Category: Climate Observations

Christmas Report 2023

Time for an early winter’s nap. We had the kids around last night and this morning for our Christmas celebrations. They have grown so much and are learning the importance of family over gifts and that is very gratifying. Still, we shared gifts and time last night and today. They have gone now, and we had a little while to relax a bit and enjoy the quiet. The evening drew closed in single digit temperatures. Now that winter has come, we are feeling more like the normal cold we experience this time of year. The autumn will always be remembered as the warmest we have experiences so far.

I got the girls and Missus each an alpaca blanket. The boys each got an external hard drive with all the photos I could find on my computer from their early days back in England. They are old enough now not to squirm and complain about how embarrassing the photos are. They were very happy about it, and both expressed excitement and anticipation for the contents of the drives. I am thrilled to have given them the photos and let them have their memories from those days before. The older one said he didn’t really have any proof that he grew up in England till now. What a laugh.

Our oldest also said he might like to have a go at building a dining room table for his house. I’ll have to keep an eye out for a decent type of wood to make it from. It would be nice to find him something other than poplar.

The day is over now, and tomorrow we will celebrate Boxing Day before we get back to normal for the season. I am looking forward to that! I also will say, I looked at Facebook for about a minute or two. No interest in that. So, I checked out again.

Next thing to come along now is the New Year. We are a quarter of a century after 1999. That is amazing! I really cannot even believe it.

Off to sleep now.

5AM Thoughts

The temperature took a dive last night into single digits. I am still fighting with the too recently split firewood burning a bit too cool for the weather. I mix it with wood that is drier and burn them together. The wet wood dries out and burns after the dry wood and is there to light the next load. It’s not great, but I am keeping an eye on the chimney situation ready to clean as necessary. The house was a little chilly when I went to bed last night, but by early morning it had warmed up ten degrees outside. There must have bene cloud cover that came in.

I have been catching up on some woodworking videos that were posted about two weeks ago by Lost Art Press to YouTube. The shop may be too cold to work in, but I can keep my head in the game. I have also been making candles and perfecting my method for the molded colonial style. I am quite content with the way I have worked out right now. I am able to wick the molds without using something like a wire with a hook to pull it through. It is a simple matter of priming the wick, then wiping it to narrow it take off excess. Then stuff it through the holes at the bottom and push them through. The holes have been enlarged with an auger and they would leak, but putting a piece of wax at the bottom to stuff the hole stops it. It has eased the fiddliest part of the job. I have also got the removal from the molds eased. That is a simple matter of running the molds under hot water to release the candles. Doing that works a treat and does not require any kind of mold release to be sprayed into the molds before. I like that. It keeps the candles pure and clean.

Christmas is getting close again. It feels like it is sneaking up on us again. I have my shopping done, nonetheless. It is card mailing that I am endlessly hopeless at doing. I’d like to make them custom to the farm with a nice image on the front. I’d like to have a pencil drawing of the front of the house and the shop on a white background. Trouble is, I cannot draw that well. Well, if I could. Maybe I can start from a photograph. If I were able to draw it, I would like a standard drawing for the year, and one with a snow-covered roof for the Christmas season.

Lately my ear has been turned to a few YouTubers whose expertise lay in Geopolitics and economics. One in particular specializes on the Chinese economy. For years it has been anticipated that China will overtake the United States in GDP. There have been problems. For one, they have millions of homes started in the country that cannot be finished by the developers. The companies are far overextended in debt and don’t have the capital to finish the work. Loads of people have their life savings invested and are likely to lose it. Factories are not ordering, and foreign investment is running out of the country. The Belt and Road Initiative is failing, which is great. China has been investing in economic imperialism, and building infrastructure in other countries who cannot repay the costs, leaving China in control of the infrastructure there. I am no expert, just learning and being made aware. The point of it all is that there is an opening for more US production, which hopefully opens the market here for small businesses to get started. I’d like to see more garage industry here, with better quality and makers who actually care about their product.

Well, that’s what’s on my mind now. See you in the next post.

