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.
I am glad the storm missed you and you had no interruptions in power. May spring burst forth!
Take Care,
Kaye
Thank you, Kaye.
Stay safe.
Weather is so changeable…glad you are safe. Prayers
Thank you, Brenda.
Stay safe.
All things considered, you had a beautiful day yesterday. What a relief it must have been when you realized the storm had pretty well passed you by. Seeing the murmeration of starlings and all the deer capped your day. And sweet Sophie! And you had pie, too! Stay safe. Hugs, Elaine
Thank you, Elaine.
Stay safe.
Weather is usually so unpredictable…good you didn’t lose power and the snow was minimal. Those starlings and the deer must have been a happy thing to see! And your pie looks delicious!
Thank you, Barrie!
Stay safe.
Glad you had a day filled with pure serendipity. Time to get grounded and ready for spring! <3
Yes! Thanks, Betsy.
Stay safe.
glad that you and don are safe, didn’t get clobbered with tons of snow or lose power … really good news! plus you got to see so many deer at once and have apple pie … more good news! :)
and the water will wait or be useful on hot summer days, right? also good.
the older i get (65 this saturday), the more i am drawn to nature. not enough to go camping overnight in a forest or be super-calm around bugs and snakes, but enough that i honor the pull to get outside and recognize/enjoy/appreciate how good i feel outside. we live in a beautiful world and i get happier outside, seeing familiar plants/trees and trying to identify the ones i can’t quickly name, looking at miles of crops or meetings of cows, horses, sheep, etc. in the countryside, walking or sitting in a green space, just taking it all in … i like plants (unfortunately i do not have a ‘green thumb’) and always especially love animals, water and the weather (some of my alternate dream jobs would have been meteorologist, storm-chaser/researcher or coast guard … not strong enough to have been a veterinarian). all that to say i understand fascination with the forecast … not only for safety, but wanting to understand it.
love the color and pattern combinations that sophie is wearing today.
happy, safe wednesday to everyone!
kathy
Thanks so much, Kathy.
Stay safe.
I’m glad the storm passed you by. Weather can do strange things, especially this winter.
We have deer in our area too. I have never seen more than 3 or 4 together though. 11 must have been a bit magical to see.
And how fitting you had pie on Pi day…it looks yummy!
Take care
Thank you, Marilyn.
Stay safe.
So glad your Pi Day worked out, in more delicious ways than one. Glad to be reading Margaret Atwood’s new short story, My Evil Mother, which is free today on Amazon Prime. Just the break I needed.
Thank you, Shanna.
Stay safe.
Great day today…sun is shinning….birds singing and very little snow…..so we both dodged another would be pain in the tush. Going to the park to walk around the pond. Enjoy ….the pie looks yummy.
So glad you dodged it, as well, Maria.
Stay safe.
My sister in central western Connecticut got about 1/2” while her stepdaughter, six miles away, had 8”.
Don went to the grocery store just down the road and there was 6 inches on the ground. Five miles away!
Stay safe, Margaret.
dear Claudia/Don — glad your storm was not as bad as advertised — re big stock of water, you are ahead of the game, hopefully, you won’t need it, but a good “just in case”. My goodness, that is one delicious looking pie, I have a terrible liking for stuff like that (blame it on my Irish/Scottish ancestors, ha) so such things have to be limited in our house, sadly. stay safe/healthy
Thanks so much, Linda.
Stay safe.
I’m so glad you avoided it. Or it avoided you! And oh, the joy of the murmeration and then the deer. It sounds like a four-star day!
It was. Thanks, Jeanie.
Stay safe.
Pi day is a favorite here–it’s our niece’s birthday and she’s levelling up a decade! Where does time go?
Relieved the storm spared you. We are in the Sierra rainshadow, so the recent storms have been kind to us. A few inches of snow or a couple drizzles at the most. I’m feeling for everyone who has not been as fortunate though.
Enjoy!
Thank you Roxie.
Stay safe.
