wxmanmitch

We're starting to get some leaf drop now and I think my location is now starting to go past peak. The best color was Friday when it was sunny. I feel bad for all the tourists who came up here expecting to see the color, but it was shrouded in fog and low clouds most of the weekend. What a damp, foggy fall it's been weather wise, but the foliage was probably at least average if not better than average.

Above my home with the drone.

A few more shots from the drone today when the fog and drizzle temporarily lifted enough for me to get it to 150-200'. There's still a lot of gorgeous color, but some leaf drop is now beginning to occur. As you can see, I have a ton of reds and bright oranges around here from the red maples. The birch and beech trees are contributing to more of the yellows. It has been a very wet summer and early fall period and the red maples have put on a spectacular show. The sugar maples are turning orange and yellow more than red, but I don't have too many of those around the house. They tend to exist more on drier, southern exposures around here. The Berkshire Valley is still mostly green with some scattered color, and most of that color is somewhat muted.

Damaging fog out there tonight! Could hardly see and had to go less than 10 MPH on the dirt roads up to the house. By the time I get up to the house, it clears and the stars are visible.

Took the drone up for another flight this morning under full sunshine. The sun dramatizes the reds and oranges more I think. Just a sea of red and orange everywhere!

I'd say we're at peak here right now. Gorgeous colors all around. I took the drone up today again, but the lighting wasn't ideal. I will try again tomorrow and see how it looks with sunny skies.

I'm not SLK or HIE. A lot of the times I drop quick around or just after sunset only to stabilize most of the night whereas good radiators often continue to drop slowly through dawn.

The colors are really blossoming here now, greater than 50% color with peak fast approaching. It's like someone flipped a switch and boom. Interestingly, leaf out in May was similar in that it happened virtually overnight. I think the high density and near monoculture of red and sugar maples has a lot to do with the "light switch" phenomenon. The birches also seem to turn around the same time, although they're mostly yellow. The valleys have more species diversity, especially with regards to the oaks and introduced species like Norway maple, resulting in a slower turn and multiple peaks instead of one primary one like here. Lots of reds and oranges coming out, which is a nice surprise since I was concerned septoria leaf fungus/tar spot would cause the sugar/red maples to drop without turning much color. However, the fungus must not be bad enough to be much of a detriment. It's still pretty much all green once you get a few miles south as even Mt. Greylock is still mostly green.

36° F for my low, so no September freeze here. My "growing" season has now reached the 5 month mark as my last sub freezing min was on 4/30, when we had a couple inches of wet snow. I put growing in quotation marks because I had some residual snow OTG until May 13. I had a 33° F in mid May, so this is my coldest since then. Big snow at this location, but I don't radiate well at all like those valleys up north. Low diurnal temperatures is where I win out. I wonder if I snow before I freeze...

After a slow start, we've made some good progress in the past week. As you can see from my drone shots, there are reds and oranges beginning to appear. I'm still optimistic that this will be at least an average fall foliage season, just about 7 to 10 days later than usual. Peak is often about now, but thanks to the warm humid September it will likely be around October 6-8.

What a glorious day! I never reached 50° F thanks to that lovely marine layer that came in from the east. The high recorded on my el cheapo thermometer, which tends to read a little high sometimes during the daylight hours, was 48° F. Morning low was 40° F today and 39° F yesterday. There was even a little bit of fine drizzle too, which is amazing since a short distance away it was a much sunnier day.

I came across this casualty from yesterday's windstorm. It was an old balsam fir(one of many on the property) that had been dead awhile, so good riddance since it's one less tree I have to fell. Over 2.25" total for the event and everything is soggy and wet again. As usual the warm front failed to make it through here today. It tried for about 5 minutes around 330 PM when the sun peaked through and then we were fogged back in again. Glad we live here.

