Slow Water Tweeting: Late Season Vermont Snow

With the cold March there hasn't been much in the way of tweeting outside, but I have gone and created a Slow Water Movement twitter account to compensate for this.  I've been resistant to creating a twitter account for a long time, but I've got lots to say about water, so it should be a fun way of sharing neat things I find and info about water.  Check it out:  http://twitter.com/SlowWaterMvmnt  and 'follow' the account for slow water updates.

It may be spring, but there is a late winter storm heading for Vermont.  Some forecasts were calling for up to a foot of snow around the state.  I think it will be a bit less but a few heavy inches are likely in the Champlain Valley and more in the mountains.  It could end up being cold rain in the valleys instead, in which case it may wake up the amphibians.  I'll have updates (and 'tweets') soon.

More Winter Sketches

As Winter slowly winds down, I am very much looking forward to being able to do more sketching while outside.  Most of my winter sketches have been created from photos, or while looking out through a window.  Since some of my friends enjoyed the other sketches I posted here in the past, I am posting a few more, even though some of them are not directly related to water.

This is Otter Creek from Samas Market in Middlebury.  This was in the early part of winter, and the open water in the creek was rapidly freezing.

More below...

Winter's Temper Tantrum; Water Moves Again

Something about early spring in Vermont makes me think of Winter throwing a temper tantrum.

The weather has been fluctuating wildly.  First, we were blasted by the front I mentioned a few weeks ago, which brought two feet of snow.

Quick Update: Tragedy in Fast-Moving Water

It's been a bit of a crazy week for me.  Crazy, but incredibly fortunate, compared to the people of Japan.

Last week I posted about the approach of a cold front to Vermont.  This cold front was originally expected to drop a couple inches of snow, then 10 inches of snow as of my post, but instead, there was a major blizzard.  Two feet of heavy and wind-driven snow dumped over almost all of Vermont.  I was essentially snowed in without Internet for two days, though very cozy and comfortable.  The whole state was shut down for a while.  After this heavy dumping of snow was cleared away, I made my way out to California to visit family and friends. After I left Vermont, much of the Northeast was pounded by flooding due to heavy rains, in some cases on top of snowpack.  My home in Vermont was under evacuation notice due to possible ice jam flooding, but none occurred.

While in California, I visited a very neat native plant and wastewater filtration park.  I'll have more about this later.

Finally, just a short thought about the Japan tsunami.  Disasters of this scope are unpredictable, unpreventable, and unstoppable once unleashed.  With something of this scope, horrible tragic loss of life and loss of shelter and way of life are inevitable.  Japan was as prepared as anyone could be; if they hadn't been, the already horrible death toll would be even higher.

BUT

It is well known and well documented that healthy wetlands along a coastline and in estuaries can delay and decrease the impact from tsunamis and storm surges.  Preservation of wetlands is often looked at as a way to 'save the Earth' and protect endangered species, but in truth it is often the best way to protect endangered PEOPLE from the many water-based disasters our planet is unfortunately so prone to.  Every wetland lost along a waterway is not only a lost ecosystem, but lost protection for us and our homes as well.  When we remove a wetland we are gambling against the future - betting that floods and tsunamis will not occur.  Unfortunately, in the long term, this is a bet against nature that can never. never be won.  Whether it is a horrible tsunami in the Pacific Ocean, or a ice jam flood in northern New York State, stochastic events WILL occur and the less buffer we have against them, the more loss of life we will see.  And restored or constructed wetlands may not function quite as effectively as naturally occurring wetlands,. but they are still far, far better than nothing.

If you don't consider yourself a conservationist, and don't worry much about lost habitat, please still consider the above when a new proposal to drain a wetland comes up.  It's not that much of a stretch that you or someone you care about may be put in danger by the very same wetland loss you are deciding whether to oppose now.

The LA Creek Freak blog had a good post about this as well, check it out if you would like to read more.

Best wishes and warm thoughts to our neighbors in Japan, connected to us in Vermont and the rest of the US much more closely than we realize.  May the loss of life be minimal, may the recovery be swift, and may we learn from this so it does not need to happen to this extent ever again.

