powderfreak

No one had A/C when I’d grow up spending summers in Woodstock, CT. Zero. It was hot and humid and you just dealt with it. Today every family member with a camp there has A/C now. My parents put in central AC there. Maybe it’s less expensive, or more wealth in general, or a push to live more comfortable in general, but from childhood to now everyone around the lake/pond in NE CT has A/C now.

Good point on the dews. The dews keep the nights from cooling off like they used to. I think most of my need for A/C comes at night. During the day if it’s hot or a bit uncomfortable, who really cares. But I lose my mind sweating while sleeping. I think the average minimum temps went up the most with the new 30-year normals. Instead of 46-54F type mins in the fake cold spots, the number of nights of like 55-65F are vastly higher these days.

Back to weather… first legit evening of T-Storms. Constant flash and booms for over 90 minutes now. Very slow moving stuff. Torrential rain. Been a solid light show. All the summer feels. Oddest thing is they are moving SE to NW, rare direction for T-Storms here.

The number of people I know who have put A/C in over the past 5 years is very high. Even folks starting to install pools and stuff. Not sure if it’s getting that much hotter up here or we are just getting that much softer that we can’t put up with any discomfort? Ha, probably a mix of both. Or it’s just a lot of people from down south moving up north and wanting creature comforts that the native NNE’ers were previously fine without (raises hand)?

Dog is actually on the injured list, otherwise she’d be rolling in every postage stamp pile she can find, ha. She wrecked her knee and now has a plate and four screws in there. Should be back hiking second half of summer.

He’s old school, the science professor. No need to post just for the sake of posting, ha. Me on the other hand… Looks like cloud over and rain in the late afternoon/early evening season has begun. Been thundering for an hour it seems like but finally started raining.

May is a summer month in NNE. Its so hot with humidity coming up that all snow on the mountain has a surface ground fog bank coming off of it. Pretty wild to see these streams of condensing air moving down trails and through the woods. These are 2500ft range. Looks like the Tolland Green on Christmas Day as Grinch dews move through.

No I think it's just the record highs we've been having. That late season upslope was very dense, QPF rich stuff. Bullets, needles and graupel. Certainly no fluff. We've had a few daily record highs in the area over the past week. That'll usually do it this time of year. Instead of sitting 40s and 50s the summit has been hitting 70F almost daily. In my experience, and the annual graphs show it, the snowpack tries to hold on for as long as possible but every year it hits a point where it just falls off a cliff. It rarely melts at the "average line" pace, it's usually much steeper than the average depth for whatever reason. Like whenever the first real "summer" warmth pattern moves in. In 2020 that May heat moved in about a week later, but same pitch of decline. Just depends how long into the spring we can get before we get that heat. May 2020 also saw like 5 feet of snow disappear in like 10 days.

This last 8 days of hot sunny afternoons has caused highly accelerated snow melt out of the mountains. Can see Mansfield's depth falling off a cliff the past 8 days. Lost like 2.5 feet of snow depth during this time. It's in free fall now. Last weekend there was still natural snow in spots down to 2,500ft (I even skied in the trees up high last weekend)... gone now. And that snow is very water rich at the bottom of the pack... just glaciated stuff. The water draining Mansfield behind my place has been decent flow despite no rainfall and low RH. It has to be snow melt.

Heading up the road in a little bit for a hike, as always will have camera with me, ha. It's hot though, damn. 73F at MMNV1 at 4,000ft. The simple garden thermometer at 3,300ft on the Snow Cam is in the mid/upper 70s. That's very warm for up there in the spruces.

It's always weird visually when it gets hot this time of year with very minor leaves or even none at all... though it's changing every 24 hours. A friend posted a shot from a golf course yesterday in VT, everyone wearing shorts, fairways nice and green, but the trees in the woods were still largely just sticks or some light green budding. It doesn't look "right" ha.

It's interesting how that area has some large differences in temps tonight. Classic elevated valley type of night in E.VT? Spots with any wind at all are 67-72F while no wind is 60-62F.

That seems like a lot. Efficiency Vermont does some decent rebates, though no where near as good as they were just 2-3 years ago. We are doing one condenser and three heads for $9k. Needing two condensers though likely is a big step up as the heads aren’t *that* much more to add. I know once over like 1500-1700 square feet you’ll max out one. Friends who have done it said it helped a lot this past winter with heating prices. Still need to burn oil or propane from all the fake cold nights, but really helped them in shoulder season late fall and early spring… like the Nov/March stuff.

Keep your head up man. Life can throw curveball after curveball but eventually you’ll barrel one for 450 feet to walk it off.

86/47 mixing out and temp going up.

Same here. We’ve been delayed this spring due to back order of parts and supply chain. Now expecting new Mitsubishi units in late May. Mines getting finished as soon as they get them.

The last couple years at least. That monster heat was two Mays ago.

88F at BML… another NNE scorcher.

86/50 here. Still pretty dry at 29% but not 16% of yesterday. A couple degrees cooler so far than yesterday’s 88/37 at this time. Classic, increase the dews a bit and the temperature can’t completely go bonkers.

Not even a mention about the temperature, only dews. Edit: Just looked, jeez only mid-70s there in Tolland?!

Trying in a round about way to justify to his wife why he had to spend a ton of money on an irrigation system?

DIT got so much rain last year, it could probably not rain a drop this summer and he’s be at average over the past two summers. I think sometimes in summer convective rainfall folks look at “average” too much on a too small a time scale. Summer rain comes in short heavy bursts. Get a tropical feed and pick up 6 weeks of rain in 6 hours.

He loves it though, ha. I feel like there’s a bit of a lack of awareness on how warm season rainfall works too. The guy is looking for average like 1.25” water per week steady (which doesn’t really happen). Its more like 3 weeks of very little then some convective cluster drops 3-4” of rainfall and bam, you’re at 4.10” for a month, lol. Or on a larger scale, there’s 3 dry summers followed by one like last summer where it rains 30”. That’s the equivalent of a convective burst dropping a bunch of rain in a large time set amid drier climo. Its not going to rain 0.20” of gentle soaking each day all summer like he seems to want.

BTV southerly flow season has started. Hung around 70F all night at BTV (68F min) on steady channeling south winds. Should get 90F pretty easily IMO. “This is especially true in the Champlain Valley where overnight southerly winds have kept temperatures from dropping much so here we`ll be starting significantly warmer than yesterday. That said, looking for several high temp records to fall again today with BTV possibly hitting 90 degrees, which if observed will be the 7th earliest in observed history.”

lol at an airport measured 94mph gust. There wouldn’t be a tree left standing in New England with a wind speed like that not measured on a dune off the ocean.