Tom12309

I just walked to the corner to mail a letter and oddly it feels cooler than earlier this morning. Heavy drizzle, no wind, ground fog. And lest anyone ever question my professionalism I'm working from home, the thermometer reads 50 degrees, there's no wind. I'm not going down cellar, taking the Drifter off the work stand and heading out to find every unsurfaced road within a 35 mile radius. No, I'm back in front of the screen when what I want to do is play in the mud.

Gracious, it's warm in the Dorptown out looking for the paper delivery. Hope it's not up in the gutters again...

Hey Wiz - congratulations, meteorology is such a freaking complex science mixed with true art to be on that road is really cool.

40ish degrees and raining but dang that's a farging cold rain in the Dorptown. I was out in it for a time and I've felt warmer rain at 30 degrees.

About 6 degrees in the Dorptown. Great day for all the Thanksgiving 5Ks and 10Ks. I predict heavy heavy hot toddies. Hug your local race volunteer. They probably won't feel it, though.

ALB issued warning a while back, we'll see. Safe guess I'm not raking up the last leaves Saturday, though. Several of my neighbors will be bumming. Their yards are covered, they haven't raked at all.

My niece lives in Underhill, her husband has a giant sugaring outfit. The last huge blow down took him the better part of the winter to clean up and get the pipelines repaired. Time to do it all again it sounds like.

Here's a totally reliable gauge for ya... went for a two and a half hour bike ride west of the Dorptown here. Into the wind it was roaring, in a crosswind I leaned about ten degrees into it to stay straight and if it gusted I needed a good grip on the bars. Heading home at 30mph there was no wind noise in the helmet at all. Would have been real fun with deep section wheels on.

Short doesn't have to be useless. Terse, thought out items that convey the most salient points are possible. Self editing seems to be a rare skill.

According to the bike computer it was 25 degrees outside of town, 27 in town at 0730. Don't know how accurate that is, though it does get the cellar temp right, because all the annuals in my garden that shrivel up and die at the merest hint of a frost are looking pretty robust.

The comment about "expect a 4, get a 1 and expect a 1, get a 4 (+?)" is spot on as far as the public goes. I think most people go hurricane=wind and if the wind forecast isn't nailed each and every time they say the usual "must be a nice job where you can be wrong all the time"... to which the only appropriate reply is, in my opinion, "you know how complex a fluid dynamic system you're dealing with, dumbass?" but I digress so the nut is how do you, outside of the people that have seen a few and intuitively sense what's coming, get the message across that it might look good or bad but it could get a lot worse so be ready?

Some of the most spectacular are the back roads and the understory on a damp morning, it just glows. Its hard to get a whole vista at peak and that's cool when it happens but to me its the small views all around.

Yeah, I cut and mulched the roses by the calendar last year, it got hot and they promptly punched leaves and branches out all the grow buds. "Not a good idea, guys" I told them. Sure enough two deader than fence posts, several of the rest coming late from the crowns and haven't bloomed once this year.

I didn't keep track of the last 7 days, but yesterday three inches of rain fell, the big line of storms were well north of here this afternoon but about 6:30 it started blowing like hell from the nnw and took a tree down on the power lines. It must have rained later because I had to drive in to the office to work an implementation instead of dialing in and when I got back and wanted to drink a beer on the front porch I sat in a very wet Adirondack chair cause it was really dark out with no power still...

On the fringe of that one by Albany when it came through. Fringe was pretty interesting, horizontal rain with a little hail mixed in maybe 200 yards visibility. Lots of lightning. The middle of it must have been interesting.

"Hold my beer..."

Interesting how the rain is distributing. Albany airport recorded something like .7 inches, 6 or 7 miles west in my back yard the gauge had at least an inch more than that and if you went ten miles west it was three inches or more. If you were in one of those north-south alleys the rain was lined up in you got doused and if not you were kicking up dust.

Antifungal solution mixed in the pump sprayer for the roses - check. New Kool Stop Salmon pads in the calipers - check. Bring it on, the water table's a little low.

I'm loving the measurements to the hundrethe there. Cheap cylindrical garden store gauge says an inch fell today here slightly NW of ALB. Judging from the size and color of the radar returns in comparison you guys to the east of us got smoked.

A few mornings ago I was riding my bike up one of the hills west of town when a fully grown one sauntered across the road about 40 yards in front of me. I grinned a little wider passing the house about 50 yards further up on the side the bear went into because the two big dogs that come out to laugh at me cause I'm slow were looking off in the other direction not making a sound. That's the first one I've seen around here.

One summer in the 90s it was extremely hot in August and for a couple of years there was a bar band playing around Albany called The Rolling Blackouts.

Interesting point. During Irene the winds were about what we get from a big thunderstorm but from the east where a tstorm is generally NW or W around here. In my back yard the poplars that just waved around in a summer storm fell right over if they had nothing sheltering them.

Can't complain over this way... snowed all day yesterday but didn't accumulate on bare pavement until last night, I cleared maybe 4 inches off the driveway this morning and that's not counting what added up on the existing snow from the all day light to occasionally moderate stuff. Not bad for a storm where the good stuff was way off to the east.

It is logarithmic from one class to the next, linear within the class.

When I was a kid we went up to the Gaspe Peninsula and being on the south shore of the St Lawrence watching that wall of dark come down the river is in the top half dozen or so coolest things I have ever seen. Imagine seven people in a Pontiac station wagon driven by my 18 year old brother with seven heads stuck out the windows alternately all looking at the sky trying to find a hole in the clouds and our unsynchronized watches until we as one yelled "STOP NOW", screeched to a halt and jumped out of the car maybe five minutes in front of it. Also the silence as all the birds stopped singing.