Snow depth on Craig St in Pittsburgh, 17 Jan 2022, 6:54am (photo by Kate St. John)
17 January 2022, 9am
A week ahead of today’s snowstorm the predictions were dire. By yesterday morning the forecast called for 6-12 inches in the Pittsburgh area beginning with wet snow on Sunday, possibly some freezing rain, ending on Monday at 1pm.
With that much warning and a national holiday, Martin Luther King Day, the streets are empty in Pittsburgh.
At 6:50am I found a windless place to measure the snow in my neighborhood, 5.75 inches shown above, and it is still snowing at 9am.
Here are more scenes before dawn.
Still snowing in Pittsburgh, lit by floodlight, 17 Jan 2022, 6:50am (photo by Kate St. John)
Maintenance crews were already out blowing, shoveling, salting and plowing to keep up with as many as 3 more inches.
The sky was white with snow but I could see lights in the distance.
Snowing in Pittsburgh, 17 Jan 2022, 6:48am (photo by Kate St. John)Snow in Oakland, 17 Jan 2022, 6:43am (photo by Kate St. John)
Allegheny National Forest at Beaver Meadows Recreation Area, 12 Jan 2022 (photo by Barb Griffith)
15 January 2022
The sun was shining and the temperature was in the mid 30s when six of us arrived at Beaver Meadows Recreation Area in the Allegheny National Forest on 12 Jan 2022. We were there to find 40 red crossbills (Loxia curvirostra) reported on 29 December. Just one perched in profile would be enough for me. I had to see the beak.
This one dragged his tail as he bounded across the path, planting his back feet in the prints of his front feet as he hurried from one subnivean hole to the next.
Likely the footprints of a white-footed mouse, Beaver Meadows, 12 Jan 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Since meadow voles have relatively short tails my guess is that the print was made by a white-footed mouse, (Peromyscus leucopus) pictured below. Notice the long tail.
Otters slid on lake ice near their den. A local man helped us with this ID and showed us a photo of the otters.
Red squirrels made small highways between trees.
Bobcat,
Snowshoe hare.
This was my first ever look at snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus) tracks but I recognized the distinctive large hind feet that spread like “snowshoes” to help them walk on snow. (An optical illusion may make the footprints appear to bulge. My boot is at bottom of the photo for scale.)
Snowshoe hare track + tip of my boot, Beaver Meadow Recreation Area, Allegheny National Forest, 12 Jan 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Here are two sets of snowshoe hare prints, plain and marked up with notes. In the smaller track the hind feet are just less than 4″ long. In the larger the hind feet are about 6″ long.
Tracks of two snowshoe hares, Beaver Meadow Recreation Area, Allegheny National Forest, 12 Jan 2022 (photos by Kate St. John) Tracks of two snowshoe hares, Beaver Meadow Recreation Area, Allegheny National Forest, 12 Jan 2022 (photos and markup by Kate St. John)
And here’s the mammal that makes these prints. Snowshoe hares are active at night, dusk and dawn so of course we didn’t see any.
Ultimately we saw 10 species of birds, only 26 individuals, five of which were red crossbills. It was worth the trip for the snowshoe hares. Yes I did see a crossbill beak.
When I look up at the sun to estimate the time, I expect it to be noon when the sun is at its highest point. In Pittsburgh the sun’s highest point, called solar noon, is always later than clock noon and it varies. It’s 3 minutes after noon (12:03p) in early November, 34 minutes in early February (12:34p). The reason is explained by The Equation of Time and our location in the Eastern Time Zone.
The equation of time is the difference between time measured using a sundial, also known as true or apparent solar time, and time measured using a clock, also known as mean solar time. [mean is 24 hours] …
The length of a solar day [from solar noon to solar noon] is not exactly 24 hours long. It varies throughout the year because of the elliptical shape of Earth’s orbit and its axial tilt. It is longer than 24 hours around the summer and winter solstices and shorter than 24 hours around the spring (vernal) and fall (autumnal) equinoxes.
Earth’s eccentric orbit and axial tilt affect the location of the Sun as seen from Earth. If you take a photograph of the Sun at the same place and [Standard] time every day for a year its location varies in a lazy figure 8 called an analemma.
Beyond the analemma, solar noon in Pittsburgh is always later than clock noon because we are longitudinally more than halfway west inside the Eastern Time Zone. For instance today, 3 Jan 2022, solar noon is at:
11:37am in Bar Harbor, Maine
12:00pm in New York City
12:24pm in Pittsburgh and
12:49pm in Indianapolis.
