the rix mix

Was a possibility for a dusting of snow tonight. The storm passed over South Jersey - they may have had five plus wet inches down there, edge of snow about 30 miles south of Elizabeth,  storm moved out to sea, expected to batter Boston & produce blizzard conditions from coastal Maine up through Nova Scotia & Newfoundland.

Labels: weather

On Friday a major snowstorm was forecast for Sunday Night into Monday, 6+ inches followed by more deep freeze. But the storm was downgraded starting Saturday, we got less than an inch here, the heavy snow in South Jersey. Temps are still below average for early March. Some years we have crocuses & robins by now.

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, weather

Another load of snow dumped here yesterday, six or seven inches wet. More wet snow tonight that will likely include freezing rain & may or may not go all the way to rain. Another snow projected for Sunday.  Sunday is when Gina & Glen return from their ten day Florida vacation.  If they can. My arrangement for feeding Gina's cats on a daily basis does not include shoveling her sidewalks.

Labels: cats, Elizabeth NJ, weather

Major snowstorm in Central Jersey yesterday, Elizabeth was right in the middle of a 100 mile wide storm from the southwest, a foot of snow. But we're also in a sustained cold spell that could last ten days or more with hardly a nudge above freezing, & those do not occur every winter  in Central Jersey.  Plus the first long-range forecast put another storm in the vicinity of Superbowl weekend. Opinion here is mixed on if that would be a good or bad thing, worth a snowstorm to see what happens.

My friend Bruce Longstreet would tell a story about his first winter in Vermont. He was convinced Vermont was his true home but underestimated winter in Montpelier. He parked his car in a public lot before a snowstorm & when he went to retrieve it afterward discovered it had been plowed under & was essentially encased in a block of ice. Rather than chip it out, he decided to wait until it thawed. But Montpelier was not Jersey, where long spells of subfreezing temperatures are actually uncommon. He walked for quite awhile.

 Bruce would have been unbelieving then if someone had informed him he was really temperamentally suited to the climate around Mendocino County California, & by nature a haiku poet. Certainly I wouldn't have believed it. I think maybe one winter soured Vermont for him, but it took a few years for him to admit it to himself, he had so long dreamed of living there.

Labels: New Jersey, sports, weather

I posted this on the afternoon of 10/29/12

Early reports & photos from Cape May County are alarming. Coastal communities are already underwater, & the main storm surge & most dangerous high tide aren't due until evening. Coastal flooding in north Jersey has occurred at levels associated with the height of noreasterns. Sandy projected to come ashore south of Atlantic City. My live cam links have been going down one after another, the remaining working sites apparently so busy I can't get on to them with my slow internet service. More wind than rain here in Elizabeth. The heavy rain is only about 20 miles south now. Jersey has had many bad storms over the past fifty years, but none with the devastating tidal surges of the March '62 storm. The tide comes in, stays in, & structures that could withstand a fast-moving storm are battered into rubble,

Whatever I was expecting - & I was expecting a very bad storm - it was worse than I imagined. I was briefly outside walking around that evening. Then the brunt of it hit. I thought my windows would blow in. The power went out. It was long scary night. There wasn't much serious damage in my neighborhood, thank heavens. The day after the storm, while thousands picked through the rubble of ruined homes & businesses, my neighbors were raking wet leaves.

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, in the news, jersey shore, weather

Gave a buck & fist tap to the big guy on the front stoop, pronounced him my bodyguard. He's more likely to put it toward some 7-11 chicken wings than a beer. He also lives across the hall & one night knocked on the door because I'd left my keys outside in the lock.
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 Pre-pubescent daughter in B&H store commercial tells her wuss dad she has 700 FB friends, demands new computer, & calls him "so 20th Century."

The proper parental response is to say, "Technologically-speaking, I'm sending you back to the 19th Century."
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My a/c is trying. But I don't have a machine I expect to cope all that well with day after day of high 90s & not dropping below a humid 80 at night & never a gusty thunderstorm.
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Teed off on my Methodist pastor brother on FB today for posting a "Put back prayer in the schools. Share this if you agree" graphic.  I commented, "Sure, but them all pray; Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans. Let the atheists read something, too."   But even that isn't what I mean. Anyone can pray anytime, anywhere. There was always something wrong about compulsory Bible reading & the recitation of the Lord's Prayer to open a public school day.

