Newspaper

Weather Pages

Well, it’s not a hurricane but winds are almost in that range.   Thought I would take a minute to comment on the weather.  You may recall that I used my Christmas money (from The FOJ’s; MFO, and some of “my own”) to check a bucket list item that I’ve had for a long time.  Have my own personal weather station! And not just some pretend device, a real semi-professional station.  So after a lot of research, I finally settled on a Davis Vantage Pro 2.  Next question was where to put it.  Well, sticking it in the back lawn would be one solution, but I wanted to get data unsullied by local conditions, wind currents, warm surfaces, etc.  So what about the roof of the digs!  The peak of the roof is probably feet off the ground, and we’re one of the highest locations nearby anyway, so maybe 90 feet or so up in the pristine air.

Well, at my age (and present condition) I’m not about to clamber up there, so we contacted Lincoln Contractors who had done an excellent job of fixing roof leaks for us in the past.  They said sure, and sent out “Mike” who took the project to heart.  He’s a neat guy.  So I assembled the various piece and parts, got the mounting hardware put together, made sure the thing “talked” to its display console, and eventually they came back and installed it on the roof.  It was an excellent choice of location since it is quite unobtrusive on the digs, you can hardly notice it

Kind of reminds me of a lunar lander

It collects and measures rain amounts and rates, temperature, wind speed and direction, and calculates relative humidity, dew point, wind chill, heat index, keeps track of maximum gusts on and on. 

Well, today it got a real workout.  With the Nor’easter bearing down on us, high winds and strong gusts were predicted.  And mother nature didn’t disappoint.  The river was in full roar

We watched the console as it gave us real time data on wind speed

31 mph (MFO doesn’t like Knots) from the NNE, at 3:02pm on 3/02 (hey!) 

And with the push of a button, the maximum recorded gust

of 54 mph at 9:53am

Neat! But wait, there’s more! By hooking it to the router you can (with days of hassle) upload the data real time to Weather Underground which has a nice display.

Along with graphs (near and dear to an Engineer’s heart!)

Don’t know if it will be readable in this small format but here’s the wind speed (blue line) and gusts (red dots) for today.

 

note that after starting this morning it has more or less increased all day.   Anyway, I greatly enjoy watching it..  great stuff.   You should be able to find “me” through Weather Underground; station ID is KMDLEXIN32.

Natural History Pages

We often tell people that one of the joys of “living on the water” is that there is always something going on.   The other day when we had another front/storm pass through I am pretty sure there were some waterspouts.  Hard to tell, not well formed, but quite possibly were

And same day/time there was “something” over by the base

And not only are we treated to meteorological events, but we get a lot of “visitors”

Like the Canada geese

Tundra Swans (the good kind)

Always stately Herons

And “Henry” (I am terrible at raptors, so won’t guess – assume probable red tail or shoulder)

Food Section

Not much to report, we went back to a Blue Apron today, but it arrived too late to thaw the proteins, so MFO is going to do what she calls “Chicken Rags”, those boneless skinless (tasteless) chicken breasts.

We are still very pleased with Sea to Table, the seafood has been excellent, and you are not bound to a recipe (and ingredients) that come with “The Apron”.  Had some Maine Redfish the other night that was superb. 

Cocktail hour approaches, and I think maybe I’ll use some of my precious Plymouth Gin and have a martini (Stirred NOT Shaken, up, with a twist) so pleasing to the eye and palate.

Personals

Yesterday was Frederic Chopin’s 208^th birthday.  I hope Brian Ganz raised a glass (or piano lid) to him and maybe celebrated with my faithful reader ABusyBee.

We were supposed to go up to Hopkins today, but we bailed and they thanked us..

Okay, cocktails are neigh, as is

DFD