Our updates for all of you

After last weeks post of me talking about the somewhat short winter so far, it got cold! I mean really cold over the weekend, like two mornings with the lows of +8 (-13C) and +9 (-12C) and 'highs' around 25 (-3C). No one I had talked with thought it would be that THAT cold again this season! Then last night, 02/13/18, there had been a "Winter Storm Watch" issued for the time period of 10 PM Tuesday to 12 noon Wednesday for "up to" 11 inches of snow. Luckily, we didn't get anything near that with about 4 inches overnight and the snow stopped around 10 am and warmed into the mid-30s during the day so what had fallen had begun to melt, clearing off the roads and walkways but staying on the grass. However, for its last blast, we still could get a few more inches of accumulation between now and next Sunday the 18th. Then, the long-term forecast has the daytime temps going back into the mid to upper 30s again in about a week. We'll see! On Monday t...

Yes, a bit over a year ago, as I write this post, there had been the dump of right at four feet of snow from February third to the fifth. An area record that was then compared to the winter of 1996 which had been the most snow in the recent history with memories of up to thirteen foot deep drifts. From last year, February 6th, 2017 Above and Below: When we woke up to go to work that Monday morning we were, as everybody in the region was, very surprised to find so much snow had fallen overnight from Sunday to Monday. As we took stock of what we would need to do I measured several spots to be over three feet deep on our property. We weren't going anywhere fast that day. That one pathway was made by a cat getting from the parking area to the back porch to be fed.   Below: Our travel trailer at the time, a Forest River Wildcat Maxx at the time that February morning was well buried.  During last summers vacation, we were parked for a couple of nights...

So, here we are, early in 2018. While our area gets cold, we don't get the  really cold, the cold of Montana and eastward. Where we are, in North Idaho, 30 miles from Canada, we are in a bowl of a valley. That's why we wind up with mostly overcast days in the winter. We are also pretty well protected from the strong blizzard kinds of winds and the weather patterns that are causing the conditions in Montana eastward, a parked high-pressure system that steers that super cold weather up and over this area and into Montana and eastward. We are into, what is usually some of the coldest weather of the year for this area, for a normal year! When was the last of those, normal years, thanks to climate change, whether from natural cycles or what's been changed by human expansion? Anyway, since before Christmas the area has been lows in the 8 to 10-degree (F) range (-13 C to -12 C) with highs in the upper teens to low 20's (-6 C or so). As mentioned the last post, we'd...

Idaho is the fastest growing state in the nation?  Really? Seems so according to various news agencies, 1.2% per year growth according to the Census Bureau, or at least that was the source quoted in one story. Even a rural area like ours gets some growth. You can see it in more cars on the area roads but even here many people are willing to commute. When we were in California, if we were working in the San Bernardino Valley, that was a commute of around eighty miles a day, four days a week. When we first moved to the high desert, in 1989, it was about thirty-five to forty-five minutes from point 'A' to 'B'. Before we moved to Idaho in 2006, and with the almost constant growth in all those areas, that same trip took up to an hour and a half on many occasions. Up here in North Idaho, I would NOT want to have to be at work by eight am in Spokane, Washington, often about two hours away, in good weather! But in "adverse weather" like now, like much of win...

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...

Getting a 21st Century Assistant So I did it. Thanksgiving Day I did it. I had been wanting a Google Home since they had come out I think almost two years ago. I've really liked the idea of voice assistants and have tried some over the years with my Android phones. Before getting Google Assistant on my Note IV, and Assistant is only available if you have Android 6.0 or greater, I had tried other 'assistants' that did or didn't work as promised or expected with previous phones. Most recently I had been using "Dragon Naturally Speaking" primarily with it reading notifications, text messages and caller names occasionally like when driving and would rather not try looking at my phone or my watch display.   With buying a Google Home, I had been holding off for a couple of things, first the price to come down, and that happened over Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which has become Cyber Week the last couple of years. But with fifty dollars off I felt that was a...

I'll start with the more recent activities and work back. Will we have a wild winter again? At the beginning of November in our area, we had almost 10 inches of snow! While yes, there often is some snow in November, it is usually a couple of inches around the middle of the month but around 10 inches for most areas? Even the longtime residents I talked with said that was a lot of snow for so early in the season. The trees too were not expecting the snow as many still had the fall leaves and needles of them. All the snow was getting many nervous about a repeat of last year's record snow or an even a worse winter this year. A few weeks ago a state weather forecasting department was predicting what Idaho could expect for snow and rainfall for this winter of 2017-2018. For our neck of the woods and general location, it was predicted an approximate snowfall of 193 inches or about 16 FEET of snow! Of course, that number could be totally wrong and it also is over the span of a fu...