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, potpourri, religion, weather

All day drenching rain from Tropical Storm Andrea. Before the Weather Channel few would have considered it a tropical storm.  Days like today are infrequent in New Jersey. A rainy day here is more likely to be overcast with intermittent showers. Of course, we have our thunderstorms with astonishing if brief downpours.  A break now with wind picking up as the center flies northeast, maybe another shot of rain late. Then a nice day of drying out.

Labels: New Jersey, weather

A Buddhist saying (if I'm correctly remembering it):  Winter does not become spring. There is winter, & then there is spring. 

The calendar says spring. It's the equinox. Some years in Jersey, not many,  spring is here by this date. This year it is not. One day one goes outside & it is spring. Not almost spring, not a sign of spring or a little bit of spring that is gone tomorrow. Spring.

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, weather

On Thursday, the impending snowstorm was very worrisome, for good reason. A low was developing south into a wet, windy coastal  noreastern, & a frigid plains snowstorm was heading in from the west. That's how we get our largest snowfalls here in Jersey, when those two combine over the mountains & seaboard in our region.   Next thing the media jerks (not the National Weather Service) gave the storm a name, Nemo, & were dusting off "Snowageddon" graphics from past storms. Gina & I couldn't find a parking space at ShopRite, Thursday evening, had to go to the supermarket we don't like.

About noon on Friday I looked at the radars & concluded, in my intuitive way of looking at these things, that it would be a substantial snowstorm but hardly one of "historic" proportions.  Maybe that would occur 100 miles east over lower New England, wqhich would get the full brunt of the coastal storm,  but not here. The storm from the west was drying up & the noreastern was speeding up.    Still, newsradio was all ramped up. Yes, people should have stayed home from work Friday or gone home early.  Common sense given our roads & mass transit. Radar was strongly implying the snow would begin later & taper off sooner, which means the roads would be cleared by late Saturday afternoon afternoon & life would return to more or less normal on Sunday.  Media managed to make an interesting weather event boring.

Outside now: Light, steady snow.  Wind not a factor. 10 inches on ground at most. Pretty.

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, New Jersey, weather

Some rain today with snow on the grass as the temperature fell. Nothing unusual or serious; just a reminder that anything can happen from here on.

The period from mid-November through Christmas is a kind of fifth season in New Jersey. Drab, often damp, with declining daylight.  Temperatures can rise to sixty or fall well below freezing.  Substantial snowfalls in December are  uncommon but no surprise when they do occur. The season  is alleviated, made more bearable by holiday decorations. After New Year's  Day we hunker down for four weeks of dark & cold. Groundhog Day is an Event.

Labels: New Jersey, weather

Labels: birthday, boardwalks, jersey shore, postcard, weather

Maybe this map will help explain my neighborhood.  I am the red star, corner of Elm & Cherry. Next intersection up is Stiles & Cherry, then Lincoln & Cherry. Then Cherry meets the major road Morris Ave. (yellow road) at an angle.  The 7-11 is at Cherry & Morris. Gina lives on dead end Wilson Ter. The CVS is at  the 28 on Westfield Ave. The small market owned by Chinese people is at Stiles & Morris, the 2.   Broad St. lower right is downtown Elizabeth. There is no railroad along West Grand., just an abandoned track bed.  Branch library, a Dunkin' Donuts, ShopRite are all on West Grand off the left of the map. Another Dunkin'  near Orchard & Morris.

Wilson, Lincoln, Decker, Melrose & all the streets on the other side of Elmora Ave. are essentially old suburban, lots of single family.   My immediate area is apartment buildings & two family houses, with some single family homes mixed in. Around my corner some on the way up meet some on the way down.  My favorite street is Stiles between Chilton & Magie. Many old houses with wrap-around porches. There's a classic Victorian on Stiles between Chilton & Cherry, near the Russian Orthodox church.

There is a marked improvement in the quality of some apartment buildings  located on Cherry between Stiles & Morris Ave. I wouldn't mind moving up a block. Cherry rises up a slight incline at Stiles, then dips slightly. Enough incline for skateboarding.  The dotted line from Elizabeth River Park is Elizabeth River. It eventually becomes tidal.