Cold and Not Cold

Well, what’s it been? Two weeks of this crap? We send the kids back to public school and our reward is everyone comes down with something. I took a trip into town today. First time I felt like going out anywhere other than where I absolutely had to for the last two weeks. It was a bit of the usual. “Hi there, how are you?” Honest answers got responses that “it’s going around.” Of course. But the tales I am told is that there are people going on antibiotics and the like to try to clear it, and that some are throwing up. We have not had it that bad here, so I am thrilled about that. But everyone has a nose that won’t go and a cough that won’t stop. My cough is spurred on by the stupidest thing at the moment. It is just a light click in the lungs. Nothing severe anymore. That’s all gone. But I get this little click, and it irritates my lungs and I go off coughing. I am sure that some of it is also an infection in one of my sinuses. I picked up hay and breathed in a tiny bit of alfalfa on the right side, and have been giving up what looks like infection ever since. Well, that is more than enough of the morbid details.

I have some parts coming tomorrow to do a full service on the tractor. It needs a 400-hour service. Time to change just about everything. How exciting! How expensive. I got some work done in the trailer for Missus today as I had promised her tomorrow. If that is getting interfered with, I wanted to get done her necessities.

I leave in 45 minutes to meet the kids at their bus stop. At least they are going to school.

I am concerned about the amount of wood we have piled up for winter. But is it usually this warm in December? I was out without a coat today and really felt fine. It is meant to be as warm again tomorrow. It will be winter in a couple of weeks, but this is a warm late autumn. It is 45F out right now. Seems a bit too warm for this particular time of the year. But things have been goofy all around lately where anecdotal weather is concerned, which is why I put in these anecdotes. They are entered here as a reference. Then I can check back and see how things were on particular days based on how I felt about them, and not just the hard numbers. Those are always available from my weather station.

Wax, Warmth, and Colds

Wax working is on partially paused at the moment due to only one of my crocks keeping a temperature that does not burn the wax. My newest crock pot on its lowest setting has burned the daylights out of the block of wax I had put in it and turned it quite dark! That was unfortunate. I searched on the Internet for a wax melter but was not happy with the best I saw as it wanted to be cleaned out every time it was shut off long enough to cool. I finally found one that I could heat up and cool without having to drain it, and it has a temperature control knob that allows me to set the temperature where I want from around 100 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit.

I ordered a large one and a small one and will keep the one crock that runs cool enough to safely heat wax and keep it for a while. That one has been very reliable, which means that as a crock pot, it is probably broke.

Apart from that I have been enjoying the work with the wax. It has been slow because I am limited on what I can do, but I think I will speed up soon, and I may even be able to try dipping wicks to make candles that way, too. I’ll get everything set up when it arrives and go from there. No promises till then.

I have a new printer on the way that will allow me to print color photos and even labels for my candles. I decided I wanted to be able to print a photo from time to time, rather than just putting them up on the Mural. The Mural is great, but sometimes there is a necessary feeling of completeness in having a good old fashioned paper print in hand.

I ran us out of the wood that I had split a couple of years ago and had to resort to this year’s stock. Well, let me tell you, that did not go well. The wood I pulled from the freshest row is so wet that it hardly burns at all. It sure don’t put heat into the house. It is not worth much unseasoned, and would do well to sit a year, but I cannot when I need every little bit I can get to keep warm as winter settles in. Saying that, it seems quite warm this November. Warmer than any year gone by. Today was a short sleeve outside kind of day. (For some reason, it was chilly as can be in the house all day despite the almost temperate weather outside.

So, it is Sunday evening, and I am going to carry on making candles. I do have the one pot, and a mold that I think needs using quite a bit more before Christmas. It is down to the last hour or so before bedtime, though everyone has a cold here right now, and I am not so sure if anyone is going to school tomorrow.

Cold Hard Facts

I was working with one of my daughters on her schoolwork yesterday, and to complete the assignment we looked up the month of March from 2019 till this year to compare precipitation amounts recorded on our farm’s weather station. Precipitation recordings can be seen on the graphs below as the vertical blue bars reaching up. Each month has a different scale as the software adjusts it for relative size on the page. In other words, 2019 and 2023 both have similar scales and are showing the greatest amounts of measurement. As there were freeze cycles on some days, this does not show actual precipitation days as such, but it does show what was collected.

2019

2019 did not show a lot of precipitation. Two years prior to this was an El Nino spring, and a couple of feet of snow settled onto the ground all at once, leaving our farm with a very high water table. 2019 was not just a low year for precipitation, but one of several drought years.

