New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff
Where's winter?
Wednesday 01/25/2006
Much of the end of last week and this last weekend was more like spring than some spring days. By Friday all the snow was gone locally. The Suncook River is ice free from bank to bank. Many fields are still green, and really greened up again last week once the snow was gone. Of coarse by Tuesday we had another 6 or 7 inches of snow back on the ground and missed another similar snowfall overnight last night when the storm blew by to the south of us. I got home around 7 tonight to find my garage gutters dripping melting snow. So even this last snowfall is melting quickly. It just seems like winter has missed us this year.
We have gained close to an hour of daylight with the sun starting to arc higher which will be warming any exposed ground and south facing slopes. I have been walking the dogs several evenings a week, mostly down below in the Park. I'm surprised how soft the ground is in some places. It just doesn't seem like the ground is very frozen this winter. Of coarse the rain late last week, which melted away the rest of the snow, brought the Suncook River back up to a fairly high flood stage. The meadow was well flooded again. I have never seen it flooded like this before in mid winter. It seems like everyone is remarking on the weird winter we are having.
Sunday morning 25 mallards chugged up the river past my house. Not far away, in a newly bare field, I watched 16 turkeys fly into a group of tall pines to roost for the night. One night I drove past them just after they had gone to roost. They are in very tall pines right next to a week traveled road. Most were near the top of the pines with actually little overhead cover. That night it snowed. But I guess the higher up the tree the less like a fisher will detect your odor. They looked more like pterodactyls sitting in the trees. Wooly bear caterpillars roamed my garage on Saturday in the 60 degree temperature. Moths flew at night. Yes this is a weird winter.
Recently something hit me, and maybe it has before and I forgot, but my bird feeders sure do act as a barometer of winter weather. When it is cold I am out there refilling them almost daily. Not so this winter. They go days before they are empty. I bet I could measure the winter severity by the days between fillings. I'm still wondering if this will be the first river that the Suncook doesn't freeze solid? Very weird indeed!