Sunday, 10:30 am: It’s a nice sunny day. Maybe the weather gremlins are finally behind us for this year. Yesterday we had most of our windows in the house open all day – you know, in with the good air, out with the bad air thing.

Also yesterday we drove to Van Buren, about 12 miles away, for a quick stop at the post office and to buy a few groceries. During the drive we stopped on Route One, a few miles from our house, to watch an osprey hovering above the Saint John River, at least I think it's an osprey. I did manage to get a photograph, which at that moment I thought would be a good picture. Almost after I finished snapping the image, the bird dove into the river and came back up with a fish. I should have kept clicking away! The one that I did shoot is on today’s blog.

This coming Tuesday evening we are going for some additional NWS Weather Spotter training in Fort Kent. It’s always an interesting class. I particularly like to the see the improvements in weather forecasting technologies, and to talk with other Weather Spotters in our area. By the way, Fort Kent is the northern terminus for U.S. Route One, the southern end is in Key West Florida.

Current values from our
Vantage-Pro weather station:

Temperature: 61° (F.)

Barometer: 30.44 & steady

Humidity: 19%

Wind: NW at 6 mph & variable

Visibility: > 3 miles

Skies: Clear

Precipitation: None

Since midnight:

Low temp: 24.7° (F.) at 5:30 am

High wind: 12 mph at 10:27 am

-- A Spring Visitor --

Friday, 9:40 am: What an odd morning, or it’s probably me? For some reason I thought it was Saturday, so I had to rethink today’s blog. In any case it’s a nice sunny day here in the Saint John Valley. We had a pleasant and relaxed morning sipping coffee and listening to CBC Radio One, also available online. There’s nothing like hearing the news from across the river. Sometimes I feel like I am a fifth columnist for Canada.

Our mail-order strawberry plants arrived yesterday, so today my wife will be busy planting them in our raised garden bed. Now if we can just keep the squirrels out when the berries start to appear. Our tomato seedlings are now a foot tall, but it is still too cold at night to plant them outside.

This evening we’ll be dining at our favorite German restaurant near Grand Falls, New Brunswick. I need to get my ration of schnitzel and egg noodles with Hefe Weizen Beir, or wheat beer, with the yeast sediment at the bottom of the bottle: Now that’s typically Bavarian. The couple that own and operate the restaurant are real Germans from the Lake Constance area in Germany, and not imitation Germans from Toronto.

Now on to what this is really supposed to be about -- weather. Please pardon my digression into everything else that’s not the least bit related to weather or climate. And one last thing before I completely forget, a bald eagle was flying over our house just minutes ago.

Current values from our
Vantage-Pro weather station

Temperature: 34° (F.)

Barometer: 30.20 & rising slowly

Humidity: 47%

Wind: NW at 6 mph & variable

Precipitation: None

Visibility: > 3 miles

Skies: Partially cloudy

Since midnight:

Low temp: 19° (F.) at 5:32 am

High wind: 13 mph at 8:55 am

Wednesday, 2:00 pm: It’s a nice day outside. It started out partially cloudy and now it is completely overcast. More importantly, it snowed last night. Yes sir, that right, snow! The light dusting even lasted until this morning when the temperature rose above 32 (F.).

I’ve ordered some more wonderful add-on gadgets for my ham radio. On the 29th is my birthday, so I got the green light from my wife this is my birthday present. I was afraid I’d end up with new handkerchiefs and t-shirts if I didn’t speak up. My sister in Chandler Arizona sent me some of her homemade fudge. If I was diabetic I would have been in a coma for a week now, and if I were still a teenager my face would have looked like a mine field.

Yesterday we had a large cow moose across from our house. I took a few digital photographs of it shooting though our plastic storm windows. The photos didn’t turn out good shooting through clear plastic, so I deleted them. Microchips can do a lot, but they can’t correct for a not too bright operator [me!]. But really there was a moose there!

Current values from our
Vantage-Pro weather station:

Temperature: 46° (F.)

Barometer: 29.52 & falling rapidly

Humidity: 33%

Winds: WNW at 18 mph & gusty

Visibility: > 3 miles

Skies: 100% overcast

Precipitation: light dusting of snow in morning

Since midnight:

Low temp: 26° (F.) at 5:09 am

High winds: 24 mph at 12:34 pm

Friday, 10:10 am: Spring has finally been kick started, and I think it is in overdrive. The last few days have been wonderfully warm and sunny. Our ground is even drying faster than first anticipated. I haven’t used my rubberized boots for awhile, and my feet no longer make an unpleasant squish when I walk on our lawn.