On the far side of Elizabeth River, in the space across from Oakwood Place, is Oakwood Plaza, unpleasant projects, predominantly African-American. The river serves effectively as a moat. Yet the streets above, around Riverside, used to be upper middle class & are still pretty nice. The projects are boxed in, because this entire section of Elizabeth, including the Morris Ave. retail district,  is predominantly Hispanic, oriented toward Colombia, with some leftover Anglos,  African-American  middle class, Haitians, Nigerians, a few Indians & Balkan  Muslims, & many Orthodox Jews scattered throughout. You hear Spanish, but if you look closely it's quite diverse.

Elizabeth Fire Dept Headquarters are at the end of Prince St. I hear every fire engine that goes out of that large building.

The initial two day failure was large,.  Power came on from Morris at Orchard through downtown by Wednesday after Sandy. Mine came on overnight, very early Thursday AM,

My second power failure, Saturday AM,  encompassed at least the area from Cherry  at Stiles to Westfield Ave.  & over to Chilton. Came back on Wednesday night.

Power is now out on Wilson, & on Chilton from Stiles to Elmora Ave. The electric grids here are odd,  encompass partial blocks, seem to leap over streets. I heard a rumor that my grid wasn't even connected to an Elizabeth substation. Who could know around here?

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, weather

For the past week I've gotten more real information about power failures &  power company responses from Mike Francesa's afternoon sports talk show on WFAN than  I have from any other sources. Francesa,  who doesn't have much of a sense of humor to begin with, has been without power since the night of Hurricane Sandy.  He lives in the 'burbs & has partial power from a generator. His kids haven't returned to school yet. His power was out for days after Hurricane Irene & after a blizzard two winters ago. He is very angry. Francesa opens the  phones up & people call from all over, reporting if they have power or not, if they've seen repair crews sitting idle with no job  assignment or awaiting  authorization they never get to  begin work at a site. He's had calls from guys claiming to be on repair crews & wasting their time. He has calls from people who have lost everything. Francesa looks at power company websites & calls them out for "cooking" their maps of outage areas. I had to give Governor Christie credit (we shall see how he handles the situation over time), & I have to give Francesa credit for staying with the storm. He correctly says we can't "look back" at the disaster while the storm is still happening to hundreds of thousands of people.

It probably wouldn't have come out, buy  I should have tried to take a night photo from a block & 1/2 north on Cherry Street looking toward my corner. Beyond some lit buildings & a working traffic light there  wasa  black curtain or wall that swallowed anyone walking into it. It was penetrated only by the lights of oncoming cars  on the one way street, they had a ghostly quality. There was bright waning moon for several nights last week.

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, media madness, weather

Amazingly, my power just returned during a nor'eastern storm, it's snowing. I'm hoping it stays on.

Sometime early last Saturday morning I lost electric power again after it had been on for two days following the hurricane, which had knocked it off for two days.  Apparently - never confirmed this - a tree had toppled a block west.  I was in a black hole. Yet,  power, thankfully, remained on up the block, at my friend Gina's house. I continued to sleep here but spent a few evenings there,  including last night, until we clicked glasses when President Obama gave his acceptance speech.

I know people in Rahway, six miles away,  who are still without power & do not know when it will return.

I threw out   $75 - $100 of groceries, since I keep a well-stocked fridge. I cook electric, so that became a big problem. Hot water was on, heat was off, & temps dropped. It got pretty miserable. PSE&G was uninformative. The Mayor  practically admitted he didn't have the juice to make PSE&G prioritize this city.  PSE&G & other power companies have been awful at managing their manpower & resources. Something is wrong when they have 10,000  repair personnel out, the number of problem locations falls, but the pace of power restoration doesn't pick up. That's happening all over, & there will be hearings, I'm certain,   Even the unprecedented magnitude of  the storm & damage cannot disguise that  that power companies did not heed the warnings  & learn the lessons of serious previous storms over the past few years, have workable contingency plans, or identify & upgrade known weaknesses in their systems.

