Snow Day

We have had some interesting weather lately.  Several days last week was spring, with the 29th even getting  up to 75 degrees! But the 24th, just 5 days earlier, we had an inch of snow and ice which made for extremely bad roads on Friday, the 25th (no school). 

Three days after our thermometer hit 75, I once again had to melt the ice for my chickens during a 15 degree Friday morning.  Again, there was no school on this Friday due to the snow from Thursday night!  It kept snowing through this weekend until we had 3 inches of snow on the ground by Saturday evening. 

It was just below 30 this morning, which was pleasant compared to wind chills of 0, and I felt like taking a walk in this beautiful snow God had given us.  I also took some pictures of the scenes around me.

 Ring the dinner bell; the snow-cream is ready.

It looks like this pump would produce some good cold water.

 The slide is as slippery as ice.

 The snowy side yard and garden area.

 Our old hog trailor.

 A snowy garden bench would be a rather cold seat today.

 The snow-covered lane leading up the mountain.

 A small water fall in our creek is pretty surrounded by the snowy ground.

 I thought the snow covered trees were pretty, as usual.

 The creek.

 

The ice covered caves are always cool.

 Where I go, Agusta goes.

 This is the new stray I call "Little Dog" and everyone else calls "Missy".

 She and Gusta are great pals and were playing in the snow.

 Our rooster was checking the cold stuff out.

 This is the start of a tree house Simon was working on when the weather was acting like spring.

Here is one of our orange cats. 
We have two that look pretty much alike: Charlie and Tigger. 

I'm not sure which this is exactly. 

That is a small sample of what I saw on my snowy walk this morning.  I, for one,  am glad for the snow.  I think snow is a blessing from God.  I am also blessed to have a nice warm home to come back to!

Snow On the First Day of Winter

Today is the winter solstice, the first official day of Winter.  I think it is very fitting that we are having a good snowy day on this day!  (Today is also the day that some people think the world will end based on an old Mayan calendar, but I'm not even going there.  Maybe Y2K had some very credible voices, but a Mayan apocalypse?)  We had snow the end of October, but the next 7 weeks were fairly uneventful, weather-wise.  About half the nights have seen temperatures at the freezing mark but the first week of December was Spring-like with highs in the 60s.  Overall, a pretty calm ending to Fall.

And that brings us back to our snowy day today, the first day of Winter!

Dandelion still has not yet calved!  Chirstina, Simon, Timothy and I just got back from checking on her.  We gave her fresh hay and also put fresh hay down in the shelter for Gracie, Violet, and the two bull calves.  During the past week, Matthew, Christina and Simon have worked on putting up the outside walls of the shelter they roofed last month.  They got the walls up just in time for this bitter cold snowy wind today!  The children also took a few moments to enjoy the snow over there at that farm.

This is what the shelter looks like now!  Quite an improvement for the winter.  Before Matthew put the wood up, we had tarps up but I don't think we got any pictures of that phase.

Simon helped a lot getting the hay today.  Christina did also, but  she moved so fast that I did not get a picture of her carrying a bale.

Here's Dandelion warm and dry in the barn.  I tried to get pictures that showed how hard it was snowing, but it didn't work too well.

 

And here are the other cows enjoying the hay within their newly errected walls.

All that's left for the outside is the partial wall at the top of the front.  We are going to leave the rest of this wall open.  Matthew also plans on putting in a loft to store hay in the back half of the structure.  It's coming along beautifully!


Of course we had to take some time out for snow play!  I think the house has a majestic aura looking up at it from the road.

I think Timothy still likes his bike better than the sleds.

But he did go down a few times in the sleds.

Matthew and Simon finished today off by taking care of the pigs.  We still have the boar and gilt that survived from K & T Showpigs.  They are both still a mystery, so we have decided to keep them around awhile and see if they produce piglets that are any good.  They mated on December 13 which means we should see some piglets around April 9th.  We'll see.

The tarp had come loose that covers their feeder because of the severe wind we've had today, and their feeder was low enough for them to knock it over and spill feed into the snow/mud, so they definitely needed attention!  Matthew loaded 3 100 pound sacks of hog feed on his shoulders and poured them into the feeder.  I suggested that he put one sack on each shoulder and balance the other on his head, but I don't think he took my advice. 

The pictures they took did not come out too well in the dusky, snowy dimness, but I wanted to put them up anyway.

Snow Already?

With still three days left in October, I think this is an interesting weather forcast:

They predict that we could have 4-8 inches of snow before October leaves us!  Could this be an omen of the winter to come here at Pure Water Hollow Homestead?

The Winter That Wasn't...Until Now?

This year has given us a very mild winter here at Pure Water Hollow. We have had very warm temperatures over all and rain. We've had less than an inch of snow fall on two different occaisons, only one really being enough to sled ride on, and that only briefly before all the snow was gone. Our local school system has only missed 2 days of school this entire winter, which is unheard of! I think we average between 15-20 snow days during a normal winter(We missed Jan 3rd and Jan 13 this year.)

The National Weather Service had this bit of interesting historical data to report back at the end of January:

AT THE JACKSON NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE FORECAST OFFICE THE DECEMBER 2011 TO JANUARY 2012 PERIOD RANKS AS THE SECOND WARMEST DECEMBER JANUARY PERIOD ON RECORD.

THE TOP 5 WARMEST DECEMBER TO JANUARY PERIODS ON RECORD FOR JACKSON IN DEGREES FAHRENHEIT.