A graph of the number of minutes solar noon occurs before/after clock noon always follows the same curve below, echoing the analemma. In this graph I have altered the Y axis to match Pittsburgh’s solar offset from Standard Time. The curve is always above zero because solar noon is always later than clock noon in Pittsburgh.
We’re having such a warm December that it may be mid January before we see ice again. When we do we are likely to see needle ice but it is too late for frost flowers.
Frost flowers, shown above, are beautiful, thin, curled ice confections that form in the presence of soggy unfrozen soil, freezing air, and dried plant stems that haven’t frozen yet. This week we have soggy soil and will eventually get freezing temperatures but all the plants have frozen at least once. The National Weather Service in Louisville, KY explains (paraphrased):
“Frost flowers are thin layers, perhaps credit card thickness, of ice that are extruded through slits from the stems of white or yellow wingstem plants, among others. … Practically speaking [this is] a once per year event, although not all individuals produce frost flowers on the first day of good conditions. The water in the plant’s stem is drawn upward by capillary action, expands as it freezes, splits the stem vertically, and freezes on contact with the air.”
Needle ice is much more common in western Pennsylvania because it bursts up from saturated soil into freezing air. It too is caused by capillary action but it is more hardy than frost flowers.
Needle ice (photo by Kate St. John)
We’ll likely have needle ice some time in January. This vintage article tells you where to look.
Sunset in Schenley Park, Candlemas 2021 (photo by Kate St. John)
21 December 2021
By the time the winter solstice arrives today at 10:59am we already will have gained three minutes at the end of the day.
Though the winter solstice has the shortest daylight — only 9 hours, 16 minutes and 57 seconds in Pittsburgh — it doesn’t have the earliest sunset nor the latest sunrise. That’s because the length of the solar day varies, solar noon to solar noon, while our clocks use the average day length of 24 hours. For a host of reasons, our clocks do not match solar time(*).
Thus the earliest sunset occurred 1 to 13 December in Pittsburgh and the latest sunrise won’t happen until 31 December and will linger for more than a week. See table below, built from information at timeanddate.com.
Pittsburgh PA Sunrise & Sunset near the Winter Solstice
Date
Sunrise
Sunset
1 Dec 2021 (earliest sunset) to 13 Dec 2021
7:24 am to 7:34 am
4:53 pm (earliest sunset)
21 Dec 2021 (winter solstice)
7:39 am ET
4:56 pm ET
31 Dec 2021 (latest sunrise) to 8 Jan 2022
7:43 am (latest sunrise)
5:03 pm to 5:10 pm
If you cue on sunrise the days will seem to get shorter into early January.
If you cue on sunset your day has already gained three minutes this month and is getting longer.
(*) For the ultimate in “Our clocks don’t match solar time” consider that Solar Noon happens around 1pm during Daylight Saving Time. Solar Noon is in the 12 o’clock hour, as it should be, during Standard Time.
Phipps’ Holiday Light Garden at dusk, 16 Dec 2021 (photo by Kate St. John)
18 December 2021
This week’s shorter days and unusually warm weather found me outdoors appreciating sunsets, merlins and Phipps Winter Light Garden.
On Thursday 16 December I visited Phipps Conservatory at 4pm for the Holiday Magic Winter Flower Show and Light Garden. At dusk it was 62oF, so of course no snow, but perfect for strolling in the garden. The show runs through Sunday 9 January 2022 so there’s plenty of time to visit. Click here for tickets.
Phipps’ Holiday Light Garden at dusk, 16 Dec 2021 (photo by Kate St. John)
As night fell songbirds came into the garden to roost. Robins and mourning doves zoomed overhead. White-throated sparrows chirped in the bushes near these blue lights as they settled for the night.
Phipps’ Holiday Light Garden at dusk, 16 Dec 2021 (photo by Kate St. John)
The Cathedral of Learning, framed by decorated trees.
Cathedral of Learning as see from Phipps’ Holiday Light Garden at dusk, 16 Dec 2021 (photo by Kate St. John)
Indoors the flowers were spectacular. These beautiful angel’s trumpets (Brugmansia versicolor) are native to Ecuador but extinct in the wild. You can see them in the Tropical Forest room.
Angel’s trumpet flower (Brugmansia versicolor) in the Tropical Forest room, 16 Dec 2021 (photo by Kate St. John)
Orchids and poinsettias.
Orchids at Phipps’ Holiday Flower Show, 16 Dec 2021 (photo by Kate St. John)
Earlier in the week, on Monday 13 December, I walked Schenley Park’s golf course to watch the merlins come to roost. During my last two visits — 23 Nov and 13 Dec — there have been three merlins that begin arriving at 4:30pm. Each one chooses the top of a bare tree to watch night fall. Eventually they roost in the pines.
