Bob Chill

Lol. It was a major upgrade from the previous... ummm...unwalled hole in ground. Zero to hero. I was called the "#1 of #2s" during the inaugural weekend. I was going to buy newer/smaller tractor but the emissions and electronics are a nightmare. Smartest thing I've done since randomly buying 25 acres of forest is buying that Massey tractor. Spent its whole life running hay bales around just 30 miles from where it's parked. Well cared for. Cost me 5 grand... newer tractors anywhere close to that power is 25k or more lol. I'll be under 9k all in for full mechanical restore and a machine that will rarely stop for any reason for 50 years. It weighs more than a honda accord. Don't bump into ANYTHING no matter how slow ur goin..... don't ask....

Hey wx fam! Been a nutty year for me. Been wantin to update longtime wx geek friends but time keeps slippin.... until today I spend 75% of my time in sw VA now lol Became good friends with the contractor who did the initial clearing on our tract of land. We started working together and it clicked immediately. I've had more fun running heavy equipment in the last 4 months than I did my entire 20+ office career lol. Wife and I are aiming to sell Rockville in mid spring and we're building everything in VA ourselves. Buddy I'm working with has his homebuilders license so we're going to do it together. Have plans now but need a VA architect for mods and final. PM me if anyone knows a fair one. And by fair I mean it's a simple plan with simple mods. Don't be thinking new BMW cuz I already talked to you and laughed behind your back hahaha I've done so much chainsaw milling in my free time I'm ready for a bandsaw mill with 20' of track. I'm allowed to mill my own hardwood beams for construction framing. So cool. Can't wait. House will be framed with the red oaks i haveto clear for the home site. I built an outhouse entirely with a chainsaw mill and basic tools in my spare time lol. Dropped every tree and turned it into a building. Lol. Never in a zillion years would i have guessed this path 5 years ago. I've been slowly restoring the 1967 Massey Ferguson diesel tractor I bought last winter. That thing is bombproof. Runs perfect and I beat on it all the time. Chipping, hauling, grading, and dragging stuff is a typical week. Never complains. I'll be done painting the wheels within 2 weeks. Everything works like it did out of the factory. Prob another 50 years of hard service ahead. What a trip lol

Getting warm after huge storms is pretty normal. Especially with Archambault events. Our biggies favor the flip from neg to pos NAO. Hard to stay cold on the heels.

I've been rippin and readin a little lately but have no thoughts other than climo enso stuff so lurking only. Since 2015, it seems remarkably hard to NOT get heavily modified continental air in here. Models keep showing the express 7+ days out but the carve slows down and by the time the cold pool gets here, it's west or even sw flow in the mids or uppers. I can't even count how many times really. We all know how well stale air works here with a synoptic system lol. Imo- it's just a cycle. We see it all the time. Train tracks set up and don't want to leave no matter what the euro says hahaha. Imho- much of our winter's snow fate will depend on things nobody can see beyond a week. Digital cold air does not make it snow. We need a fresh feed at the start of synoptic development. Elusive as hell last few years... always sloppy stale mixed messes with no feed when it matters. Iirc, vast majority of "rain when it should snow" lately is likely a byproduct of slow moving stale air patterns with blocking. The brunt of the cold keeps focusing on the MW and hanging around. The MA can't survive like that. We need a banana. Especially in a Nino. When those show up during snow season, so will I. I'm done trackin mix lines other than real time.

Man, I found pics of the first cut back in July. Trees getting shredded by a machine must be watched live to appreciate. Top 2 pics are hard to recognize but it is the same place as the gravel pics. Lol. We ran a trackloader for 6 days straight after the mulchers finished. It was in the 90s every.single.day. We chose mulching over excavating because it creates a mountain of composting biomass out of the gate. Excavators just knock everything down and move it to the side. Which is totally fine but we plan of having large gardens and a 3 acre pasture to attract wildlife. The mulch is nearly soil now and man we have A LOT lol

We'll see how many years I have left first. Lol. Crazy things keep happening. I'll be running a 12k lb excavator around on weekends here shortly. I have to build bridges that support 15k lbs to get across 2 drainages but I can't build them without the excavator. I'm going to be a single man road/bridge crew. Those pics will be really wild. Or scary. I've never done this b4