2020

While 2020 had more precipitation days recorded, the scaling is lower, and there was little but often.

2021

2021 was a true drought year. It would be followed up by 2022 and in combination these years would seriously hurt not just us, but the whole of the western United States.

2022

2022 was definitely a drought year, and it was all the talk. Rivers like the Colorado were running low, and usage agreements of the past were called into question.

2023

This spring has shown a serious amount of increase in precipitation days, and in the amount collected each day as the scale reaches up to 0.50″ in order to show the higher amount collected on each bar than previous years excepting 2019 which has a scale that goes to 0.60″.

It is easy to want to complain about the high-water table this year, but remembering the previous years, and having no occupied basement under our house, we are getting by at the moment. The old root cellar is cause for concern, so we are not free to just enjoy the gross amounts of water surrounding our house. Given the choice, I would rather close that old root cellar off for good and fill it up. But those are our problems, and not the problems of the greater world around us, and the troubles that the drought has caused are far worse.

So there we have it. Some cold hard facts about what the climate has been like for the past five years, from dry in March, to almost torrential. I picked March because Springtime in the Rockies. Spring is when the winter gloom lifts, and with the changes of the weather snow tends to fall in abundance. Some of our earlier years here in Southeast Idaho saw some serious rainfall in the summer. The last few years have been dry, but given the uptick in spring snow, I wonder if we will also see rain coming down again as before? Summer is not far off, and we’ll soon know. This may be an important year to put in a garden, if the ground out there ever dries up enough that I can till it without losing the tractor into a quicksand-like bog.

The Forecast Improves!

This week we have snowfall coming till Thursday. After that, things stand to improve, and if the computer is to be believed, and is predicting it right, things will seriously improve!

As can be seen for the following week, we should see temperatures in the fifties! I think that with that, and a lack of precipitation, we could see the end of mud season!

The current temperature is kind of wintery, but for here, that is not true. This is early spring weather! Our records show what this place can really be like in the summers and winters, though those records are nowhere near normal cold temperatures. In fact, we are normally around 0F in the dead of winters. The recent years have brought us exceptional extremes. But whatever the case, at least for now, there is a tolerable improvement in the weather coming!

Our temperatures have been pretty insane over the last few years. Prior to July 2021, I would seldom see the mercury rise over the high 90’s. By seldom, I mean I don’t remember it ever having happened at all. I am pretty sure I saw the first time our area hit the 100’s since moving here a little over ten years ago. I cannot be so sure about those lows. But I can say that I have had this weather station installed since October 2018, and it has been keeping an eye on the weather every minute since. The only gaps have been where the computer failed, and I had some of the data saved in a separate database by the time I put a new computer in. There were no record setting extremes during that period that would have come down to what can be seen on our current records.

So, as the week progresses, I’ll be keeping an eye on the weather forecast, and hopefully we will see the prediction ring true, bringing us an end to mud season first and foremast, then an end to burning firewood, too!

And that’s the last thing I want to talk about here. Our house has only fair insulation and bad windows. Nonetheless, the forecasted weather for this week requires only a small fire burning in the stove. By Sunday we may not need to burn anything at all. So long as the sun shines in the day, and the house gets warmed by solar radiation in the days where the overnight low stays about 35F or above, we tend to not need to burn a fire. Given the wood remaining in the pile, I think we will be quite adequate for the year of the temps are taking a turn they intend to keep. Of course, there will likely be a drop here and there, but even those could keep us in snow and warm enough temps to be tolerable. Either way, it is certainly workshop weather!

Record Cold

Previously our record cold temperature was -9F. It was set on New Year’s in 2019, I think. Since the weather station keeps the all-time record readily available, I cannot look up the second coldest, and third, and so on. That got bumped recently to -11. That record was set a couple of weeks ago. I was kind of proud of it. But even more recently, during a cold snap that hit us this week, we hit a new all-time record of -21F just yesterday. The forecast called for it, then set us up to immediately get into a warming trend that would bring us back up to normal temperatures in just three days or so. I trust lawyers and weathermen just as much as I trust car salespeople. Especially as much as I do sat here now at around 2:00AM the next day, monitoring the temps and our water pipes. An hour ago, we hit -23. It went up since then to the old record of -21 when I got up feeling the briskness in the house. Typically, one can expect the coldest part of the day to happen around sunrise. That gives us about five hours or so to reset this record again.