Our tomato plants that I started from seed on February 17th are now about 12 inches tall in their peat containers. Hopefully within two or three weeks I’ll transplant them into the ground. Besides the tomato plants we are still undecided what additional plants we should have in our garden this year.

I am also getting my hand tools sharpened to dig out wild red dogwood plants near our house. Dogwood is so invasive up here. Short of bulldozing it, dogwood is very labor intensive to remove, roots and all. More middle-aged garden adventures next time. Maybe!

Current values from our
Vantage-Pro weather station:

Temperature: 47° (F.)

Barometer: 30.37 & steady

Humidity: 30%

Wind: NNE at 5 mph & variable

Visibility: > 3 miles

Skies: Clear

Precipitation: None

Since midnight:

Low temp: 24.4° (F.) at 5:41 am

High wind: 13 mph at 10:04 am

Tuesday, 12:05 pm: Our dismal weather is still with us. Needless to say it is becoming a drag. I feel like I am back in northern Europe, where this kind of weather is commonplace. I’ll become a mottled white man if the sun doesn’t come out soon.

Yesterday we put off our shopping trip to Presque Isle and decided to have a lazy day at home. It was not an entirely lazy day, my wife did a lot of cleaning and I, well let’s just say I did significantly less than she did. My wife thinks of work as a hobby, so I tell her, “Have a good time.”

During the past few weeks I’ve received three aurora alerts and none have materialized visually. Last week AM radio reception at night was essentially wiped out, so I know the aurora was there, just not visible to the human eye, but at some other wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum. If you are interested in aurora alerts click here and follow the instructions.

Current values from our
Vantage-Pro weather station:

Temp: 46° (F.)

Barometer: 29.88 & steady

Humidity: 60%

Wind: ENE at 2 mph & variable

Visibility: > 3 miles

Skies: 100% overcast

Precipitation: None

Since midnight:

Low temp: 36.5° (F.) at 6:01 am

High wind: 21 mph at 10:43 am

Sunday, April 16, 2006: perhaps the only difference in today’s blog compared to the one I wrote yesterday, is that it is Easter Sunday in the Christian tradition. The weather is essentially the same. Yesterday we had about .57 inch of rain. It is another bad cinema DVD day for me. I've got some real classic stinkers.

Today we walked in the rain to visit our neighbors back in the woods. It was a pleasant visit, sipping coffee and eating chocolates. I know it sounds like we were brunching with elves in the woods, but they are real people living off the grid [power grid]. Here at home, I did give in and bring in firewood. It will need a day or two to dry out.

Tomorrow we are planning on driving to Presque Isle for some needed shopping. Unfortunately mid-grade gasoline is around $3.00 per gallon here in the north woods. The last time high gas prices soared to about $3.50 per gallon, allegedly due to hurricanes in the Gulf area, local gas stations in Madawaska ran out of gas because the prices were even higher in New Brunswick. Almost everyone within easy driving distance in Canada drove over to the U.S. and filled up. In the mean time keep your fingers crossed, and for today our weather is as follows:

Current values from our
Vantage-Pro weather station:

Current temp: 38.6° (F.)

Barometer: 29.67 & rising slowly

Humidity: 91%

Visibility: > 3 miles

Skies: 100% overcast

Precipitation: Rain .06 inch

Since midnight:

Low temp: 34.9° (F.) at 4:42 am

High wind: 13 mph at 2:45 pm

Saturday, 3:40 pm: A wet and drab afternoon. It’s raining enough that I’ll put off bringing in firewood for today. It is just difficult to imagine that it is only the middle of April. Even our dogs want to stay inside. If I had any sense I’d listen to the NOAA weather radio from Frenchville and find out how long this is supposed to last, although, I do love a surprise.

Luckily, to occupy my time, I have a good collection of DVDs of mostly black and white films from the 1950s; you know in the last century. They are grainy low-budget thrillers, teen exploitation, or sci-fi with very basic production values, and even some of them are questionable. They are enough for me to enjoy and pick out the shoddy fakery and drive my wife crazy. These are pizza and beer movies.

Back on track once again, our weather is, well, it is just here and coming down. Days like today allow me to be lazy without the guilt. To view my ongoing weather please click here.

Current values from our
Vantage-Pro weather station:

Temperature: 43° (F.)