Well, the drink-water should have a far-reaching expiration date; just find a place to stash the jugs til the next scare. I have a half dozen of the gallon-size jugs right now and they do take up space. We always have to (everybody has to in Southern Calif) have tons of bottled water on hand (like I’m currently also looking at eight flats against one wall of our small ‘home office’, each flat having 24 bottles each in them [16-oz drink bottles]) due to wildfire and earthquake threat (at least three weeks worth of preparedness when we could be/will be ‘on our own’ without any kind of help from the city-feds-county-state [The Big One earthquake isn’t a matter of ‘if’, it’s ‘when’]), and I drink it anyway (the stash is rotated weekly) because our tap water tastes awful. All the plastic is recycled of course.
(Of those drink-water flats, we should really have four inside the house and four outside the house, but I don’t like the plastic getting hot outside, like in an uninsulated outbuilding/shed or the garage [the officials clearly just want you to be able to get at it, which is the point; I wasn’t here for the 1994 earthquake but I remember hearing later of a local pharmacy/store whose roof fell in and smashed all the bottled-water inventory they had, just when everybody was needing bottled water really badly and were willing to pay top dollar for any; so, if our house was damaged and not able to be entered, and we had to indeed LIVE in one of our outbuildings/shed {or the car} for awhile, the bottled water would do us no good if it was indoors/inside the house where we couldn’t get to it]. It’s a shame you have to think about this kind of stuff, but it’s an inevitability, especially with earthquakes.)
Sure glad you got thru the bad weather okay! Interesting in how you describe it to us. I loved hearing of the wildlife in your environs, too. I haven’t seen a deer around here for a long time. What I noticed today, although I hadn’t initially thought of their absence, were tons of birds and I loved hearing their song with the coming of long-awaited sunshine. What I’m also noticing in my surroundings is the color of blue … the returning blue sky, the blue of my wild rosemary, the blue of my native (Ceanothus) ‘blue-lavender’ bushes, the blue of the lupine springing up on the roadsides, even the purply-blue of some iceplant we have on the hillside behind our home. I know this will soon be replaced with deep orange of the Calif poppy and true yellow mustard scattered in wide patches on the coastal cliffs/slopes of the foothills in our valleys as we approach the coming spring of the year after all the wet (although a superbloom isn’t anticipated; something to do with annual seeding I don’t understand).
We’re dry here, finally, in Southern Calif for a few days, or seems so (maybe). Had approx 24 hrs of continuous rain without a break (it just poured this morning at 3am), then it cleared this morning from about 9a-10am only to start raining again til noon, but I think it’s finally done. We’re soaked to the max. I’m just really grateful (unlike what you’re experiencing) we didn’t get bad wind with this latest storm. The totals so far are that, where I am, we only got three inches of rain since Tues morn, although areas just west and north of me got twice as much. And, yeah, they had to shut down our mountain highway for now; there’s an incredible amount of runoff as was expected. And now those local peaks have melting snow. It has nowhere to go but downhill!
I have a ‘concrete’d-in’ barranca at the entrance to my neighborhood (at the cross street) which is dramatically full and deep of fast-flowing muddy water … saw it this morning … which is fine, as long as it keeps moving out to the river like it’s doing. It got overwhelmed (blocked up) fifty-something years ago in very-damaging floods, same time of year and as much rain; the barranca, dirt-sided at the time, before it was reinforced with concrete, inundated our housing tract (we call them barrancas here; some people might call them a culvert or ravine); thankfully, problems upstream were mitigated and better flood control measures exist today (fingers crossed).
Sophie’s cold-weather gear, as in sweater-y fuzzy woolies, is darling. And that apple pie looks scrumptious. You made me so hungry for pie that I have a mini peach one frozen that I’m going to pull out tonight and bake in the oven; I think warming up the kitchen isn’t a bad idea although, truly, our rain of late, as the ‘pineapple express’/tropical has NOT been a cold rain.
Thanks for letting your readers know how everything turned out!
Thanks, Vicki.
Stay safe.