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December Doldrums

How could that be? You might think, Christmas, the lights, the presents, all the holiday programming! How could there be doldrums?

Well, I'll tell you,  days and days of overcast and kind of foggy weather. Pretty cold days and nights, like "highs" from 27 to 32 and the lows from 17 to 28 for many of those days. The cause? A stagnant high-pressure system over the Northwest. Stalled out and just sitting there with no strong enough cold front coming through to move the High Pressure away. With the stalled pressure system here, the storms are going North into Canada and coming back into the states in the mid-west areas and they and the eastern states are getting the snow and early winter weather. Add to that, these really short days this time of year with sunrise after 8 am and sunset near 3:30 pm, short dark days.

No snow left from the ten inches in early November, the mountains have snow but on most days you can't see the peaks. It's cold but not "wintery". Even a year ago there was snow on the ground, not much since most often the snow really starts near Christmas and is the most from Christmas to early February. I try to keep a log of things like that. I moved it to Google Drive after the listing I had done for several years was lost when my iPad was reset a couple of years ago losing all that data.


Above, taken earlier today, 12/14/2017, shows the general look of the past few weeks. Almost constant overcast and cold. 

So, it kinds of melds together and to be honest, not all that Christmas like! After years and years of living in Southern California, you'd think I would be used to the non-snow cold weather. Maybe so, but there were never days and weeks of overcast where I lived. Those morning clouds usually 'burned off' to hazy sunshine in the valleys. In the deserts, storms never lasted long at all, blow in one day and blow out the next.

The following four photos were taken with my DJI Mavic and show the area of our new offices in the town. The top two, a few days after the snow in November, the second of those photos is of the building we're now in.


Above: in this photo, I was higher and closer to the highway, Highway 95/2 that goes from Mexico to Canada for the highway 95 part, and from Seattle to the east coast on the highway 2 part. 
Below: the view of the building we are now in, until two years ago a National Guard post. Built in the 1950s and totally redone in the 1980s. 


The bottom two, the one sunny day we had, last Monday, the 11th, showing the snow all gone and the browns of winter and the evergreen trees too.



Above: looking North, center left in the photo is Vally View Elementary school.
Below: Looking East, Highway 95/2 along the right side of the photo.



And finally, this photo looking south westerly.


Till next posting, Tad

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