2001-2002 41.9
2011-2012 41.7
2006-2007 41.2
1998-1999 41.0
1988-1989 40.9

IT IS INTERESTING TO NOTE THAT THE COLDEST DECEMBER JANUARY PERIOD ON RECORD AT JACKSON WAS JUST LAST YEAR...WHEN TEMPERATURES FROM DECEMBER 2010 THROUGH JANUARY 2011 AVERAGED 29.5 DEGREES...OVER 12 DEGREES COLDER THAN FOR THE SAME PERIOD THIS YEAR.

AN EVEN BIGGER STORY SO FAR THIS WINTER HAS BEEN THE LACK OF SIGNIFICANT COLD AIR OUTBREAKS. SO FAR THIS WINTER THE LOWEST MINIMUM TEMPERATURE RECORDED AT JACKSON HAS BEEN 17 DEGREES...WHILE THE LOWEST MINIMUM TEMPERATURE AT LONDON HAS BEEN 16 DEGREES.

THE WARMEST MINIMUM TEMPERATURE EVER RECORDED FOR AN ENTIRE WINTER SEASON AT JACKSON WAS 11 DEGREES IN THE WINTER OF 1997-98. FOR LONDON THE WARMEST MINIMUM TEMPERATURE EVER RECORDED FOR AN ENTIRE WINTER SEASON WAS 10 DEGREES IN THE WINTER OF 2001-2002.

THERE HAS ALSO BEEN A LACK OF SNOW SO FAR THIS WINTER...WITH ONLY 4.2 INCHES BEING RECORDED AT THE JACKSON NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE OFFICE. HOWEVER...THERE HAVE BEEN 5 OTHER WINTERS WHERE EVEN LESS SNOW HAD FALLEN BY THE END OF JANUARY. THE NORMAL SNOWFALL FOR OCTOBER THROUGH JANUARY IS 12.6 INCHES. THE LEAST AMOUNT OF SNOW RECORDED FOR AN ENTIRE WINTER SEASON WAS 6.4 INCHES IN 1991-92.

THE LEAST SNOWIEST OCTOBER TO JANUARY PERIODS ON RECORD FOR JACKSON IN INCHES.

1990-1991 1.2
1991-1992 2.5
1988-1989 3.1
2006-2007 3.5
2007-2008 4.0
2005-2006 4.2
2011-2012 4.2

THE LATEST LONG RANGE OUTLOOK CALLS FOR A CONTINUATION OF ABOVE NORMAL TEMPERATURES FOR THE MONTH OF FEBRUARY...BUT THERE IS ALSO SOME INDICATIONS THAT A MORE WINTRY PATTERN MAY SET UP ACROSS THE EASTERN UNITED STATES FOR AT LEAST A SHORT PERIOD OF TIME AFTER THE MIDDLE OF FEBRUARY.

IT ALSO BEARS TO KEEP IN MIND THAT IN SOME WINTERS THE COLDEST TEMPERATURES HAVE OCCURRED IN MARCH...WITH BELOW ZERO TEMPERATURES EVEN BEING OBSERVED. ALSO...EVEN IN OUR LEAST SNOWIEST WINTER...1.7 INCHES OF SNOW WAS RECORDED AT JACKSON IN APRIL.


Jackson actually has had much more snow this year than we did here, even though they are only about 60 miles away from us. During our 2nd snow they had over 2 inches when we only got about a half an inch. At any rate, you can see how little winter we have had around here in a historical context.

February has seen warm temperatures and no snow as well. Even today, the high is forcasted to be 56 degrees. But in the early morning hours of Sunday, they are predicting our area to get slammed with a good old fashioned snow storm! It is hard to believe, but we are perhaps in line to get 6 to 12 inches of snow!

I'll believe it when I see it!

In the mean-time I will enjoy the nice spring Saturday that God is giving us today!

First Snow Day of 2012

The December Pure Water Hollow weather of 2011 went south, you might say, compared to the recent Decembers we have experienced. We were warm and rainy with no snow at all! Seeing that I am interested in preserving some of our weather history, I found these graphics from the local tv meteorologist worth recording here.

This one is the average temperature of December:



And this one is referring to the total amount of snowfall during December:



You can see by those stats what a different December we had this year, compared to the previous couple of years!

Now, the New Year of 2012 has been officially christened with a nice winter blast of cold and snow. The very first day of January was a Spring-like 62 degrees with all the wind of a nice April storm, but the 2nd day saw the temps fall to the 20s and our first snow of 1-3 inches.

We were closer to the 1 inch mark at our homestead, but it was enough for all the area schools to be called off the next day. The snow and the freeze was also good enough to allow the children to try out the new sleds they got for Christmas!

Here is Timothy pulling a sled up the hill:



On top, he was assisted by Simon and Christina:




Going down:





A happy Timmothy after an exciting ride:





Simon and Christina also enjoyed several rides down the hill, some on their own, some together, and some with Timothy:





After they burned all the snow off of that hill, they moved the operation to their other hill:




It was a nice time of sled riding for Timothy, Simon and Christina, even though the temps never got above 30. It was a long enough time to get chilled fingers and rosy red cheeks, but also a brief enough time that they all made it back into the house before anyone got too cold and upset!

Later on, during the overnight hours, our Pure Water Hollow thermometer got down to a very cold 16 degrees, but we were blessed with a warm and cozy home! Today was back into the sunny 40s and many are now predicting a very mild January, overall, similar to our December. So, will yesterday be the first of many snow days this year or will we only have a dreary, soggy winter?

I, for one, am hoping for some more snow!