We’re on Day Three of four days in a row of incredibly hot weather for Maine. At this time of year the normal high we’re used to is 75. Today it will be 90 and the air quality will be bad because the air is moving up from PA, NYC, and the east coast. It’s too hot to hike.
Some of you asked if Hurricane Earl will affect us. Yes, but my husband and I are looking forward to the rain & cooler temperatures. We might regret that attitude at dawn on Saturday when Earl will have been here for 6 hours, but for now Earl is welcome to arrive ASAP!
Rose-breasted Grosbeak in the rain (photo by Marcy Cunkelman)
July 28, 2010:
What do birds do when it rains?
If it’s storming they take shelter but during showers — even heavy ones — they’re willing to get wet.
In the National Aviary’s Wetlands Room there are sprinklers near the roof that turn on to simulate a tropical downpour. Have you ever been there when it “rains?” The birds react instantly. Most of them sing or shout, some fly through the water, others bathe. The room is filled with sound while the birds obviously enjoy themselves.
This month we’ve had some weather that’s felt mighty tropical, complete with brief downpours. During one of them Marcy Cunkelman photographed this rose-breasted grosbeak in her yard.
He doesn’t seem to mind the rain, does he? That’s probably because he lives in the tropics most of the year.
Ozone is cosmopolitan because it’s formed in the sky and blows with the wind. It’s created when heat and sunlight cause nitrous oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) to chemically combine into O3. NOx and VOCs come from motor vehicles, power plants, industry and chemical emissions and from those new gas well compressor stations popping up in Pennsylvania. That’s why we’re urged not to drive so much and to use less electricity on Ozone Action Days.
We’re also told to stay indoors. That may work for us but it doesn’t help birds, animals and plants that have nowhere else to go. Ozone is harmful to their respiratory systems, too, and it burns sensitive plants.
So we’re all limiting our activity today – a sort of Ozone Inaction Day – and waiting for the weather to change.
Bad news for everything that breathes.
(NOAA’s 1-hour ozone prediction for the Eastern Great Lakes for 5:00pm July 6, 2010 (as of noon on July 5). Click on the image and the Loop Control arrow to watch the latest animation on the NOAA website.) .
I find out the coolest things by working in television. Here’s one about a “bird” I don’t normally discuss.
Last week I received an email from PBS Engineering with a list of dates and times when PBS stations will experience satellite interference from the Sun on the AMC-21 satellite.
Why?
PBS uses AMC-21 to send programming to the stations. PBS beams it up and each station has a dish to pull it down for pre-recording or broadcast.
AMC-21 is a geosynchronous satellite so it orbits the earth at the same speed the ground is moving. From our perspective on earth, the satellite never appears to move so we can point our dishes to just one place and never have to adjust them. Unfortunately the sun reaches that same sweet spot twice a year.
In the weeks near the equinox the sun gets in the way. For about 15 minutes per day the sun’s path is directly behind (in line with) the satellite. The sun emits a lot of radio waves and in this position it confuses our dish receivers. The dates and times of the interference depend on your location on earth. It’s worse in heavy sun spot years. This year “there should be minimal Ku-Band sun outage disruptions due to the low level of solar activity” according to PBS.
For WQED most of the interference happened earlier this week. Our last episode will be today from 3:45pm to 3:59pm but you’ll never notice it on the air. We correct for it in our engineering department.
It’s the last day of the shortest month of the year. Thank heaven!
As of this morning the first 27 days of February produced 48.3 inches of snowfall. This is already the snowiest month ever recorded in Pittsburgh and if any accumulates today the record will go higher. Today’s forecast calls for snow. Less than an inch. Hmmmm.
Until this month I was always happy to see snow. Perhaps my short respite in Florida lowered my tolerance. Perhaps more than four feet of it turned me off.
I still think snow is beautiful but I’m weary of it.
The weatherman says it’s going to snow 6 to 10 more inches in the next two days with gusty winds and blowing, drifting snow. Oh no!
Where will we put more snow? Will the wind break the trees that survived until now? Will the power stay on? Will my street ever get plowed? When will garbage collection resume? When will the 56U bus, the one I take to work, start to run again? Will any buses be running? Will I be able to walk in the street to get to work without being killed?
I’m losing my resilience.
It was pretty, but enough already!
(Snow in Greenfield, 8:00am Saturday Feb 6, 2010, photo by Kate St. John)
This morning dawned clear and cold at 5oF. We’re back in the deep freeze, but this time with an official 21.1 inches of snow. This is the fourth largest snowfall since Pittsburgh began keeping records in 1884 and it sets the record for February.
After the snow stopped falling yesterday, the sun came out and the air felt almost balmy. Heavy snow began to fall off the trees, people came outdoors to dig out their cars and I took a walk to Schenley Park to see what was going on.
The snow was up to my knees. I had to walk in the road, but so did everyone else and there were very few cars. If I hadn’t been able to walk where it was plowed I’d never have made the 3.7 miles round trip.
When I got to Phipps Conservatory I found the sign show at top. Yes, there are tropics inside their building but it was closed. All the action was on Flagstaff Hill, mobbed by thrill-seekers with snowboards, saucer-sleds and makeshift toboggans.
As promised I took a lot of pictures on my low quality cell phone, shown in the slideshow below. (Click on any image to see the slideshow in its own lightbox.)
Cars and their tracks are buried
Snow in Greenfield
Kids were sledding on those bleachers!
Snow sifts down from the trees
Fun on Flagstaff Hill
Flagstaff Hill is jumping!
The peregrines are perched at home today
Drifts at Phipps Conservatory
Snowclad Schenley Visitors Center
The tropics are definitely wishful thinking today.
Remember last month when I showed you Marcy’s orange ruler measuring almost 10 inches of snow?
This morning I had to get out the yardstick.
At 8:00am there were nearly 21 inches in my backyard. I left the ruler out there and it now reads 21.75 inches.
And it’s still snowing heavily.
I’ll try to take more pictures today if I can get outdoors, but it’ll be a challenge because my boots aren’t that high! Meanwhile you can click on the yardstick to see what our neighborhood looked like from the street at 8:00am.
(Sorry for the poor image quality; these are from my cell phone.)
This is one very cold bird who’s so fluffed up he doesn’t look like himself.
Can you guess who he is? Here’s a hint: I put part of his name in the title of this blog.
Still stumped?
Cris Hamilton sent me this photograph of a greater roadrunner she saw on a trip to New Mexico last December. She writes: “We found that the roadrunners were very skittish – not real easy to find, and once found, they would take off quickly in the opposite direction. … We found this one at the visitor’s center of the White Sands National Monument. It was really cold – like in the teens if I remember correctly, but sunny.”
At that temperature he’s indeed a “cold road.” Click here to see what greater roadrunners normally look like.
If you watched the festivities at Gobbler’s Knob you already know that Pennsylvania’s world famous groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, predicted six more weeks of winter.