Barometer: 29.49 & steady

Humidity: 93%

Winds: calm

Skies: 100% overcast

Visibility:

Precipitation: .45 inch

Since midnight:

Low temp: 28.4° (F.) at 1:53 am

High wind: 27 mph at 12:45 pm

Thursday, 10:25 am: We received an email this morning from the mail-order nursery where we buy our plants and seeds. They notified us that our strawberry plants are being shipped. Normally I would contact them and request they delay shipping for another month. This year our spring has sprung and the plants are coming on time for a change, and not when we still have two feet of snow on the ground. We also ordered some Poplar hybrids, but they haven’t shipped yet.

The last two days when my wife and I were driving on US Route One we saw young moose grazing next to the road. At first glance my wife and I thought the first one was a horse that got out from some farmer’s field. Also the first groups of ATVs have started driving down our road, which has a secondary use as an ATV trail. This spring certainly has been dramatic, in the sense that it came so early, and warmed up quickly. Enough about spring! Let’s hope we received enough snow to recharge our ground water.

Today is overcast and sprinkling, and our ground is very saturated from the melting snow making walking in our garden soggy. In fact it is so soggy, our stack of firewood fell over because the ground underneath sunk from the weight and the whole affair toppled to one side Later as the ground dries out, the frost heaves and sunken areas will even out, and our lawn will look great.—but not now.

Current values from our
Vantage-Pro weather station:

Temp: 49° (F.)

Barometer: 29.82 & falling rapidly

Humidity: 81%

Wind: SSW at 11 mph & variable

Skies: 100% overcast

Visibility: > 3 miles

Precipitation: Occasional sprinkles

Since midnight:

Low temp: 41.5° (F.) at 4:02 am

High wind: 22 mph at 9:23 am

Wednesday, 8:45 am: The last week has been chaotic so my weather blogs have been nonexistent for many days. The day after returning from Bangor and Augusta last week, our Border Collie was diagnosed with end-stage kidney failure which really came like a lightening bolt out of the blue. Sadly she died yesterday. She wiggled her way into our hearts.

Aside from the loss of our pet, everything here is in order including the weather. A few days ago I received another email aurora alert, but it never materialized, or at least not visible at our location. I was thinking, as I write today’s blog, that the direction I am sitting as I type, which is generally facing Canada, that all of America is behind me – literally. It is an unusual feeling to ponder, that if I just turn around all of our country is at my feet. Yet I can’t see the end of it, but I can see where it begins. Thanks again Jack Kerouac.

Most of our snow has melted, and what remains is melting rapidly. Our low temperatures over the past several days haven’t fallen below the 20s. The days are balmy enough I can go outside and work in my t-shirt. Last year I didn’t put my long johns away until the end of May. But then again it is not exactly Speedo weather. Yikes!

Current values from our
Vantage-Pro weather station:

Temperature: 42° (F.)

Barometer: 30.37 & steady

Humidity: 50%

Winds: Calm

Visibility: > 3 miles

Clouds: Scattered high cloudiness

Precipitation: None

Since midnight:

Low temp: 24.7° (F.) at 5:53 am

High wind: 5 mph at 8:54 am

Our girl Mitzie

Wednesday, 7:20 pm: Where have I been you ask? My wife and I were in Augusta and Bangor for two days. Of course their snow was gone except Monday night when it snowed in Augusta.

On the way down we listened to an audio book I read years ago, On the Road by Jack Kerouac. Needless to say the parts in Jack’s book about stopping at dingy rundown roadside diners, circa 1947, and eating apple pie and ice-cream influenced the number of times we stopped to snack on pie and ice-cream. His novel influenced a generation, the Beats [a.k.a. Beatniks], not to mention my eating habits lately. He rode in penniless squalor and enjoyed it: I rode in climate-controlled comfort and enjoyed it.

So much for reminiscing about 1950s counter-culture. Now back to the weather. This morning we had two inches of snow that fell overnight. While trying to write my weather blog on Sunday our power went out for three hours due to very windy conditions. It gusted to 38 mph. I lost everything. My creativity evaporated the moment my computer died. Fortunately my brain stayed intact, or at least I think it did.

Current values from our
Vantage-Pro weather station:

Temperature: 36° (F.)

Barometer: 29.61 & rising slowly

Humidity: 86%

Winds: calm

Skies: overcast

Precipitation today: 2” snow

Since midnight:

Low temp: 30.1° at 3:40 am

High wind: 6 mph at 1:58 am

Can you guess where?