The Storm Passeth

Well after two nights and a day of horizontal snow and howling winds, we crawl back up the docks and assess the carnage.

Hiking to the grocery store.  We fell five times between the two of us.  Nothing broken.

There's something weirdly incongruous about this.  Note, this is only like 30 hours worth of snow.  Wow.

Some of the drifts were four feet deep.  It made moving around an exercise in physical comedy.

 

Luckily, as is often the case, the day after the great blizzard of '16 passed was beautiful, mild, and sunny.  Tomorrow it will warm, and most of the ice and snow will go away.  Tonight, it will be mercifully quiet, wind-wise, and we'll finally get a decent night's sleep.

All in all, not too bad an experience.  Okay, can winter be done for this year?

M

Prepping for the Storm

So, as we go into two days of blizzard (and, no, I don't mean a Skyrim festival) here's some of the things we've done to prep.

As we're likely to be stuck here on board for at least two days:

Laid in additional drinking water, food, wine, more wine, chocolate, sawdust for our composting toilet, and ten full gallons of Kerosene.

Tied down all the coolers on the dock and added an additional spring line to the dock, just in case.

Put us on shore power so that our batteries can be as charged as they're gonna get.  That way if we lose power, I'll have electricity even if the solar panels are covered and we're heavily overcast.

Showered, cleaned, did laundry, did the dishes.  In general tried to do anything that would be a pain in the butt or dangerous to do in a snowstorm.

Charged up the computers, tablets, phones, and the cat.  I really shouldn't have tried that.  It mostly irritated him.

 

Just fill my dish and leave me the hell alone, okay?  Trying to nap, here. . . .

Did I mention wine?

The snow is starting to fall.  We're looking at two feet of the stuff, along with winds that could hit 50mph.

Such is life aboard.  Wish us luck.

More later, stay warm, stay safe.

M

Of Ice and Low Tides

Yeah, it's winter here on the Middle River.  Thought I'd share this with you.  See the grey beam at the top?  That's the UNDERside of the dock.  And, yes, the river is frozen.

...yeah, it's winter.

Compare the above to the "low tide" picture of just a few days ago:  here.  On top of that, there's a major winter storm headed our way.  So after most of the winter being more like spring, we finally get a bit of cold.

Will keep you posted.  MAJOR new things happening here, which I'll be posting for you in the next few days.

Okay, so I'm a tease,

New stuff over at Life, Art, Water.  Check out Morgainne's stuff.

M

Weather Insanity.

Today is Sunday, January 11.  It is 63 degrees outside right now.  We are not in Florida, we're freaking north of Baltimore.

Even the grass is thinking it's spring already.

Not done yet:  this afternoon it is supposed to rain, then the temperature is supposed to plunge 42 degrees (F) to a low of 21 tonight, accompanied by gale force winds, uncharacteristic high tides literally over the docks, then snow on Tuesday, then it gets warm again.

This weather volatility is as stunning as it is unusual, waaaaay too much energy in the system.

. . . .and I'm afraid this is probably the new normal.

Though Magellan is grooving' on the sunshine and warm weather.

More shortly if we don't blow or float away.

M

Yeah, it's winter....

Spent much of the week since New Years--Happy New Years by the way--tidying up our weatherstripping and getting ready for the cold weather, which--after an astonishingly warm winter thus far--finally arrived last night with high winds and temperatures in the teens.

Yeah, that's ice in the cat's bowl.  He was unamused.

Typical with winter's here, the strong NNW winds overnight blew a lot of the water out of the Middle River and down into the bay. That, coupled with the low tide this AM, means we're sitting on about a foot of water, and well below the dock.  I suspect most of the other boats are nestled firmly in the mud at this point.

Yeah, that's about four feet below normal.

On the plus side, I did find the sunglasses I dropped in the water two months ago.

Okay, so they need a little work.

So for the next few cold days, we'll rely on our trusty kero heater to keep us comfortable, then the weather supposedly warms again for some time.  Stay tuned.

M