gravitylover

Looks like a couple of crazy nice days coming up.

Looks like it stayed slightly above freezing here. Local mesonet sites had 32.4 and 34.1

^^Re: Leaf peeping - Most of the trees that had any color have dropped most of their leaves. There are still plenty that are late summer/early fall faded green but it doesn't seem like those are going to change to anything worthwhile this year and then there are the ones that just turned brown and crunchy but didn't drop. What a blah leaf season. Gonna bring in some wood to get a fire going in the fireplace tonight, not much oil left in the tank.

Yay frost advisory tonight. Guess I should check and see if there's even any oil left in the tank from last year

The other takeaway is the nearly fully leafed out green trees in the background. Boy today was a nice day. Driving around with the windows open, riding bikes in the woods and playing tennis...

Yeah the long stretch of minimal diurnal range combined with warm and humid days put the hurt on the colors and now the trees are just dropping their leaves. It started out with such promise with the cool start to September then *poof* I'm digging the fall feel out there today though.

.5 for the two days but it's been near constant light mist or drizzle making it just plain soggy. I was out and about today and took some tiny back roads over the top of the Taconics and the color was great but mostly yellows and oranges without much for the vivid reds we usually get a lot of, those trees were already either bare or had just turned brown and crunchy. Above ~1k feet the wind was pretty strong and it was raining leaves as hard as it was raining water, both were coming down in sheets. It was weird to be out in that environment where it looks like deep deep fall but the AC is on cold in the car because it's 71/70 and feels tropical.

.3", 72/70, AC running I actually had to close the windows because it was so muggy

I understand that for the majority of the population reservoir levels would be important and how they define how dry it is but for many of us that live with forest as part of our daily lives it's more important that the overall moisture levels are higher than what they are now. I mentioned the other day how surprised I am at how high the reservoirs are this fall considering how little rain has fallen since the end of August but that's due to several factors. First off we had a reasonable snow year that ended late, an abundance of rain for the following 4-5 months and apparently water usage through the served areas is down over the last ten years. The land, on the other hand, is bone dry, as dry as it's been in a very long time. After how wet it had been and things rotted standing they are now just flopping over because they're brittle and can't handle a breeze, there are huge trees down everywhere and branches just falling out of the trees that aren't as healthy as they should be from last years extreme drought. The foliage is dull and falling off the trees already dry and half shriveled, creeks are barely flowing if at all, places in the woods that are almost always wet are parched and cracking and the amount of brush/forest fire fuel just waiting to burn is astounding. Sure we've had some very dry periods and the drought last year was more significant than this but the length of time that we've gone without even moistening the surface is scary and the forests are really showing it, in many places even more so than other dry times we've had in the last 20 years. Now hunting season has started and there are people traipsing through the woods, far off the regular trail networks, that are sometimes quite careless and it concerns me. I see more garbage in the woods this time of year than at others, I see smoldering fire pits that I never see when it's not hunting season and I see cigarette butts on the ground far into the woods where I never see them. These things are like waving a red flag to me so I'm beating the dry drum.

There's some good color on the ground in the woods but nothing special on the trees. As much as I don't want TS force winds we really need the water it would bring. It's scary dry out there.

I first went there when I was 27 I instantly fell in love with the drive through Daquiri shops with the huge frozen Margaritas

...and it goes back to 80 in two days.

Did anyone notice that it snowed above about 4k from the 'Daks through the Whites this morning?

That's what that fog was in the mornings for a few days recently

^^ That's what I'm talking about. That map posted on the last page is wrong for most areas. There may be a few pockets that are still sort of moist but for the most part it's parched out there. FWIW NJ I had easily as much rain as you did through the end of August and more in the spring.

They can calculate whatever they want. I'm telling you that it's not true. I'm out in the woods a few times a week and doing ~1k miles a week, more like 2k this week, driving around the northeast and it's dry. Some areas are still showing green but they're few and far between.

^^And that wind yesterday dried things out even more. I did a quick round trip to central VT yesterday and in many areas the trees were nearly stripped of their leaves and there were huge branches down all over the place. I also noticed that crops that hadn't been harvested went from green and tasty looking over the weekend to brown and probably only good for animal feed rather than human food. In most places the leaves haven't come down but the early color has turned brown and in general things aren't nearly as vivid as they had started out. This foliage season had such promise but as it dried out that went away

It may look luscious but the soil moisture is way down and most plant life is actually dry to the point of being crunchy now. The forest floor has turned to hardpan over the last two weeks, in many areas the leaves are down or very thin and the undergrowth is completely down already pretty much everywhere north of 287.

I remember it as being an overhyped dud.

One spark before then and it won't matter.

The forests have gone very dry very quickly at the worst time of year for that to happen. The leaves are coming down adding fuel to the understory and there is no lush growth left to retard a fire if one were to start and with fewer leaves left in the canopy there is more air movement which would also help to facilitate fire growth. Places that were muddy just a few weeks ago are sandy and dusty now

Nice morning https://photos.app.goo.gl/z1QXlpKXAQxEFjqp1

It's not the waning daylight hours. It's the increasing amount of time between your birth day and today Ask me how I know

You don't really want the little bit that fell, all it did was energize the slick coating on stuff and bring the mosquitos back out

And now it's raining. Hola Jose