This is What a Cold Front Looks Like

It's been warm for the last two days.  The snowpack in Vermont has taken a major hit.  For the last 18 hours or so, it's been raining rather hard, and the smaller rivers are raging with rain and snowmelt.  Otter Creek is still iced over but I wouldn't be surprised if the ice ripped up and caused some ice jams.

At about 10 AM, I noticed that the online weather station was indicating 33 degrees in Middlebury.  I was confused because I had just been outside and it was a balmy 48.  Was the weather station broken?

Nope!  Sure enough, it WAS 33 degrees outside!  It was POURING, and the rattle of sleet was evident in the rain.  A strong early spring cold front was blasting through the area.

Two hours later, Burlington is reporting snow and here in Middlebury it is 31 with freezing rain and sleet.  There are little beads of frozen raindrops on the branches of the trees, and everything is slowly becoming covered in ice.

The ice storm won't last long, because the freezing rain and sleet will soon turn over to snow here also.  We could get up to 10 inches of wet snow before the storm is over tomorrow morning.

This graph from a wunderground.com weather station is pretty amazing.  You can see the temperature dropping 15 degrees in about 10 minutes, the wind shifting from the south to the north, and heavy precipitation.

Will Vermont's Icy Winter Break Soon?

This has been a cold, long, snowy winter.  I love winter and have been enjoying it very much, but I am also looking forward to spring:  maple syrup, migrating amphibians, vernal pools, rushing streams, spring ephemeral wildflowers.  March is usually a time of cold rains, wet heavy snows, wind, and occasional deceptively warm days.

Today we had a snow squall rage through, and now the temperatures are dropping like a rock.  It doesn't seem like it now, but signs of spring may be on the way.



This weekend, rain is forecast.  Not icy freezing rain and sleet like we had earlier this week, but rain - perhaps quite a bit of it, and possibly heavy.

There will be snow before the rain, and snow after the rain, but nevertheless, it will probably be quite rainy for a time.

When the rain hits all this wet, thick snow, the creeks will immediately rise.  If enough water rushes into the rivers, the raging waters will rip off much of the ice that has been encasing them for the last three months.  This will result in ice jams, potential flooding, and one of the first signs of spring - the sights and sounds of running water everywhere.

This may herald the start of mud season - one of the less popular of Vermont's many seasons.  Mud season is a great time to talk about watersheds, because it includes a lot of rushing water.  It's a bad time for hiking or driving on dirt roads, though.  It is also concurrent with the start of sugaring season and amphibian migration season.

Really, I think of mud season as like ripping off a scab.  It is an example of wrenching change - painful, powerful, exciting, and cathartic all at the same time.  Not that ripping scabs off is necessarily a good idea... but mud season is.  Despite all its inconveniences, it is the time water speeds up and comes back to life.

Neat Lake Champlain Ice Pictures

With Vermont experiencing 'wintry mix' again, and the sidewalks covered in ice and ball-bearing shaped sleet, it is necessary to think about ice a lot when navigating around.  It's not all bad, though.  The cycles of freeze and thaw have brought some amazing ice formations to Lake Champlain.

About a week ago, during a thaw and before the lake froze most of the way across, my friend Neahga was down by the lake and captured some amazing scenes of ice and water.  Some of it looked a bit like frazil ice, and it seems to have formed when a thin layer of ice offshore fractured during a thaw.



Click for more...

Lake Champlain 'Closed' by Ice?

This morning, while walking towards the UVM campus in single digit temperatures, I noticed something odd about the lake. It took me a minute to realize what it was, but I realized there were no little ripples or waves. None at all. There wasn't much wind at the time, but even during seemingly caml days the lake always has a few ripples on it. Also, the reflections were just a little bit weird. They seemed kind of warped and blurred.

It took me a minute to realize what had happened. The lake had frozen over. From what I could tell, the ice extended all the way across the lake.



(Note the thicker ice in the harbor, which is much whiter because its surface is bumpy and it is covered in snow)

Beauty in Destruction

Earlier this month I was walking across a parking lot near a construction zone and found this:



I'm not sure exactly what it was, but it definitely wasn't supposed to be in a runoff area. It was also really beautiful.

