across the county that all post their weather data to the Wunderground web site.  

This is a screen capture of the weather display on Norris's computer.  Its a very flexible interface that allows you to display many different weather parameters in many different ways over any length of time.  Norris is still experimenting with various sorts of displays, but for right now this is the fairly simple set of displays he has selected.  You should be able to click on the screen below for a larger view.

To see how the weather data is displayed on the Wunderground website, go to this link:
http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=KNCWEAVE14
or simply click on the Hawks Landing Weather on the right side of the top of the blog, underneath the bear picture.

You can see that the weather data can be displayed on the Wunderground site for a day, a week, a month, or a year at a time.  For now, there is no history before the first of June since that is when the software was installed, but as time goes on the history will build up.

Over on the right hand side of the Wunderground page, you can see the ""Nearby Weather Stations" map that shows the location of our weather station in Hawks Landing (station 60 on the map).  The nearby station at location 62 is the weather station at the Reems Creek FD.  If you click on the "Satellite", then click the + button five or six times, you can actually see our house.

Just under that, in the section called "About This Station", you can see location information for our weather station as well as a photo.  If you click on the photo, you can enlarge it to full screen.

The Virtual Weather Station software also makes it possible to add your weather to any web page, so that's how we now have our weather permanently attached to the top of our blog page.

The ground hog was right

Saturday, it was terribly cold and blustery and it snowed all day. We don't often have snow in the screened porch - but the cats experienced it.


Six more weeks, the groundhog said. We really didn't experience much winter before this week anyway.

But even by early afternoon yesterday with the sun shining, you wouldn't know we'd had many of the white flakes at all.

The area on the slope behind our house that stays in the shade all morning shows the most evidence.

First Snow of the Season

Last year when it snowed in late November, they said it was "unusual" to have snow that early around here. I guess we are having another unusual winter already!

Hail, Hail

Norris and Cheryl just made it home when a small storm system struck with violence. First there was a lot of rumbling thunder, but then, there were loud noises on the roof. Hail the size of ping pong balls started bouncing around outside.

Cheryl waited for it to stop falling before venturing out for a couple of quick photos - here's one by the bird feeders, where the slope collected a lot of the stones -


And one that, when we first saw it, was probably twice this size. Temperatures have fallen, but it's still in the upper 60's so it's all melting very quickly.

But on third day, the real snows came back

Four inches in the last 5 hrs and still coming down hard

two days in a row

We woke up to a bit of snow yesterday - after the sun came out it looked like this.

There's something of a natural crystal chandelier effect going on when you're close.



And a sugar frosted look from a little distance




That's about what our snows are usually like. We got the same treat today, but Cheryl doesn't have time to take Lu for a walk this morning. Lu likes to go up the neighbor's driveway (they have a long driveway and a series of spaced boulders he can travel along, hopping from one to the other). At the bend in their driveway was a small tree with these brilliant red clusters on the ends of the branches.

Christmas Snow

Looks like our Christmas snow is starting to wind down as the sun is trying to come out. The prediction as of Christmas Eve was for "up to 1 inch of slushy accumuluation." I think we did much better than that. Here Cheryl makes the official measurement on our deck. I think this might top our old "layer cake" picture from when we lived in Reston.

16 inches is what we measured before the wind started blowing it around.

The view from our living room.

Cheryl shows us that the snow is literally knee deep.

The bird feeders and bird bath are all wearing impressive snow hats today.

The view up our back slope. Its a wonder our satellite dish is still working with this much snow on it.

White Christmas

We started getting snow about 8am this morning and had about 4 inches by 3pm, with another 4 inches still expected today. Before the Christmas snow got too deep, Lu got to go out and explore the snow for himself. He wasn't entirely sure that he liked the snow under his feet as he opted to come back in the house after a few minutes.

Turkey Tracks

Not the quilted kind. We've posted many pictures of the wild turkeys we see regularly in the spring, summer and fall, so this time, here are some tracks in the snow under the deck, taken from the living room window. We usually don't see the turkeys during the winter - we figured they don't come up on the slopes. They must be really hungry in this sub-freezing weather and made their way here to clean up the sunflower seed under the feeder. That's o.k. by us, but it will undoubtedly upset the local field mice or voles - whichever it is that burrows tunnels out there.

Our forecast for yesterday called for a 30% chance of a dusting, up to possibly an inch of snow. Those forecasts were for the nearby town of Weaverville, but as we have learned, those snow forecasts don't pertain to conditions on the side of our mountain. We have 5 inches of snow so far and its still coming down. Fortunately we don't have to be anywhere till tomorrow so we are content to be snowed in for a day or two. One of the joys of being retired.

Fall ends abruptly - not so fast!

We had a hard freeze this weekend, and watched blustery winds blowing leaves about while the snow fell (but didn't stick). We figured that was the end of our fall color show, but we were not really taking into account a few holdouts -

Most of the maples are bare but there are some tall ones in the neighborhood - and this skinny one in our "wildflower meadow"- that are still brilliant red.


Our early blooming rhododendron came out with a few blossoms recently and they are hanging on. You have to look hard to find them.


All the annuals were hit hard by the freeze, but we still have the Autumn Ferns, and these Dusty Millers on the front walk that survived last winter and thrived.


But the most special plants currently are our American Beeches - here is one showing mostly brown but still some yellow.

And a little lower in the yard, this one still has bits of beautiful green mixed with the brown and yellow.

And just a few more feet away, across the road, is one that is still entirely rich green, tipped with a bit of yellow on the upper branches. This is truly a "four season" tree - it holds onto its brown leaves through the winter, though they will turn paler and end up a light tan shade. Come February, when the sun shines on it, those leaves will glow like flowers.



And then there's our Tiger Cat, who likes to remind us of his good looks.