changing seasons + hiatus

The false siren of winter storms came early this year. Snow fell in the hi-Sierra on October 8^th and Wolf Creek ski resort set an all-time record for earliest ever opening by a USA ski resort.  But - for the past two+ weeks it’s been ~70F at Tahoe.  Perhaps it will change this week as overnite temperatures are dropping into the teens.  There's some snow today above 7,000ft.

The fall aspen colors are amazing as yesterday I ventured up to Sorensens and Hope Valley to take in the awesome view.  Lotsa leafer-peepers, and a mere shadow of a New England autumn… but close enough. 

Here at WinSol3, these fall + spring seasonal turns and ‘middle periods’ for solar gains and passive heating/cooling of the house are always a challenge.  I’ve gotten good at it over the years, fine tuning and intuitively learning what WinSol3 needs to maintain a comfortable temperature ~60-70F each day and nite. It requires some minor manual adjustments:  like keeping the loft curtains closed all the time, and maybe opening/closing windows in the day or night cycles.  This is a fine intuitively honed balance.  I’ve only had to turn the firestove on for a few days in early October.

Old timers say that this winter will be like last winter.  Meteorologists are saying it can’t possible be like last winter – that was an all-time aberration.  I believe the latter.  And what convinces me of that, is that I just haven’t seen the proliferation of pine cones on trees that I saw last year.  uI still see robins and squirrels all over the place – last year at this time they were already bunked up for the long cold haul.  Mother nature has a few predictors around (I’m sure if I could communicate with any animal creature, they’d tell me exactly what kind of winter it will be).

 So as the seasons change so do beckoning calls for projects in faraway places on community microgrids... and time to follow Bucky Fuller's adages:

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
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“You may assume that you are fulfilling your significance if you apply yourself to converting all your experience to the highest advantage of others.”

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I will be signing off this blog for quite a while.  Please email me directly if you need.