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, weather

Mantoloking NJ, at the head of Barnegat Bay. Notice that many of those houses are quite old & sturdy-looking. Some have been in families for generations. They testify to the capriciousness of coastal storms. The inlet isn't a strange thing. That inlet has wandered forty miles of barrier beach just during recorded history. Left to itself it eventually fills itself in, in days or weeks or a season.  It's strange only because development has prevented it from opening up more often during lesser storms.

There's the saying, "Only Nixon could go to China."  I think it would be great if our Republican governor acknowledged climate change & raised the issue of a gradual pullback, a retreat from the edge, which is not only long overdue here but would also begin to   settle the matter of public beach access. After a major storm is the best time to deal with this. Let's stop calling beach "land." As storms destroy them, let's slowly get rid of the first line of houses, the ones directly on the beachfront. Yes, they were owned by wealthy people. That's why it takes a Republican. Although I'm generally o.k. with rebuilding amusement boardwalks & maybe piers - just do it better, it's insane to replace all the ruined structures in Sea Bright, a narrow town  barely floating  between a tidal river & the ocean, &  wouldn't even exist but for a massive sea wall & dredged sand beach treated by residents as a private playground, & which floods from nearly every coastal storm now.

Labels: jersey shore, weather

Hurricane Sandy plus a noreaster that will combine with it.  The cone indicates the widest possible variation of track, not impact. I'm located an insignificant distance from NYC on the map, about 80 miles north of coastal impact. This places me in the windiest strongest quadrant of the storm, it'll all be coming in directly off the ocean, & because the storm is moving inland south  of  New York,  I stay in that section.   Besides the wind, much depends on the rain bands, how frequent & wide they are.  We could get anywhere from 5 to 10". Also full moon.

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, weather

Labels: Atlantic City, boardwalks, jersey shore, photograph, postcard, weather

USDA: Corn estimates drop amid deepening drought
ST. LOUIS (AP) — A deepening drought in the nation's farm states has cut further into this fall's harvest, with farmers now expected to pull from their fields the lowest corn yield in more than a decade.

But American farmers are still expected to produce their eighth-largest harvest ever, and while there's sure to be a rise in prices at the grocery stores, there's little risk of a failed harvest that would lead to shortages on the shelves. 

The U.S. Agriculture Department predicted the nation's biggest harvest ever in the spring, when farmers planted 96.4 million acres of corn — the most since 1937. But it cut its estimate a month ago and again Friday, saying it now expects the nation to produce 10.8 billion bushels, the least since 2006. 

If that estimate holds, the federal government says it will be enough to meet the world's needs and ensure there are no shortages. But experts say food prices will almost certainly climb as corn is a widely used ingredient found in everything from cosmetics to cereal, colas and candy bars.

Has anyone yet suggested God is punishing us for our Muslim president. Just a matter of time.

Commodity prices aren't an interest of mine. Weather is. There's a lot of contradictory information being fed to the public about the drought, even from different Federal agencies. Food prices up (they are going up), meat prices down, at least temporarily. Enough corn for export, not enough corn. What if the drought continues through 2013? Or instead, there are ruinous rains & floods? Extreme weather seems to be becoming the norm. But there's nothing unusual about this summer in Jersey so far as I've observed. The winter was mild. We had a blizzard last October turned out to be our most significant snowfall of the season.

The better safe than sorry solution? Get rid of the Muslim president, elect a Mormon?  Still not quite right given the de facto religion of the Republican base is fundamentalist Baptist.  Mormon folklore has it that an enormous flock of seagulls saved them from starvation  by eating the massive swarm of katydids devouring their crops in 1848.  There's a famous seagull monument in Salt Lake City.

Labels: How's the economy?, weather

When I was a teenager, my best friend & I were swimming in my family's  circular pool when a thunderstorm came. We got out of the pool & took shelter in the awning-covered patio at the rear of the house. We had no sooner sat down when a bolt of lightning zipped  through the surrounding higher trees & blew a small hole in the corner of the garage roof a few yards from the pool, with a simultaneous ear-splitting explosion. A  puff of smoke or steam rose from the hole  as a torrential downpour drenched any fire that may been ignited. We looked at each other & said, "Wow."

Labels: growing up, weather

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, photograph, weather