New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

Got snow? No!

Wednesday 02/06/2013

Winter sure was short this year. Ice finally covered the Suncook River at my house a little over ten days ago and all of it was gone by yesterday. Monday NH set some all time record highs with a 60 degree reading at the coast. Sunday's warm set a new record high for the day at 48 degrees atop Mount Washington.

And how the warm temperatures, including even warm fog filled nights, has siphoned off the snow cover, especially the local fields here in Epsom. Monday's near record warmth just sucked the snow right off the fields and by days end most fields were mostly bare around here.

I just read the NH snowmobile trail condition weekly posting. Most trails across central and southern NH are closed. Even those to the far north are reported to have just one to three inches of base on the trails. No, not much of a winter so far. The last real snow storms we had here were the few days following Christmas with a eight inch storm on the Thursday after Christmas and another three or four inches a couple days later. We have had really no accumulating snow since then and this prolonged January thaw has pretty much taken care of what snow we had. I feel so sorry for the snow machine owners and the companies that depend on snow to make a living. Last winter's nearly snowless season left our local snowmobile dealer at her wits end when I spoke to her last spring. So many businesses teeter on the brink of financial disasters in winters like this. Even the local sport and bait shop owners telling me how disastrous last winter was. And now it is looking like a repeat.

I did get out ice fishing Sunday with my daughter and her family and one of their friends and his two granddaughters. We hiked into a half mile to one of our favorite hidden ponds to find three or four inches of snowy slush on top of just enough ice to fish on. Maybe four or five inches of good ice. Still feet got wet and cold with those conditions. We did have a nice fire and roasted hotdogs and made a great day of it. And we had plenty of flags for the kids to run to, making frequent exciting moments as well.

I noticed that the Merrimack River in Concord has melted free of ice as well. We are going to need a real string of zero nights to recapture winter on our rivers. The fishing report says Great Bay is free of ice for the second winter in a row. I guess there had been a little ice in some coves but even that is gone now. And how the sun is climbing back up into the sky by noon further melting the snow and ice even on a cold day. I bet old sol is going to win this winter race and likely give us another mild winter. I do remember when I was growing up in Londonderry in the 1960's that by late February we had melting along the north side of the fields where the sun laid in all day. So even back before Climate Change upset our winters by late February the sun was in command of things.

I'm seeing turkeys about regularly this winter and deer tracks are not hard to spot in the snow here and there. Looks like another non-winter for them here. Of coarse this could change if winter really sets in for February and continues on into April. So I could be thinking wrong. But looking out the window on this mid January day I can't help but think that spring is just around the corner.