Out of interest, Peter Sinks hit a low yesterday of -42.56F. Peter Sinks is 20.82 miles from our house at a heading of 70.22 degrees. It holds the record for second coldest place in the lower United States at -69.3F, recorded in 1985. The coldest on record is at Roger’s Pass in Montana which in 1954 recorded a comparatively bone chilling -69.7. Peter Sinks is a geographic feature in the northern Utah mountains near Bear Lake. One can think of it as a sort of dish shape that collects falling cold air in its bottom. Trapped there, the air cannot fall out and dissipate, so as more cold air falls in from the atmosphere, it just gets colder and colder.

2:35AM just passed by, and we hit -24F. That ancient record has been edged out.

When I woke up about half an hour ago, I found the woodstove had a couple of logs in it that were putting up a decent fight against the cold. There was room for some more, so I went out to the stash on the front porch to bring in some more. I had nearly emptied the bunk in the house with the couple I added to the stove. I can only imagine for now that the logs I had found burning away in it were added by a chilly Missus who must have been up recently. The girls and I are sleeping in the living room again tonight, which is the room next to where the stove is. Despite all the stove’s effort, it is chilly in here. Of course, under the massive comforter I have wrapped around me, that chill is not so menacing. I hope the girls have enough blankets to prevent the assault. They both have their heads under, so I would guess they are a little chilly. The older one recently awoke and pulled another over her, then fell back to sleep. I may have to trek upstairs to get them each one or two more.

With the record set yesterday, and our all-time high on my weather station of 104F, that put our temperature spread to 125 degrees. Obviously, that is going to be a bit greater by morning. -25F has already slipped by us in the time I spent typing, and I think it is fair to expect -30 to go by before the sun rises. It is 2:50AM and I think I am going to get up and boil the kettle for Missus’ 3:00AM wake up, get those blankets for the girls and encourage the woodstove to flex its muscles.

I must have put too much wood in the woodstove because it has warmed up outside to -24. Missus is up and quickly on her second cup of tea. She says I used too small a cup for her first. I checked that water was running at a drizzle in both of the bathrooms. I brought some wood in from the stores on the front porch, too. The dining room made it up to 75 when I let the stove run up to the maximum safe operating temperature. Missus’ craft room and office is surprisingly warm for running one of those heat panels and the fan blowing air in from the dining room only to keep it warm. Meanwhile, I continue my temperature record watch party of one. It’s at -23. Maybe I ought to just go back to sleep if we already set the record. Nothing but boring now. What a laugh!

After 4:00Am now, and it has warmed up to -22. Still colder than yesterday. It could go either way from here, but I am going to sleep through it, whatever it does. It is time to go reclaim the joy of being in dreamland. What fun it has been to see this shocking cold! Not from out in it, mind! I am quite happy to remain here in the house!

It is coming up to 10:30AM now. It bottomed out this morning at 6:10AM at -26F. That’s a record on my weather station. Right now, I have the block heater on the tractor so I can try to use the tractor to jump start the truck. That’s how it is today. I hope we will see the temperatures warm up as the forecast predicts it will over the next few days.

Late Summer Projects Update

I have finished most of the fencing for the old llama pens in the side yard next to the house. These pens are conveniently located and make life easy daily, but especially in winter, for feeding and caring for the animals. I have two goats in the pen I am looking at keeping the calves in for their winter feedings, and I have let the calves out into the pen, too. The gates are in where I want them, finally allowing access to those pens for things like the lawn mower, and hopefully one day a tractor large enough to lift out anything that dies in the pens. It happens. Best to make it manageable. The only bit of fencing left to do there is along the east side of one of the pens where there is electric fencing at the moment.

The new driveway is serviceable to some degree now! It is rough and could really use a smoothing out. I have been hoping for years to get a tractor to do this sort of thing, but one never comes. The resources to do so may come soon, finally. If so, I would like to level it out and push a little out to grade and give it a smooth transition out to the road, rather than through the shallow end of the borrow pit, as is there now.