Blowing hard out of the E and SE today with gusts over 40 MPH at times. Lots of twigs and branches down. There's a definite standing wave pattern with dark low clouds over the mountains with much brighter conditions over the valleys. Easily had a gust to near 50 MPH while driving route 8 near Clarksburg as that's a downslope spot on E flow. My truck was shaking vigorously, which made for a harrowing moment. I'm surprised there's no wind advisory from ALY.

39° F for the low here this morning. Fall foliage is starting! I posted this drone picture of the woods behind my house in the other thread, but I'll throw it up here too. I'm guessing we'll peak in about 3 weeks at this rate.

It's starting! Here's a drone shot from today showing the scattered color in the forest canopy. I'd guess we'll peak in about 3 weeks based on the color now.

I just got a 2018 Tacoma Sport and love it. I've been averaging 22-23 MPG, which is really good for a truck with V6 power. The dealer had a 2017 Tacoma Off Road with 3,700 miles or a brand new Sport for the same price and I took the Sport. It has 4WD so that's what matters for the winter. My previous vehicle was a 2007 Tahoe which only got ~15 MPG. While it was nice to not have any payments, it needed over $2K worth of work and was leaking some tranny fluid, so I dumped it while it still had some trade in value. The 2006 and earlier Tahoes/Suburbans are much more reliable and I see many more of those on the roads around here than the 2007 and later models. I would've kept it longer if it didn't need a ton of repairs.

It's like Stephen King's "The Mist" here right now. Near zero visibility fog outside, meanwhile inside, a moth is fluttering around in the lampshade and a spider is crawling on the wall. Current temperature is 60° F. We never mixed out today. Cloudy, coolish, with periods of light drizzle and fog. A fine Sunday in August.

My electric bills are around $60 a month in the summer and $40 in the winter for around 230-280 kWh. The extra $20 is from running a dehumidifier in the basement, which can get a little damp in this weather. No air conditioning needed FTW. Propane budget plan is $179 a month for 11 months. Propane is much cheaper than oil, and pretty much all newer houses around here are using propane. I'd like to put solar panels up too, but that will have to wait until my finances can handle the upfront cost of getting it. Green Mountain Power is offering Tesla Powerwalls for $1500 (or $15 a month for 10 years) through a pilot program that provides customers with backup power in the event of an outage and the utility with a means of easing electric grid strain during periods of high demand by having homes draw power from the Powerwalls and not from the grid during such periods, saving GMP money by not having to generate extra power. https://greenmountainpower.com/product/powerwall/ I'm on the waitlist to get mine installed.

Good find. A little pricey, but I may strongly consider this. The only thing is that the Woodford tower doesn't seem to offer data, just voice and text as even when I drive by there my phone is Extended 1x. There's another one to my south in Florida, MA that has an LTE signal because it serves North Adams, but it's a little further away and since I don't face south, I can't really get the signal from it. If I drive/walk to other side of the neighborhood where there's a due south exposure, I can get 2 bars of Verizon LTE. I actually have bonded DSL in that my modem bonds 2 DSL signals into one, which increases the speed. Not sure exactly what it all means technically but I have a VDSL modem. I'd never get satellite internet unless there was absolutely no other option, even if it is a bit faster than what I have because of data caps and reception issues in inclement weather. They will severely throttle you to dial up speeds (or less) if you're a data hog and reach your monthly data allotment before the reset date. Then there's also the latency issue. Finally, it's more expensive than what I get. I'd rather have a slower wired internet connection with no data cap than a faster satellite/Wifi/cellular internet connection with a cap. At least it's fast enough for YouTube and Netflix, so that's what really matters. Loading longer radar, satellite, or model data loops can be a bit slow though...as are those pesky software updates on my devices (which I have them set to only do them at night).

