Alberta clipper

An Alberta clipper (also known as a Canadian Clipper) is a fast moving low pressure area which generally affects the central provinces of Canada and parts of the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes regions of the United States. Most clippers occur between December and February, but can also occur occasionally in the month of November. Alberta clippers take their name from Alberta, Canada, the province from which they appear to descend, and from clipper ships of the 19th century, one of thefastest ships of that time.

Average trajectory of an Alberta Clipper

This is straight from my other friend, Wikipedia, who follows Google as my hero. With apologies to Jane.  I would never call it a Canadian Clipper, or even a Canada Clipper.  Actually, I like Alberta as a name.  My friend Linda’s mother’s name is Alberta, and the clipper lives up to that name.  Our Alberta ran a dairy farm in New York, raised kids, fed the hired hands and took over the family fertilizer business when necessary.  Alberta is ninety five.  She could do it all over again tomorrow, if asked.

As the Alberta clipper heads down to Ohio, it passes over several Great Lakes.  By itself the clipper is not a great snow maker, perhaps a couple of inches.  But over an open great lake, it picks up moisture.  Over two or three great lakes it picks up a great deal of moisture.  Lake Erie is the third great lake the clipper passes over on its way to my house, if that is it's destination.

Now I live on top of a ridge that marks the division between the Lake Erie watershed and the Ohio River watershed.  The Cuyahoga River, two miles down the hill north and west of me, flows into Lake Erie.  I remember learning in geography that it rains along the west coast because storms come off the Pacific Ocean, slam into the Cascade Mountains and drop all the rain on the west side.  Great American Desert on the east side, broad brushing it.

That’s what happens here in northeastern Ohio.  All that moisture hits the watershed ridge and drops as snow.  And, where squalls persist, to quote one weatherman, even more snow.  All accompanied by leaden grey skies and blustery winds.  Akron, Ohio, ten miles south of us, may only get a dusting.  Alberta hit the ridge and dumped the snow up here

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Alberta Clippers mean take the kids to the bus in the morning, and maybe even wait there for them at night.  They mean stay home if you don’t need to go out, stay warm, read a book or get out some sewing.  They aren’t all that bad.  And, they may be over for the winter.  We’re half way through the month this week.

Alberta Clipper Five

       

I took my camera to work today, to take a picture of red dry hydrants for Lisleman. They shone like rubies in Tuesday’s sunshine.  I’m not expecting to get back a day like that any time soon.  They’re just dull looking dry hydrants, with Alberta Clipper Five closing in.

At the end of that post, Jenny commented that hydrants in her town are painted to coordinate with local landmarks.  That is a magnificent idea and I think Nick and the kids at the art academy might see these as the Loch Ness monster.  Or anything.

Because dry hydrants would make a rather dry post I thought I’d just go down to the corner and take another picture to show you another story, when I heard the heron—and looked up and found him. One more wing flap and he was over the cedars.

This poor golf course is the winter home of deer, Canadian geese and mallard ducks.  It’s a beautiful golf course, thickly fertilized all winter.  I thought about cleaning it all up every spring and asked a friend who managed a golf course in New York.  She went wild.  Don’t even talk to her about it.  And, the goose crap is toxic.

So, there are shoulder to shoulder deer and geese on the golf course all winter.  Come spring, only the geese are left.  Several years ago I realized the geese nested around the lake.  Then the little yellow fluff balls would appear, running about like cartoon ducks.  And the hawks swooped down and took them away.  One morning the hill would be yellow with goslings and at day’s end I could watch the last gosling whisked away. 

I stopped taking that road into the valley once I saw the geese nesting; breakfasting hawks were not a pretty sight, even if they are endangered red tail hawks.  I was even more angry with the stupid geese who couldn’t be bothered to go across the street and use the marsh for a nursery.  You don’t even want to know how they watched their broods lifted off without raising a wing, then sauntered around the lake as if nothing happened.

Then two years ago the golf course left the low corner at the road unmowed, and a little marsh sprang up on this side.  I watched for geese nesting on the lawn, and there were none.  I resumed using Truxell to get to work and back, keeping my eye on the lake and the corner.  And sometime in June those half grown geese began emerging from their private marsh.  It didn’t improve my opinion of their parents’ IQ’s, but at least they knew what to do with this marsh when they found it.  Here it is, waiting for spring to turn into the goose nursery.

And then I telephotoed up the hill, past the marsh, onto the golf course.  Yes, that is goose, duck and deer shit littering the ground under the cedars.

And, Alberta Clipper number Five is swirling around outside.  While we will get only two to four inches this time, I’m thinking about New England and New York taking the two to four feet pounding.

Lest we forget Tuesday.  Golf course with deer track.

A rare sort of winter day

Yesterday, between Alberta clippers number four and five, the sky was clear, the sun brilliant.  I took my camera for a ride.

Every morning I go down into the valley to go to work.  My favorite route is Kendall Road.  Its name changes to Truxell half way down; all our roads have first names and the Truxell farm was on this road.  Charles Truxell was a trustee in the sixties. Hayward Kendall donated a huge tract of land to the state to be used in perpetuity for park purposes, and named in honor of his mother, Virginia Kendall.  It was a state park when I grew up, and now is part of the national park that ate Boston.