I have all the hay stacked in one place now, rather than sitting in a trailer. I need a lot more hay for over winter. I’ll have to have help loading it all, as there is too much for me to do on my own. I have about 75 bales now and need a total of around 300. So that’s an ongoing project. I also want to get a feeder to help keep the hay off the ground in the pen, though I have seen one farmer who successfully feeds on the ground in a field all winter. It is an opportunity to get one, and I probably should, though. It will serve more than just these cows.

Firewood had had a moment of pause as I have worked on the fencing and focused a little on getting hay. I have a decent pile in the Service Yard that I brought home in spring. It needs to be cut to length and split and stacked before I will really know how far I am from having enough for this winter. I do need a bit more, I am sure. With the summer being quite as hot as it has been, and the heat knocking out a good portion of working hours, I don’t think I am ready yet, at all, though I am close, and I would really love to be ahead or next year.

As I write this, we had one day of reasonable temperatures. There are more autumnal temps coming, too. Now is the time to act! It is time to boot the projects that need to be worked around the weather forward. Those include hay gathering, wood gathering, and things like getting up in the attic and running an electrical wire that needs putting in for the outlet I installed in an awkward corner of my den. The high temps are forecast now for two mid 80’s and the rest to explore the whole of the 70’s for the next ten days. There is also rain in the forecast, which would be a very welcomed relief from the dry summer we have had. Although, when I checked my weather records on our station, it was surprising to find this year was actually not the driest recorded. Quite the opposite! The summer months have recorded quite a lot more rain than in previous years. August pulled in 3.44 inches, while previous years have hovered closer to less than one inch, for example.

There are other projects to tackle in the cooler weather, as well. I can get back to the shop, where I can work on the lathe, and candle making. It needs a little clean up in there. I’d also like a proper workbench for wood working. In addition to all this, there is the apparently annual cleaning of the barn that is required before the snowy season starts. The granary has some things stored in it that should not be there. I want my cast iron out! The woodstove will need a servicing before the burning season begins, as well as the chimney cleaning out. I also have some firewood that wants splitting to use in the woodshop. There will be a period when the autumn is too cold, and the shop will be too, and it will want a little heat to keep it, till the winter sets in properly, and makes it all too cold to do anything in for more than a few minutes. That will be the time when I will have to transition any light work into my den, and I can make candles and do leather working in there. All of that must be arranged for.

So that’s where things are as of September 10th, 2022. Let’s see how much we can get done before the end of the month!

So Nearly Spring!

It is almost Spring! Along with the recent time change, the weather is acting accordingly. There are geese in migration and there are other birds showing up, though I have yet to see my first Robin of Spring. The temperatures are warming up with higher daytime highs and nights that are not nearly as cold as they once were. The days after the time change come to sunset later than before, giving us more time to do our evening chores and walk the dogs without having to carry a light. Mud season seemed worryingly early this year, and I wonder if the ground will dry up before the sun warms the ground enough to start the pasture grass and trees. But we will have to wait and see on that still, as the dead grass from last year is now fully exposed, and nothing has even hinted at the blossom.

I have a couple of things on order from eBay and from a reputable antiques replicator that specialized in 18th century products. The first is a corn sheller from the late 19th or early 20th century. I want to grow and dry our own corn to give to the chickens. The one I have on order is in excellent condition. I hope to see it put to good use. From the replicator I have a cast iron cauldron, for fun, and a colonial candle mold, to make candles for my replica tin punched lantern that I received for my birthday. I am really excited about it! I remember first seeing one pictured in a history book in high school and swearing then that one day I would have one. Well, my birthday was finally that day! It looks as new as a Colonial American would have seen it the day he bought one in the 18th century. When the mold arrives tomorrow, I may just melt the wax in the cauldron and make me some candles. I will have everything I need to do it! By tomorrow evening I will be lighting the lantern for the first time.

