Daleville (1/29/2014)

This week I was teaching in the Roanoke area, and having the winter from hell, it snowed.  I was in Daleville, just northwest of Roanoke at the Greenfield Training Center.  Thank goodness we only had 2 inches, while at my home in Yorktown we had 6 inches or more.  This was the view from the window of my classroom.  Such a beautiful view was almost distracting while teaching my class, but I behaved and paid attention to what I had to say.  I took this photo between sessions of my class.

Daleville is surprisingly nice.  It seems to be an up and coming community which you can only appreciate once you get of the Interstate.  The even have few decent restaurants and a great coffee shop.  Altogether a fun stay.

Snow in the Yorktown area (1/21/2014)

Boy it was cold this morning (12 degrees F).  It has snowed some and the temperatures had dropped dramatically. his picture is of the same pond as always, early in the morning as the sun came up.  Beautiful sight.

York River (1/17/2014)

Having a day off I got up early to take a few sunrise pictures along the Colonial Parkway.  Yes, the State Virginia gives off on the Friday before the Martin Luther King Holiday as Lee/Jackson Day.

This picture had not much to do with sun rise but I just loved the ice on the pole and the colors so close to sunup.  A second one show the sun rising behind the bridge.

Richmond (1/16/2014)

It has been snowing this morning in Richmond.  In Yorktown (where I live) there was no precipitation at all, but interestingly here in downtown Richmond there was a little.  Some of the cars coming in had two or three inches on top of them.  A person in the elevator told me that they had 3 inches at her home and was surprised that there was hardly any downtown (she said she lives in Richmond).  Looking outside my office window, the roofs are somewhat covered with snow.

Somehow this covering of the black roofs took me back to a discussion in the environmental movement some years in the past.  The idea was that white roofs would slow down global warming, or at least the heat island effect of larger downtown areas.  Back then it sounded like an interesting concept.  So I went on line to read some more about it.  In the Huffington Post I found the following article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/samir-ibrahim/white-roofs-green-myth_b_2901288.html.  The concept might work in warmer climates, but not in colder climates, according to the article.  The author (Samir Ibrahim) gives all kinds of interesting reasons for this; but then he is in the roofing business, which makes you wonder if he has any interest in shattering the white roof concept.  Oh well, maybe another myth shattered.  I guess we need to go back to reducing emissions, and greening this world.  But now I recently heard a small presentation on the BBC on how older trees are more efficient in fixing carbon versus younger trees (sorry no reference here).  Oh well.

 

Richmond (1/15/2014)

Decided I needed to make up for a rainy day yesterday and had a 45 minute walk by the James River and back through town. This is a picture of the canal http://www.envisionthejames.org/detail/james-river-and-kanawha-canal/evj6E320620CD3A8CF84that runs along the James downtown. It has a nice walking path along it and there were quite a few walkers out today. A nice stiff walk and revenge for being stuck inside yesterday.

Yorktown (1/11/2014)

We encountered this interesting phenomenon in the woods behind our home.  During the “polar vortex” outbreak these ponds froze over, and then on Saturday we had temperatures in the 60s with high humidity.  The ice had melted but the water was obviously so cold that the warm humid air started to condense into a fine mist/fog over the ponds, kind of like lake effect snow/rain on a very small scale.  Really neat, and this one is only less than 5 minutes walk from our home.

These (Grafton) ponds are so unique and fun to observe.  The one you see here is probably close to 5 foot deep in the middle.  It is dry in the summer and full most winters.  I have a set of weekly photographs of this pond that I took over a period on 2 years.  As I mentioned in a previous post it is the home of endangered species (Mabee Salamander) and soon they will start breeding in this and other ponds behind our home (mid to end of February).

 

Good Morning Yorktown (1/9/2014)

“Red in the morning, sailor’s warning.” This is an interesting saying and from what I can find on-line there may be some truth to it (http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/weather-sailor.html).  It seems that dust from an approaching storm is kicked up and that the sun light is refracted in it, with the red rays hitting our eyes.    

It was glorious this morning, and the sun came up right behind the Dominion Power Plant in York County.  Not sure if it is a good omen or not.  When we moved to the county in 2000 we read reports that this is the most polluting power plant on the east coast (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Yorktown_Power_Station).  I’m still not sure if that is correct, but there were reports last year that it is not very good (http://wydaily.com/2013/07/26/report-yorktown-power-station-as-operating-near-impaired-waterway/).  All I know is that when the wind is bad (maybe a few times in the year) you can smell the coal that is being burned at the power station.  Moreover, my sailboat is usually covered with ash from the power station.  Thanks goodness two of the three generating units at the plant will be shut down next year (maybe the rumors were not far off).  These are coal burning; the third is an oil burning unit which will remain operational.  Maybe it is a new day for pollution in the area.  Regardless it was a gorgeous sunrise.  I should really carry my good camera with me instead of just my phone.

 

Yorktown (1/4/2014)

We have had a strange streak of freezing cold, then warm weather the last couple of days.  To those who want to argue that there is no global warming I have heard it explain that because of global warming the polar jet stream is less stable and oscillates more giving us more extreme cold days and warm day (http://www.weather.com/news/science/environment/arctic-blast-linked-global-warming-20140106).

Oh well, that argument out of the way (or started) about this picture.  It was 36 degrees (+2 Celsius) in the morning when I went for a walk and by the afternoon it was 26 (-3.3 Celsius).  Kind of amazing to see the temperature taking such a dip during the day.  It was windy as well.  I took this photo the following morning and the pattern in the ice shows how the ice did not freeze all at once; you can really see the patterns the wind made in the still partially liquid water.  Really neat to see.

 

Yorktown (12/31/2013)

Walking through the woods behind our home on New Year’s Eve, our beagle got spooked by something in the woods.  This is an area where she often gets spooked and we speculate that there are coyotes in that area (http://www.dgif.virginia.gov/wildlife/habitat_partners/infosheets/coyote.pdf).  We have seen two coyotes once while sipping our morning coffee in our gazebo.  Our beagle is always suspicious of any movement or sound in the woods.  Here she is staring across one of the ephemeral ponds also known as Grafton ponds.  The ponds are wet in winter and dry in summer.  This means they cannot contain fish and are great for amphibian species including the Mabee’s salamander (http://www.virginiaherpetologicalsociety.com/amphibians/salamanders/mabees-salamander/mabee's_salamander.htm) which is a state endangered species in our area.  Soon in February they start breeding and there will be a cacophony out there.  These woods were logged in the late 1990’s just before we moved into our home.  It has been fun watching grow up from a plantation where we could literally look over the top of the trees to what it is now.