New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff
What weird weather. Wicked warm! Where's winter?
Tuesday 12/19/2006
Well what a ride it has been the last couple of weeks. The seasonally cold temperatures December 8th to the 10th had me convinced winter was well underway, even without any snow yet. Northwood Lake was ice covered on Monday morning December 10th when I headed to Durham. But a week later, last Thursday and Friday temperatures were closing in on the 60's around here. Skim ice held on Northwood Lake and the smaller ones for much of last week into last weekend. But by today all the lakes are ice free again. Only the much smaller farm ponds have a thin coat of ice. None of the running waters have even a vestige of ice. Last Thursday afternoon I took an hour hike into Bear Brook State Park in the near 60 degree afternoon and could see the little frost in the ground giving way to the way above normal temperatures. I snapped a picture of the thawing earth. In my hour and a half hike this weekend in the park the ground is once again totally thawed. This really is weird.
And it is not just the lack of ice, or frozen ground that is weird in this latter part of December. Most of the fields around here are pretty much still green, or actually re-greening for the third time. The few days of frost seems to be just about killing the grasses and alfalfa only to have a prolonged period of sun or warm rain turn the fields green again a few days later. Normally by late October or certainly early November these fields have turned brown for the winter snow or not. My lawn is about as lush green as it can be. And here we are just a couple of days from the winter solstice when the good old sun will be headed back our way.
I am seeing a flock of about 50 turkeys head to roost each night not far away and see them again as I head off to work in the morning. Worms have still been out under the few leaf piles that I have not added to my compost piles. It just seems surreal to have these conditions during Christmas week. There's hardly a bird at my feeders either. An occasional chick-a-dee and blue jay is about it. Life for the birds seems to be very easy this winter so far.
The haunting thought leads to me wondering if this is just an anomaly or is this the real thing. Is this how global warming is going to be. Will changes take place this rapidly. A few nights ago the weatherman was noting that it was even above freezing in most of Canada except for the North Pole. I sure has me wondering.
Late last week I bid farewell to an old friend. A friend of 20 years. Actually it was the Fish and Game Department's very first computer. Yup, I finagled the very first personal computer for Fish and Game in either 1985 or 86. I'd have to check my diary for the exact date. But I was working with Bob Lottero of Jefferson to help get the Departments furbearer and bear kill statistics on to a computer system. He was a former trapper turned computer geek who started a company setting up and running then very new PC systems. He wrote some programs for me and I would go up to his place once a week to enter it in his system and work up the data. I would arrive about 5:00 pm at his quitting time and we would work on my material to close to midnight, then I would head home. I did this pretty much all winter long. Then with his help, and advice, tried to purchase an IBM AT or XT. Well the complicated state system ended up shipping me a then "portable" IBM. It was huge with a screen the size of a saucer. So I shipped it right back specking out the XT again. This time around, and after many months, this one arrived, still with no hard drive but two floppy drives. Not an XT with a hard drive with some memory storage. Well I have used this old machine until just a year or two ago. It is very slow, as am I, plus I'm a Yankee. Why toss it when it still worked perfectly fine! But I did toss it last week.