That's a deal! Try $110 a month for DSL and phone from Consolidated Communications (formerly Fairpoint). It's pretty reliable but $110 a month for ~9.5 Mbps down and ~1.25 Mbps up is a ripoff, but when you're the only provider in town you can get away with it. And there's pretty much no cell service either (1 bar of Extended 1x service from the tower by Prospect Mountain in Woodford if you're lucky). Vermont is really in the stone age when it comes to telecom. Third world countries probably have better internet and cell service than we do here in rural NNE. American corporate greed and monopolies FTL. The Spectrum line from North Adams ends at the MA/VT line and the Comcast line from Bennington goes east on route 9 to the Searsburg line, but doesn't come down route 8 through the pass. The southern tier communities of VT (along with many others as well) are stuck on copper phone lines with no cable or fiber. Comcast and Spectrum are awful in their own ways, but at least you can get > 100 Mbps internet in most areas they exist.

My hillbilly lawn needed a mowing after all the rain we've had lately. Not sure why the grass won't grow in this area...the soil is actually quite dark and organic here compared to other areas where it's sandier. I seed it, then it sprouts, and then it withers away and dies after a few weeks. I'm about to give up. The "hill" in the background is doing better even though the soil is sandier there. I need to get those rocks out eventually, but for now I'm focusing on the big picture and not the details. I have my mower at 3 and 5/8" so the blade goes over the rocks.

Do you think there's any correlation between the presence of oak trees and ticks? From my own observation, where there's oak, there's ticks because acorns are a preferred food source of the primary deer tick vector, the white footed mouse. I have no oak trees within a several mile radius (not that I'm aware of) of my location and I've yet to get a tick here. Of course that doesn't mean that there aren't any, it may mean that the tick population is less dense in the highlands. The woods here are dominated by a mixed spruce/fir and maple/birch/beech forest. I also wonder if the duration of the snow pack has any bearing on tick populations? Snow pack here typically lasts from early/mid December to mid/late April, although it persisted into the first of May this year.

I came across this snapping turtle on the side of the main road by the entrance of development where I reside and tried to pick it up to help it cross the road, but it wasn't having it so it snapped at me. I gave up after a couple attempts and then decided to let it cross on its own as it was not worth risking a finger or worse. Fortunately, it made the trek safely without any further intervention from me, but this was one mean turtle! I've picked up other turtles in the past to help them cross the road before and they'd just hide in their shells, but not this one. Luckily he didn't bite a finger off. It's actually a beautiful night out with a nearly full moon, nice breeze and comfy temperatures. The butterflies (tiger swallowtail pictured) are loving the milkweed blossoms, including the monarchs. I'd say summer is at its peak now.

Glad we don't live there! How do those poor souls in Texas deal with this heat? 110° F give or take in the Dallas metro today with MOTS tomorrow. The dews are in the 50s and 60s too, unlike the desert southwest where they are typically much lower, so the heat indices are likely well into the danger category. I've never been to Texas, and I'm kind of glad of that fact right now. As an aside, Texas is a state that pretty much everyone I know has been to except myself.

Willows are very tough to ID...as are the various species of Hawthorne. It seems like there are dozens of species in each category, and they all look alike. With the exception of White Ash, which is easy to ID, ash trees are a bit of a challenge too. I didn't think yellow birch occurred naturally in the dry, sandy soils of SE MA. You typically see them in cooler, moist areas and often along stream beds or on north facing hillsides in association with hemlock, spruce, or fir. There is some yellow birch in coastal SW CT where I grew up in the wetlands just inland from LI Sound, but the soil there is not as sandy and is richer than that of SE MA. Yellow birch is probably the number one must abundant broadleaf tree on my VT property save for perhaps the red maple. Sweet/black birch is more tolerant of warm, dry conditions than yellow birch but the bark doesn't peel. It seems much more common in coastal SNE than yellow birch. I initially thought some type of cherry from the picture, but the leaves are definitely more like a birch. The bark doesn't look quite like the young yellow birches around my house...looks darker and the lenticels are longer and brighter than those on the yellow birch. It could be some type of cherry, but your guess is as good as mine.