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.