This should make some laugh and others feel a little bad for me. Right before the "monster truck event" fiasco, I actually had the driveway bed graded and crowned. Lol. Was just going to pack rock as it settled then gravel. Wasn't supposed to rain much that week and certainly not 2" in 30 hours lol. 2 trucks had to get up. No choice. One weighed over 8k lbs. Lol. We were so wet and muddy and intermittently stuck... Words can't describe that night (it was dark lol). I went back to Rockville laughing kinda because I couldn't tell how bad it was. My neighbor shot the 2 pics the next day and texted me "you got a little bit of access problems goin on". Then I saw the pics. They only covered half of the mess. There was plenty more So my wife and I got to work. Mud dried and I graded it all off. Could drive up and down dry no prob. Wet? Truck up the hill before first drop. Then we farmed rocks (mostly quartz) in the woods with the tractor. Packed in the bed where needed top to bottom. Then I leveled and crowned. During the 2 months, every truck or piece of equip that went up and down was instructed to drive over all rocks at all times lol. Pack em in real good. It works great and it's all free. The rocks in the pics looking like they are laying on the surface have at least 3-5 buddies underneath holding them up permanently. Dump truck went over them and didn't budge. Pics show lower 2/3ds of the drive. After all the hell the gravel went down smooth. Only took 3-4 hours to get it just right. Best tractor ride of 2023 coming down the gravel. Will be hard to top.

Looks like snowless winters turned me into a philosopher. They used to turn me into a bit of an A hole. Life progress has unlimited metrics if you keep your eyes open. hahaha I'm going post some pics of what I went thru with out driveway. Lol. The first couple will be pretty amusing when things unwound on me in Dec but the reality of what was in store for me kept smiles away more often than not

I'll see what I can do about PMs lol. Been a problem for years now I think I can't explain it but my intuition tells me who I align with and who I don't. It's a feeling and not a thought. I feel aligned with you. Who how why and all that stuff? Beats me

It all sounds so logical at the starting line right? It's just math. Do good math and check out. Simple... but that's not how it works here. It's near impossible to win the math game early because everything in the DC metro is designed to make sure it costs too much to do it along the way. Lol. My father gave me advice right before we bought our house in 2002. He said this area has a way of robbing you blind right under your nose. He also said that I will almost certainly increase expenses as my income grows so most months will look the same no matter how much goes in. He was 100% right and I'm certainly not a lavish spender. He was speaking from experience and also was 100% supportive of all of our early marriage decisions. He asked me in 2009 when he was sick if I had had enough yet. I didn't get the magnitude of question until 7 years after he passed. My answer to him was a resounding "nope i'm good" but that changed dramatically in the years following. By 2016 I had had enough but our family life was deeply woven into the fabric of the DMV's pick pocket action that there was STILL no way out without causing hardship on the people I love the most. Ugh See what I'm getting at? It's not really an equation or free will choice once your in and the grip has a hold. The emotional burden of packing up and leaving can be a titanium wall keeping you in too. Just be self aware and honest and make sure you put your heart and intuition first and not your wallet. That's a REAL blurry topic tho...

I'm all in now. I hopefully have 15+ solid years of good phys health. I'm finally light and strong for an old guy. That was harder than my driveway and I was already light and strong once lol. Everything a young person hears about getting old is true. They need to just accept that. I'm getting back to work here this spring with the contractor who did the initial clearing on our tract. 1 man show will become a 2 man show with machines. We're buying a 12k lb excavator and we both have trucks/trailers trackloaders already. I'm in for my love for the outdoors and also machines (lifetime gear head lol) I need to earn but my ambition doesn't have a single $ attached. I have a feeling it will all just naturally work out. The realtor who sold us our lot set us up to clear a 2 acre build site for a lot he sold. All I did was mention I'm buying excavator in passing. He lit up and here we are. Life is a GD trip sometimes. Nothing I'm doing is pre-planned. Just rollin downstream seeing what happens.

No doubt friend. I figured that out 3 years ago when I took the blinders off

I've always liked you as a poster. Even in the early pre-college days. As someone in their 50's who chased "the dream", I pulled it of in every way except true satisfaction. The most important part of life... I'm far from alone. I'm in the majority i think. I'm very self aware of why now. It clicked. Chasing "things and stuff and bank accounts and vacations and expensive dinners..." and whatever else can become a merry-go-round in living hell. If you are not feeling satisfaction from within, it's all a waste. The chase is insidious. You start off guns blazin. You know what you want and go for it. Over the coming decades it will beat on you. All of it. Traffic, stress, insane cost of living, surrounded by big ego jerks, etc. You start to ask yourself wtf you're doing. I realized I had no internal peace in my life. Always on alert and foot on the gas because it's the only way to play the money game Big money can often fuel a big ego and big ego's by default are very unhappy entities because it's typically house of cards inside. I realize now how wrong I had it and I was never brash or flashy. I've spent 2 months in (all of) my spare time building a 500' driveway bed by hand and a tractor. It was a real bitch. But I never wavered. I kept pushing, watching, thinking, adjusting. Gravel was delivered last week and it's all done. The happiest day of 2023 and it cost me $900 for 20 tons of gravel. This (for me) is true happiness with my life. I could have dropped 7-8k and had it done in a day but there is no way in hell I would feel such deep love and satisfaction for what I did. That one piece of work will make me smile inside until I leave the earth. Priceless really. I'm not telling a soul what to do other than be very aware that the "dream" has a very dark side that leaves an ocean sized pool of destroyed happiness in its wake. You can only understand pure satisfaction once you suffer greatly. Life is suffering by design. How much you balance suffering and internal happiness is 100% a choice. Friend, stay on the winning side of that. Whatever it takes. More money is an unlikely solution