The road in the summer is canopied over by the tree leaves.  My summer pictures of driving through a tunnel of deciduous trees have not been spectacular.  But the reason for the canopy is so evident in the winter months I got successful pictures of their bones.

I pulled in and out of parking lots the entire length of the road.  Beside Kendall Lake, there are trailheads for The Ledges and for The Octagon rock trails.  Every parking lot is lined with quarried rock; there were two major quarries in the area up to the twentieth century.  One quarry now is The Quarry, a summer swimming hole for kids, and the other is Deep Lock Quarry, maintained by the Metropolitan Park Service.

When I left home with the camera my intent was to take pictures of shadows The blazing blue sky wound up preempting shadows, but here is an interesting tree.

This is one of many creeks through the glacial ravines that empty into the lake.  There is another little water course behind my house that travels to the lake.  About twenty years ago, with township zoning only slightly more lax than it currently is, the landowner up the hill behind us decided to clear cut his woods.  Nothing I said to the township or the EPA resulted in a stop work order.  At the next big rain storm the stark naked hill of course descended by the tons into our little creek.  Smothered our apple orchard, too.  When an EPA fellow finally appeared he shook his head and said “Lady, you have a helluva mess here.”  Jan and I went toe to toe with the Amish chainsawers and saved trees on our property.  That’s a good story for some time.

Eventually the hill washed entirely downstream to the lake and silted it in.  It had to be drained and dredged a couple of years ago.  It didn’t have to happen.  Here’s the lake from the parking lot, and a deer trail.

Many of the shelters at the trail heads were WPA projects that became state or local parks, and now part of the National Park.  I love the stonework and am happy it’s being maintained. Steps to a trail and an interesting tree.

At the end of the road I turned at the golf course and came back.  The tree is at the end of one of the lakes on the golf course, and the lakes have what the fire district calls dry hydrants.  Along the road there are two pipes that terminate in the lake and can be attached to the tanker by a hose at the working end.  If there is a fire in the district, godforbid, the tankers take on loads of water at the lake and go fight the fire.  For years the hydrants were black.  One day one of my favorite fireman, Nick, put down a receipt for paint and brushes on my desk, and went out and painted them red.  They still look spiffy.

I made my U turn to come home, and was obliged to take this picture:

Almost all year long our narrow township roads are clogged by spandex warriors.  We clean up their stinking sports drink bottles.  Often we can’t get out of our own roads to go grocery shopping.  And we even have to tell them how to behave.  Another story.  I guess I’ll be in business for awhile.

With 26 leaden soldiers I can conquer the world

When I was a kid I said endlessly, and surely annoyingly, “I read in a book,…” and would add my morsel to the conversation.  I don’t recall the point at which I put it all together and derived my own opinions.

I still read endlessly.  On line magazines, newspapers and blogs have saved me from subscribing to more newspapers than I could conveniently recycle. 

Our childhood library contained books with stories of famous people and events, or historical turning points.  They arrived monthly.  I have no idea how my parents subscribed to them.  They were bound with green dimpled covers around inexpensive paper.  In retrospect, American people, events, history. 

I read about Thomas Edison, Abraham Lincoln, The Santa Fe Trail.  Flatboats on the Monongahela, Alleghany and Ohio Rivers.  Paso por aquí on a rock face in the southwest. I found even more books in the library.

For a long period I devoured histories of the settlement of the Western Reserve and the Ohio Valley, and the spread into prairies of Indiana and Illinois.  In a book that must have been about the movement of newspapers into the west, I read that line, “With 26 leaden soldiers I can conquer the world.”  It was put into the mouth of a newspaper editor, who ascribed it to someone whose name I could not remember.

I recall in the history the printing equipment crossed the Kankakee River.  How strange I can recall that, but not the person who owns the line.  My friend Google tells me it must be Benjamin Franklin: “Give me 26 lead soldiers and I can conquer the world.”  I was struck when I read it, and even now, the verb is “can,” not “will.”  Sorry, the auxiliary verb.  No arrogance, but ability.  I’ve read a lot by and about Franklin, and that was his style.

The news last night had a piece on sleep being essential for moving short term memory from the front of our brains to the hard drive, long term memory at the back.  Now that is a new problem for me, and I need to read more about it.

 The word is from....

Valentine box

I took my camera when I went to smile over the giggles from the basement.

Concentration.  Or not.

I remember Valentine boxes. On Valentine’s Day they sat on our desks.  We lined up around the outer wall, then, led by Miss Milani, we went up one aisle and down another, dropping our cards in boxes.

I almost remember decorating them.

Janice admired the box, too, and said we needed to get cards.  “Oh, no,” Aunt Janice, “I’m making my own!”  I’m sure Laura will draw a cat on every one.

Emily’s friends say he's cute, in a nerdy way.

If you want whiskers, grow your own.

Goodbye from here, where we are housebound and watching today's three and a half inches of snow fall.