Aerie Report, Morning, January 18, 2012

The temperatures rose all of yesterday and even through the early evening hours. It reached 47 degrees at one point before the cold front moved through, the wind shifted and the temperature began to fall once more. It's just 22 degrees as I type.

And what a front it was, too! Long (stretching from east of Lake Ontario to West Virginia) and skinny (only a narrow band of clouds about 50 miles wide along the front), it swept through within a matter of minutes and brought some howling gales and gusts. (Elmira area had a report of a 60 mph gust around 11:30 last night.)

Today we've got some lake effect snow showers off lakes Ere and Ontario to contend with, although the bulk of those will be to the north of us and a smidge closer to the shorelines.

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Since we moved into the Aerie in December of 2006, the intervening winters have seen us pretty much nibbled to death by ducks--that is suffering from frequent small snow storms of 3-4 inches--from November through January. With a few exceptions, the months of February and March--even early April--are when we get the "big ones."

I prefer to shovel when the snow is 4-6 inches or less, use the snow thrower for 5-8 inches and then the tractor for anything more. So far this year, I've had to shovel snow just twice. The snow thrower and tractor are getting dusty.

And even the shoveling may have been unnecessary since we had 40 degree (or more) days not long after that melted everything I didn't/couldn't shovel. Today there's only a tiny bit of snow where the winds drifted it to a depth of three or four inches and where the sun didn't get to it--yet.

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Yesterday was the DIL's 28th birthday. She and her pup spent the evening alone in their Portland, Oregon home as my son was out in Yakima, Washington for work.

He's an inspecting forester for the power company making sure tree work and right-of-way clearing is done correctly. With the forecast for one heck of a snow storm in the Cascade and Olympic Mountains (which stretch across his path from Yakima back to Portland) I hope he drives safely--and that includes knowing when NOT to drive. Even so, if tree limbs give way under the weight of snow, he could be busy, busy, busy!

Stay safe kids!