It's near impossible to discern whether it's better data or simply shorter leads that adds the most accuracy. I'm a coin flip on this topic. Personally, I haven't seen much difference for years. Leads shorten and forecast improves is how I look at it. Big shifts in guidance as land based sensor data comes in has become pretty rare IME

I thought this scene last night was next level. Add 6-12" of mashed turnips and even the spirit of Bob Ross couldn't paint it ETA: this isn't our land. It's the shared lakeside landfor the 17 private properties in our "neighborhood" lol. Usually not a soul in sight.

I'm in VA this week. Looks like smith mtn jack east of the blue ridge. Should I post here or in the SE sub?

Boomer has unfinished business. I was so mad at montana. Everyone knew he would do it but dammit it still made me mad af lol

This hobby is a process similar to death by a thousand cuts without the death part. I mean you can die from it and stuff but it takes waaaay more than 1000 cuts. If you sit back and just look at winters for what they are as they progress, it gets much easier. I've been expecting everything to morph and fade like it has simply because it's been doing it basically all winter. Winter personality is something I mention often. It's a very subjective term but the essence of it is a quantum calculation in your head that produces a strong gut feel. No specifics. Just kind of an "aha! I see what's going on here!" feeling. I've grown to trust it and while I certainly get stuff plenty wrong in all directions, on avg my expectations seem to match conditions quite well and that removes negative emotions and all the "fun" circular thinking that goes with it. There's literally 7 weeks of solid snow climo left. Especially for bigger events. This is the beginning of prime time for that. It could easily snow here this year and we can get a big storm. But given this winter's incredibly persistent personality, it's unlikely to rush thru the door. Right now, "tracking" is just chasing the crack in the door at long ranges. It may never crack open. I'm waiting for that crack to be at hour -24 before getting excited. Until then, CAPE does a masterful job at updating morning thoughts and I trust his words 100%. I just read that daily and drive tractors

I do, will wear it this summer, will post pic, and will thoroughly enjoy the laughs. Haha

It's near perfect mechanically. I drove 10 miles on country roads to get it to our property. Lol. It was a fun/wild ride. Every person who saw me drive by smiled and waved or gave a thumbs up or whatever. It set in right then... I'm restoring everything cosmetic and keeping it until I'm gone. It's a special tractor. One farmer maintained it for its whole life. I'll do the same thing

Few steps ahead of you. Instead of watching wx models this week, I bought this bad ass 1967 diesel Massey Ferguson on Tuesday. A piece of local history as it spent 50 years on the same farm. Really cool machine. Rear hyrdros lift 3k lbs and it can tow 5k. I can't even break it lol. Now I'm rooting for dry weather. It can be cold or hot but need dry. I gotz lotza workz to do and I'm about sick AF of mud

I'll go out on a limb here. My intuition has been and is continuing to tell me our winter as far as snow threats go is about to start and probably be real for a while. I have my list of reasons but the big one is simple. Look at what mid level temps do in Canada on all ensembles over the next 2 weeks. The look at mean jet panels. Says a lot on a macro scale imo. Cold enough air source coast to coast just over the border. If you loop it you can see the tpv just rotating and distributing cold air. So I do believe snow chances will increase rapidly and probably hang around for than 30 seconds. But with the personality of winter and the type of northern stream dominant pattern on the means... clean events better not become a minimum bar lol

There's a difference between passively discussing and actively or exclusively focusing on it. 5 paragraph posts every day or 2 talking about isn't passive. Only a few are really interested in speculating "why". The rest just want to know whats possible with a specific setup with no mention of 1960 or "coulda woulda shoulda". There's a fatigue here about this and there are a lot of people directly or indirectly saying as much. It would go a long ways in improving the "fun factor" here if we simply just stopped debating/beating. Nobody wants to avoid topics and nobody wants to keep getting hit over the head with the same stuff. Everything has been said. Let's try and give it a rest