powderfreak

Guess it’s a matter of perspective. I’d say east looks best, ha.

Hills are on fire.

Thousands of acres of red, orange and yellow. Even us locals turn into tourists during this time. Just walking around stunned, ha.

Congrats man. You earned it.

Late day sun angle making the hills even more red this evening. Best reds in a long time. High of 81F in the valley at the ASOS... it was just an amazing, warm, breezy evening to be out wandering the mountains. Normally hiking in the late day shadow of Mansfield would be quite chilly, but that south wind was blowing pretty mild... no sharp drop in temperature with the shadow line today.

Bingo. Hazelton hiking trail comes out of the woods right there and meanders up the Upper Nosedive.

Haven’t been here since last weekend because was on the Gondi side during the week. But this route is by far the least busy hike up the hill and I like that as the dog can be off leash the whole way. We then loop down the mowed ski trails, if moving quick it can be an hour up, hour down, total time away from house about 2.5 hours. With the fading daylight it’s been harder to hike after work these days. What a day though... classic 2020... take the wife for a COVID test and then go for a hike. A normal Saturday.

Standing here right now, just enjoying this view. It’s straight magic right now as the sun goes behind Mansfield’s ridge line.

Gonna be a very extended stick season this year. The rain this week might bring ‘em down. Maybe all of October and November is just sticks?

Just hit 80F at the ASOS. Let’s see how high we can go after last week’s 24F.

That seems to be a recurring theme right now. Maybe all we need for the best bright red/orange foliage is a drought and very early freeze, ha.

Yeah it’s hot aloft. 66F at MMMV1 at the picnic tables. Given that temp, we should have no problem hitting 80F down here in the valley with normal lapse rates.

Up to 76F at MVL here at 12pm... brilliant sunshine. The vegetation has to be thoroughly confused at this point lol. We should hit 80F.

To your north and to your south. Also to your west. It's pretty much got you surrounded.

It is mind blowing that Nature puts on this type of display each year. Every year it's mind blowing to see just acre after acre of a kaleidoscope of color.

Yup already 71F here too.

Defense mechanism running overtime these days. The models look widespread very wet, hard to argue against it right now.

I've seen worse foliage at the ski resort. I think the thing that's making it really nice is that there's still green mixed in with some incredibly vibrant reds. All colors represented on the hill sides right now.

Backyard cell phone shot this evening on the dog walk.

Hay the field today? That’s great color for a cell phone.

I want that. We decided to get my wife tested tomorrow. She can’t work until the results come back and they said likely by Tuesday sometime. 4 days to find out up here. She truly just feels like a head cold, nothing in the chest (ha, in another context that sounds bad to say about the wife). But everyone looks at you side eyed if you have the sniffles and voice sounds stuffy, so we are just going to do it despite the PCP saying it’s not a requirement and up to her. Going to be a long winter for head colds if that’s what it is.

-2.8 on the month now after yesterday’s +7. We are going to eat into that pretty good but I bet we can get a BN September for the first time in a while.

Straight fire. Got a memory card full to go through tonight. Rowdy Friday night coming up! Ha. Earliest peak I can remember. FB showed me a memory from three years ago and it was 100% green still. Like mid-summer.

So Connecticut should be prepared to go without power for the second half of October?