Sunday story of ice

Some highlights from the lower section of the Huron River. I traveled downriver and then worked my way back inland towards home. Perhaps most notable is that all areas of the river that are wide still have considerable amounts of ice. Of the lakes I passed, Belleville Lake is nearly 100% ice cover, and Ford Lake is at least 60% ice cover (unfortunately I missed the spot to turn off to get photos of Ford Lake). Beginning on the east side of Belleville Lake at Sandy's Marina, here is a short series to tell the story:

Belleville Lake, east end near Sandy's Marina

Belleville east boat launch site (MI DNR) 

Huron River near Water Street, Ypsilanti

Huron River at Gallup Park boat launch, Ann Arbor

Creek Life

A foggy mist out there this morning.

Just a trace of precipitation over the last day. I spent a few hours yesterday afternoon walking by the creek and river. The creek is working overtime doing its job. It's always so beautiful to see it functioning in top form. So often throughout the rest of the year it is a tiny, quiet tributary, but in the season for snowmelt, it shows off.

As I was walking along the creek I thought about how fortunate I am to live so nearby that I can see it from my balcony. A two minute walk and I can quickly gather the status of its condition. Knowing this little creek will ultimately flow into the Huron River, and then on to Lake Erie, is such a lovely blessing. It is a very simple way to feel connected with nature and the Great Lakes, even an hour inland from the nearest shore.

I decided on my walk that my goal will be to capture as much of the river's journey throughout the spring season as my capacities will allow. From creek to Great Lake.

North edge of the hill

There may not be any snow left for tonight's full snow moon! Of course the snow always melts much slower on the north side of the hill, so maybe. 

Tuning in to the actual pace of melting ice and snow into water really slows down your sense of time and equilibrium. We always feel so compelled to rush around and do so many things on any given day.  I think finding a natural process to follow along as it unfolds can be very therapeutic. 

Yesterday as I went out to check my rain gauge, I heard a woodpecker not too far away. It made me realize how often I might tune out the sound of a woodpecker, but this time I really listened, and it reminded me of summer, as if a promise. 

This early spring thaw is a little disorienting to me, this is weather I expect sometime in mid to late March so my sense is that summer will arrive much sooner than it actually will. 

Perhaps there is a benefit to living on the north edge of a hill. It tempers the personal impact of climate change on your sense of season's change.

Slow melt

A slow melt proceeds. As an advocate for long winters, it was nice to see the sheen of ice on the newly open water on the west end of the pond this morning. 

It does seem like we only had winter for about 3 weeks, and certainly not for three months like I remember while growing up near a lake. Now an early spring thaw before the end of February... is unusual. So a slow melt is just fine with me.

Driven to precision

A bit of a colder start this morning so the natural world can say a long goodbye to the ice. I finally revved up my Android Blackberry device to take some photos -- it is a phone I bought aftermarket and quickly realized it functions much better as a field camera than as an actual phone. Here are the results: 

This is the west end of the pond as seen from my main balcony. A lot of the ice cover is gone from this side because the water drains into the creek, as you can see. 

The more I write about what seem like mundane details about the time of year the ice melts, the more I want to go out in the field and document and share more observations. It is an excellent motivating force and one most welcome. It drives me to be ever more precise, which I find rewarding.

A view of the pond facing north-northeast

26 degrees F at the airport on the south side at 9am this morning and 29 degrees F on the northeast corner of the city. I'm sure the variation is due in part to different sensors, but also the difference in elevation (about 70 feet farther up the hill on my side of town). 

And there is a lovely clear blue sky this morning; it seems we can look forward to more of this over the next several days (finally!). 

Update: A peek at the Huron River this afternoon around 3pm:

As the pond thaws

This week is about watching the pond thaw and noting the exact date it 'ices out' -- when a body of water is 90% free of ice. I anticipate this may be within the next day or two.

