Mockingbird Hill Cottage

First of all, yesterday was Pi day, so we had to celebrate:

It was our duty.

Yesterday was an amazing day. The nor’easter hit everyone in this area and to our east. Very, very intense. If you remember, I said that our local weather gurus told us that there was a distinct chance that some of us living in certain areas of the Hudson Valley would be impacted by ‘downslope.’ When you live near higher terrain, downslope can come into play. In this case, the winds came from the NNE and impacting those of us who live near the Schawangunk Mountains (the mountains that we see from our house) and Catskill Mountains (north of us). The rising, moist air hits the mountains and turns dryer on the other side. So, even though people just a bit northeast of us and west of us were getting lots and lots of snow, our snow was light, never really stuck to the ground, at times turned to rain, etc. It kept snowing, but it turned into nothing. The most snow we had was what fell overnight and that was less than an inch. By the afternoon, much of it had melted.

I kept reading about conditions throughout the Hudson Valley and beyond. 11 inches, 16 inches, roads not passable. Here? The roads were wet all day – no snow accumulation. Our local supermarket is about 5 miles to our east. That area got at least 6 inches of snow. Even within our town there were differences. One guy posted a photo of his completely green lawn.

We are so grateful that we don’t have to do any shoveling, or stay in the house and wait until the snow melts. I’m looking out the window now and I can see very little snow and most of that is left over from the previous snowfall. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

By the way, instead of the 6 -18 inches forecasted, we received maybe 1 inch.

Thanks to our weather guys who were spot on. I followed all of the changes in the forecast – and every weather forecast from various sources kept changing over the past two days. It was fascinating. Today, and last night, we have a lot of wind as the storm makes its exit.

Sophie during the storm.

And then, to top it all off, we had a prolonged murmuration of starlings that was magical and beautiful. We’ve had a lot of them lately. Later in the afternoon, I heard a car slowing down on our road, glanced out the front window, and there were 11 deer walking at the bottom of our front lawn. They were trying to figure out how to get to my neighbor’s property. As they crossed over, they headed up their lawn walking next to the fence. (That’s when I counted them.) I alerted Don and we stood in the kitchen as they were now moving toward the back of the property, and we watched them jump, one by one, over the fence to our back forty. Toward the end of the line, there were only two deer yet to jump the fence. One of them stood on his hind legs, moving his front legs – almost like he was ready to fight. After he did this, the other deer jumped over, and then he followed. Was he the head guy in the herd? It seemed like he was the guide or gatekeeper. Again, so fascinating!

Weather, birds, and animals. Couldn’t be better. This is the same group that I saw a few weeks ago. It’s very rare that we see that many deer together. In fact, I’ve never seen that until recently. Heavens, they’re beautiful. I kept telling them that it would soon get greener out there – more food is on the way.

Oh, and we didn’t lose power! So now we have 6 big containers of water that we don’t need.

So there you go. That was our day yesterday.

Stay safe.

Happy Wednesday.