There is a lot to rearrange here on the farm to carry on with plans we have talked about lately. Missus wants a shop to sell things from. I want a workshop to make things in. Both require a lot of work, and to accomplish them, I think we will need to arrange the layout of some of the internal fencing differently. We will also have to put some animals over the road permanently. In other words, I have a busy spring ahead of me. On top of it, there is the usual with firewood gathering. I need to get a lot of it before it warms up too warm to do such hard work. The splitting can be done any cool morning on the farm. But gathering is away, and just for that reason is inherently more dangerous. But while I am splitting, I can easily take a break, get a drink, and so on. Much safer as it is at home. It also does not require a long drive, so can be started and worked on any day of the week, rather than the days there is no school for the girls, and so on. We expect to be working wood in a new part of the yard, too, and I have to set up a good workspace. Time to review my workflow.

I have the shop reduced to just things that are supposed to be in there. There is a lot to clean up and find homes for, though. I don’t have the space I need for it all and will need to set up some sort of cabinets or workbench still. I would also like to get a jointer’s bench, if I can. I’d like to be able to work in the shop on nay day there is no power, just as well as on the days there is. There are a lot of ideas floating around in my head that will keep me busy redoing it for the whole summer, I’m sure!

With the nights only getting to the mid 20’s, and the days hitting the mid-forties, the house is lovely and comfortable, and easy to keep warm when it needs it. I am thrilled that there is still wood in the woodpile! It is not all well-seasoned, but in a pinch, it will do!

I am still adjusting to the time change. This may be why I am up so late right now. It is approaching eleven o’clock. It is best I get to bed. Tomorrow will no doubt be a bust day! The repairman for the dryer will finally come to replace a part in it. That has been two months in the ordering. I’ll be glad to get it in and be done with it.

The Weather and Heating

According to an article I just saw, January was in a drought, officially, in our part of Idaho. I can confirm that anecdotally. I have not seen much new snow at all. None, really. If you were to look in our yard, you would find snow that has been there since December. Forecasts for the rest of February are not promising.

As for temperatures, it has been warming for the last week, giving the feeling of an early mud season. The grass has been wet, and some of the snow has melted away. There is still a lot covering the ground, but the clear patches are getting larger.

Our upstairs furnace started producing carbon monoxide on the 29th of January. We had a visit from the fire brigade, and then after the weekend, we had a visit from the repairman. The repairman took one look at it and said he could not fix it because it is in a bedroom, and as a combustion furnace, it is out of code. We had some things to discuss in this house, let me tell ya! The furnace upstairs is there because there is no route for ducting from the downstairs to the up. The downstairs furnace has not operated since 2015.

We decided to order some 400-watt panel heaters that hang on the wall and produce constant heat. The effect is similar to a radiator. I ordered three, but so far have only installed two. Between them and the woodstove in the dining room, the house is easy to maintain at about 70F throughout. That’s with the temperatures outside in the tens and twenties. I am actually concerned that when the temps get up into the thirties and forties, it will get too hot inside, and will be hard to keep at an even temp throughout the day.

I have yet to be updated on our electrical usage, but the two panels are using about as much electricity as two or three always on computers. Either way, we are no longer using propane, so there is a cost saved there where the money to cover the extra electric cost can come from.

As for our firewood, I think we will be running out early this year. I need to get more each year ready for winter. I have some green wood that we can burn into to keep warm after we run out of seasoned. There is still about a cord of seasoned left, mind. But once it is gone, I will need to watch the chimney more closely. Green wood burning clogs the spart arrestor. It also clogs the pipe if not kept clear, so I may have to have it apart for that. We are fortunate to have a bend in the bottom of the masonry, which is also out of code, but it collects what drops much faster than the rest of the pipe clogs, and it keeps me after that pipe, and aware of the condition of the entire thing. Once I have to clean that bend out, it is not much of a stretch to just clean the whole pipe. The whole job only takes about an hour. Small price for heating that has proven safer, easier to service, and much more reliable than our furnaces. Less costly to feed, too!

So that’s where we are at with our heating situation. It is a little unconventional, but it seems to be working. It is also redundant, still. I think in a perfect world, I would run a couple of dedicated circuits to carry only the heaters, and put a dimmer switch over each one, allowing them to be individually controlled, and turned down, especially for spring and fall.

Half-way through February, it is getting time to start making some solid plans for spring. Missus has said she would like to try a garden again this year. I would REALLY like to put water in near to the garden spots, so it is not all hose dragging and maintaining. It really kind of ruins it having to carry upwards of 300 feet of hose around the yard to be able to reach everywhere. It’s a pain where watering animals is concerned, too.