It was a very cold morning, and the morning sun was melting some snow on the Davis Center on the UVM campus, which was then refreezing into icicles that I unfortunately could not reach to color.




This has been a long winter, and as the cold stubbornly refuses to leave (it is in the single digits out there right now), I keep alternating between not wanting it to end, and feeling nostalgic for summer. Oddly, I am somehow not as excited for the Vermont spring, muddy and dark and cold but full of new life and rushing water. I am hoping that as it comes I will be glad to see it.

Neat Stylized River Maps

My friend Eli just linked to a website of stylized river maps, created to look like subway maps. These maps simplify the tracks and courses of rivers, and act as another way to think about how watersheds are laid out. Pittsburgh does show up on one of the maps, too!



The maps are too large to post on this blog, but go to this website to see them for yourself!

Vermont Buried in Snow

Vermont, and many other parts of the northern hemisphere, are buried in snow.

It's been a very snowy year here.  The coldest of the winter has probably passed, but snows and below-freezing temperatures have continued.  Most areas of Vermont, even in the Champlain Valley, have 2 to 3 feet of slow on the ground.  Along roads and sidewalks, the berms and piles of snow are 4 to 6 feet tall.  I even saw one pile of snow near a parking lot that was over 15 feet tall!  Walking is an adventure even in the cities, and outside of plowed areas, travel is not possible without cross country skiis or snowshoes.

Truly, cold weather is here.

The Panther Hollow Lake 'Delta'

As water flows into Panther Hollow Lake from Panther Hollow Run, it slows down. This causes it to drop sand and other coarse sediment near where it enters the lake. The resulting formation is a small delta, with features also found in much larger deltas.

This delta, as well as silt and clay deposited elsewhere in the lake, are leading to the lake filling with sediment, which results in a smaller, muddier, and more polluted (due to shallow water becoming warmer in the summer) lake.

Thunder-Wintry-Mix

Thunderstorms with rain are very common in many parts of the world, usually during times of warm weather.  Thundersnow is much more rare but does happen on occasion. For some reason, it has happened several times in several different places this winter, including New York City, Boston, and Chicago.  Last night Vermont had something even weirder - Thunder-Wintry-Mix.


Ice and snow on trees atop Chipman Hill the day after the ThunderWintryMix.

Winter Color Part 2: More Colored Icicles

Last week I posted some pictures of colored icicles.  Since then I have become very interested in icicles as features of 'micro-watersheds' - areas where snowmelt, rain, and other precipitation run off of impervious surfaces like rooftops.

To get people thinking about icicles and how water moves through them and their surrounding urban landscapes, I've been putting food-coloring dye on icicles in prominent places in Middlebury, Vermont and Burlington, Vermont.  The results are striking in some cases, and illustrate just how quickly water can actually move through these seemingly static formations.

(do note that none of these icicles are in dangerous locations where they could fall and cause damage or injury, and any icicles that ARE should be safely removed if possible and not tampered with)

Icicle Experiment: Color in the Dead of Winter

This winter is hitting hard.  While the coastal areas are pounded by blizzards, Vermont has been locked in a deep freeze.  Between January 2 and January 26, the temperature never reached the freezing point.  In fact, last weekend, the temperature plunged well below zero, with most areas reaching -20F and even the thermometer near my relatively warm window reaching -15F!  On January 26, the temperature in much of the Champlain Valley rose to 33 F for around an hour, then dipped below freezing again.  It isn't likely to break the freezing point again any time soon, either.

This cold weather, following a period of substantial snow, is perfect icicle weather.  Icicles on roofs usually form when snow is melted when the air temperature is below freezing, due to sunlight and/or heat leaking through from inside of a building.  As slow water in the most literal sense, icicles very visually illustrate where water flows from the tiny watersheds of roofs.

After seeing some road ice along a Pennsylvania interstate that someone had somehow colored, I decided to try something similar with icicles!  I've started a project where I drip biodegradable food coloring on icicles.  This serves two purposes: to make people notice and think about the water in icicles, and to let me see how and where it is flowing through these ice formations.