By the end of this week the natural world will have transformed from a majestic winter wonderland to a muddy early spring chatter house. It's really something marvelous when you stop for a moment and think about how incredible that really is. Novelists work hard to fictionalize a whole world, called world-building, and if one is paying attention, you can adopt a lot of narrative just from watching the seasons change.

This year also marks the return of the cicada, so you will soon see that I am not kidding when I say 'chatter house'. The sounds of cicadas as they hail their return to the stage after 17 years underground will trigger deep memories of summer, and truly, I think that is their gift, to help us understand deep memories. Memories that we've attached to that particular sound of summer. 

But for now, ice! Be careful out there, the ice will thin quickly.

42 degrees F at 10am in this cozy northeast corner of the city (elevation 910 ft ASL), and 42 at the airport (KARB) on the south side (elevation 837 ft. ASL). 

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By 2pm:

The Melt Begins!

The melt is underway. 39 degrees F this morning in the northeast corner of the city. You can see the difference in the ice and snow cover on the pond even since yesterday.

Oddly, it makes me a little sad. I am always wistful at winter's end, the disappearance of it all always makes me wonder if I'll ever see such stunning beauty ever again. A poet's lament!

Now that the snow is melting from my balcony I can see the mountain of bird seed I have set out for the birds. Yesterday it was layered into the snow. Now it is a mound, set out like a feast. And it seems to have brought the mourning doves back! 

Today is the first day in a while that I entered my daily precipitation report into the database in a timely manner. I have nearly ten years of data for this station and have managed to miss putting in something like 700 reports over the last several years. I am curious how the CoCoRaHS team will respond once I finish punching in all my daily reports. I have them all, of course, written down in a book on my desk. I just often don't make the leap to the computer. But even though I sometimes slack, it is nice to be part of this observer network and community, and to know that wherever I may go, I can create a new station and the community travels with me in a way. 

Being part of this community also makes me want to improve my weather observation station capacity. Seeing pictures of everyone's gear and setups and finely tuned calibrated sensor stations is motivating. As I experiment with different setups, I've had some changes along the way, from digital temperature sensors to old school thermometers (which is what I use now, primarily). I use a few different temperature sensors to control for the variation in readings. A few years ago I found this old barometric pressure unit that also measures humidity and temperature in an old resale shop, one of my better finds in all my thrifting.

The icicles are melting much more quickly now.

Monday snow

More snow today but it is beginning to melt. I wake up late and make coffee and think about what to write about today now that it is becoming easier to write anything. It worries me less and less whether what I write has any intrinsic meaning -- rather, do I feel better once I've written it? 

The coffee maker is making a lot of noise in the kitchen and the cockatiels are chirping now that they know I am awake and at their beck and call. Whenever I change out their food dish I give the remaining seeds to the wild birds so that they have something too in the middle of all this snow. as long as it is only birds that visit my balcony and not squirrels I am okay with this.

It is Monday. There are plenty of Monday things for me to do today. It gives me hope that I want to eschew them all so that I can write. 

This is a good sign.

I remind myself that there was a February not so long ago that yielded sixty thousand words so I know it is, despite what many may believe to the contrary, an excellent month to write prolifically. 

The coffee is done brewing. More soon.

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Snow water equivalent (SWE) is how much precipitation an area received in snow. I haven't changed my precipitation gauge in weeks because it has been frozen to the post so I kinda gave up on daily totals for a while. I figured I would just do a month total. My CoCoRaHS group just reminded us all that we should at the very least post these totals on Mondays (SWE Mondays) and I suddenly realized the temperature is finally above freezing! I can retrieve the gauge from the frozen post! 

This is exciting news. There is a lot of SWE packed in there.

the historic and the simple

Transit across the northern sea route

and birds on my balcony, eating the seeds I left for them

this is the big news for my February Sunday afternoon.

...the usual news is simply sitting in the sunshine:

...notes from the nether cafe: alabaster mist

...notes from the nether cafe. : alabaster mist: so many shades of grey. I remember once listening to the dramatic lavender sound of a saxophone echoing through the street corridor outside ...