May 15th!! and there’s 8inches of snow on the ground and -snowing hard! Talk about global weirding and the weather forecaster missing it. Sure they predicted a cold front and 1”-3” of snow at SLT (6200ft) going as low as 3500 or 5000 feet. This was supposed to be a quick little storm that just ‘snuck in’. With the AMGEN( bicycle race scheduled to start at South Lake Tahoe California
Anyone that thinks we aren’t in the onset of real climate change, and that we didn't have a hand in it, is smoking tea party dope. Pass the coffee for me. Watching the NTV Japanese news show the other day, they talked about scientists saying the El Nina (pacific warming) is over and a repeat of last year’s scorching summer heat killing hundreds would not happen this summer. I predict that it will be back with a vengeance and even hotter than last year – sorry to say. Empirical evidence suggest so.
Last year was the first year (since 1986 observations) it snowed lightly on May 1. This year it snowed on May 9th and now is really dumping on May 15th. I cannot believe the heavy flakes that are coming down outside!
Luckily, I spent the last three days knowing there was a weather event coming. As rural homesteaders have done for centuries, you always prepare for the worse and enjoy the better. This past winter, I enjoyed only a few betters.
This 2010-‘11 winter season has started the earliest and latest along with the longest and heaviest on record. I don’t really care for the way weather people keep records= data measurement misses so much. It’s the combination of factors – such as intensity of untimely storms – that are more important. I can see the myriad of data and metrics meteorologists would be gathering to measure intensity of untimely storms. Yet we can saunter up to the coffee counter and bitch about this late heavy snowfall destroying all the tree buds, pushing back seed germination for weeks, resulting in another pain-in-the-ass growing season.Something you can't easily measure.
I had just gotten all three large raised beds done. Hauled bucket loads of deep forest rich peat moss (free and best!) and combined it with buckets of biochar laden soil from the firepit. Then yesterday I put in the seeds and put down the straw. Wish I had put a couple extra inches of straw down.
The large living roof underdeck is coming along nicely. With fir posts 3' OC, 2x6 cross beams every 1-2', topped by 2x6 odds+ends for top decking and then odds+ends of OSB and plywood decking - this sucker'll hold 6' of snow and then some. The raised underdeck already came in handy as I could easily clear the PV panels of snow - an extra design feature I threw in. Synergy for all.
It got down to 30F this morning. It’s a nice 62F inside without the fireplace on overnite. Trust me, I fired it up this morning. WinSol3 is perfect for this kind of freak temperature event. All the thermal mass (14+ tons)can easily transmit back its stored warmth for two or three days. And then we’re supposed to have sunshine and 80F in a couple days.
Global weirding indeed.
