Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Three years ago tonight...

Assessing the damage the next morning, 10/30/2014


Can you remember where you were 3 years ago tonight? Right about now, if you were fortunate to be inside and not marooned in a grocery store for the night or crawling down the highway, most locals were listening to the snapping and cracking of trees in the night. The breaking sound was explosive, followed quickly by the sound of branches and trees crashing to the ground. I remember staying up all night in the darkness (the power was gone by early evening) wondering when the next tree would come down on the house. And eventually that's exactly what I heard. We were without power for five days, and trapped in our house on the hill - trees entwined with electric line fell across our driveway, making it impossible to drive out. And the temperature kept dropping each day. Anyone living in the valley vividly remembers exactly what they were doing and where they were that week. What's your story?


Sunday, October 26, 2014

Not to set off "Post-Traumatic Snowtober Disorder," but...

Halloween lawn decoration buried in snow, "Snowtober" - 10/30/2011
Daily Hampshire Gazette front page, Halloween 2011
I have been avoiding posting about this because I didn't want to set off "PTSD" - by which I mean "Post-Traumatic Snowtober Disorder" - in Amherst residents, but I would be remiss not to mention that there's a distant possibility we *might* get some snow around Halloween. 

Now stay calm, keep breathing. 

The fine print may help - and then again, maybe not. Those harrowing memories from Halloween 2011 are hard to beat back.

Read on for details here:
Tricky Halloween Forcast

Layover at Quabbin

Layover at Quabbin Reservoir, 10/14/2014 - Photo by S. Vardatira
Pass by Quabbin these days, and you are sure to see geese - coming in for a landing, bobbing on the water, watching the sunset along with the day's final visitors hurrying back across the dam before nightfall. I took this photo a little over a week ago, at sunset. Perfect, serene setting.


Tuesday, October 21, 2014

2015 Head in the Clouds Amherst Calendar - Now Available!


(Click on photo to enlarge)
Actual calendar photos and daily entries are high resolution, much sharper than the images shown here)

After such an enthusiastic reception last year, we are delighted to release our new Head in the Clouds Amherst 2015 Wall Calendar. Once again, the calendar features 12 of your favorite nature photos from our blog, all taken in Amherst and the surrounding area. And new this year, we've added photo titles and location captions so you can easily identify where each photo was taken. Printed on high quality, glossy paper, this calendar notes major holidays, as well as astronomical events visible from Amherst with the naked eye (full moon, new moon, meteor showers, and more). Our calendar also documents nearly 50 major weather events that occurred in Amherst and New England between 1660 and 2014. A perfect gift for friends and family, this calendar will delight and surprise month after month. Full size when open is 17" high and 11" wide. 

Price is $13.50 per calendar purchased through this website (slightly higher at local retail stores). 


Buy here for delivery by mail, or purchase at Amherst Books or Hastings. Amherst Books is located at the center of downtown Amherst at 8 Main Street. Hastings is also downtown, at 45 South Pleasant Street on the Common. As of December 18, Amherst Books and Hasting are completely sold out of our calendars. You can still purchase them through the link on this page, or for faster delivery if you are local (in Amherst) simply email Sharon, cloudsamherst [@] gmail [dot] com. If you order by December 23rd, we can hand deliver in the Amherst area in time for Christmas.

The [at] and [dot] are done to keep email addresses from being collected by spammers and harvesting robots. You just have to replace them for [@] and [.] when you write your e-mail. 





January: Snowing at South Beach - Puffer's Pond
February: Ski Trails - Kevin Flood Accessible Trail
March: Twilight Sky - Cushman Brook
April: Sunset - Puffer's Pond
May: Cumulus Mirrored - Atkins Reservoir
June: Summer Solstice at Stonehenge -
UMass Sunwheel (also known as "Stonehenge")
July: Path to Amherst - Looking towards Amherst from
South Maple Street, Hadley
August: Common Fog - Amherst Town Common
September: "Where the place called morning lies" -
The Homestead (birthplace and home of Emily Dickinson)
October: Traveling through Fall - Pulpit Hill Road,
 adjacent to Cherry Hill Golf Course
November: Nightfall over Simple Gifts Farm -
Pine Street, North Amherst
December: Snow in the Valley - Hadley/North Amherst


Saturday, October 18, 2014

Freeze Watch is just the beginning

Clouds ahead of cold front, Hadley MA (today, 10/18/14)
For those of you loving the warm up this past week, prepare for a rude awakening (literally, on Monday) – a Freeze Watch is in effect for much of interior Southern New England for late Sunday into Monday morning at 9 am. This isn’t a case of frost, mind you, but FREEZE. Minimum temperatures will be in the upper 20s and low 30s, and a newspaper canopy over your plants may not do the trick this time around. These sub-freezing temperatures tend to kill crops and other sensitive vegetation.
Meanwhile, as you have no doubt noticed, local talk has started to drift into musings on winter. What kind will we have? Mild or bitter cold, snowy or icy, and what will happen to Pine Street when deep freeze sets in? Indeed, the sorry state of Pine Street has practically displaced weather talk these days, and this being New England and all, that’s saying something.  Pine Street aside, forecasters from the Farmer’s Almanac to bona fide meteorologists (oops, did I betray a bias there?!) have been rolling out their predictions (Almanac) and forecasts (meteorologists) for the coming winter. 
The fun of the Farmer’s Almanac is the specificity of their predictions, right down to providing a summary for our own Amherst Center. So if you put any stock in what the Almanac has to say (or even if you don’t and are just curious), here’s their winter forecast for Amherst Center:
Winter will be much colder than normal, with near-normal precipitation and below-normal snowfall. The coldest periods will be in mid- and late December, early and mid-January, and mid- to late February. The snowiest periods will be in mid- to late November, mid- and late December, and early to mid-March.  (Farmer’s Almanac, 2014)
To be honest, that’s pretty typical for a lot of winters around here, except for the “near-normal precipitation and below-normal snowfall.” Last I checked, precipitation included snowfall.
It probably won’t surprise you to hear that meteorologists have their own take on matters, and while they are predicting a somewhat colder and snowier winter than normal for the Northeast, they don’t expect the record-breaking misery of last winter.  Cold air will surge into the Northeast in late November, but the brunt of the season should hold off until January and February (much as it did last year, as you may recall). And who can forget last winter’s “polar vortex,” which brought extended bouts of arctic temperatures?  We’ll see a few blasts like that again this year, but temperatures are not expected to stay so persistently sub-zero. So, take heart – winter is coming one way of another, just like you knew it would.
As for Pine Street lasting the winter (or even the next month), that’s another matter altogether.

Sunday, October 5, 2014

First frost, but not yet time to panic!

Ground frost, 2013 (Photo by S. Vardatira)

If you hoped (or feared) this would be the summer without end, time to revise your thinking! The National Weather Service in Taunton has issued a Frost Advisory, which is in effect from late tonight until tomorrow morning for Hampshire and Northern Worcester Counties in Massachusetts. Temperatures will be in the lower 30s. Sensitive vegetation should be protected, and potted plants normally left outdoors should be covered or brought inside away from the cold. Time to harvest the basil and tomatoes, folks. And for some ideas on how to protect your other plants, check out this garden helper website. After tonight, temps climb out of frost range, at least for the next 10 days, with lows in the mid-40s to mid-50s, highs in the mid-60s. Fortunately, there's still growing time to be had before winter arrives in earnest.