The distant photos below show two of the three merlins as dots at the tops of trees. If you can’t see them, click on this photo for a markup with circles.
Tiptop of trees: 2 of 3 merlins at Schenley Park golf course, 13 Dec 2021 (photos by Kate St. John)
After I left the merlins that evening, I saw this spectacular sunset on my way home.
Sunset, Pittsburgh, 13 Dec 2021 (photo by Kate St. John)
We often hear the word normal on the weather report as in: “Today’s high was 64 degrees F with a low of 49F and was 23 degrees above normal.” (That was yesterday’s temperature in Pittsburgh and, yes, it was 23 degrees above normal.)
Climate normals are always a 30-year average of temperature and precipitation as recorded at each U.S. weather station. Recalculated at the end of each decade, the new normals announced in May 2021 are based on the most recent 30 years of data: 1991-2020.
Normal is a rolling average and it keeps getting hotter. The 10 maps above compare each decade’s normal temperature to the 20th century’s average. We have moved from cool blue (top left) to angry red (bottom right).
Normal might not feel hot for people in their early 30s because it’s what they remember throughout their lives, but for retired people like me the current normal is the climate of less than half my life.
I remember the snowy Decembers of my youth. Even without the graphs I can tell the normal temperature has changed.
The Cathedral of Learning peregrines remain on campus all winter, keeping tabs on their territory making it safe for future nesting.
On Friday I saw an adult red-tailed hawk circling up over the museum and thought for his sake, “You’re asking for it!” Sure enough, both peregrines popped off the Cathedral of Learning and zoomed down to relentlessly dive on the hawk until he flew low between buildings at Carnegie Mellon.
Scaffolding has been rising at Heinz Chapel but I paid no attention until a peregrine found it interesting. On Wednesday 8 December I noticed a dot on the top rung. Through binoculars I identified Morela checking out the new view (circled).
What’s that dot on top of Heinz Chapel scaffolding? A peregrine! 8 Dec 2021 (photos by Kate St. John)
Meanwhile Morela and Ecco are thinking of spring even though the winter solstice is more than a week away. Their abbreviated bonding rituals are becoming more elaborate as they bow they turn their heads, nearly touch beaks. Both have been digging the scrape(*) and Morela sometimes pauses to stand in it.
Here’s a selection of their goings on in early December.
Ecco waits for Morela to arrive
Ecco and Morela bow
Morela digs the scrape where she will lay her eggs in March
Morela standing over the scrape as she will do before laying eggs in March
Ginkgo turning yellow at Schenley Park, 13 Nov 2021 (photo by Kate St. John)
20 November 2021
This week we had a last blast of fall color, a partial lunar eclipse and a surprising confirmation of pigeon fertility. Here are a few scenes from 12-19 November.
Beech leaves turn brown though the veins are still yellow, Schenley Park, 15 November 2021 (photo by Kate St. John)
On Wednesday 17 November four of us drove north hoping for water birds but were disappointed by the lack of bird activity, particularly after the clouds moved in. Colorful leaves were scarce in Crawford County, especially at Conneaut Outlet swamp where high water killed the trees. This scene says “November in western Pennsylvania.”
Conneaut Outlet, Crawford County, 17 Nov 2021 (photo by Kate St. John)
On 18 November I saw a pigeon feeding two babies at its nest on Filmore Street near the Cathedral of Learning. Yes, nesting in November! Feral rock pigeons (Columba livia) breed year round if there’s enough food — and there is at this pile of birdseed on the corner.
Birdseed for pigeons at S. Dithridge & Filmore, 18 Nov 2021 (photo by Kate St. John)
As expected the partial lunar eclipse was obscured by clouds in Pittsburgh at 4am on 19 November. Only a tiny bright uneclipsed sliver is visible. The clouds are lit from below by the city lights.
Partial lunar eclipse obscured by clouds. Only the bright sliver shows in Pittsburgh, 19 Nov 2021 (photo by Kate St. John)
More leaves fell this week but most of the trees are not yet bare. Here’s a week’s worth of change at Schenley Park, 12 and 19 November.
Maples are bare, oaks are red, Schenley Park, 12 Nov 2021 (photo by Kate St. John)Not yet. Most of the trees are Not bare. Schenley Park, 19 Nov 2021 (photo by Kate St. John)
The leaves are hanging on about two weeks longer than they used to. When will most of the trees be bare in Pittsburgh? Soon.
