Ski Patroller

Outstanding piece of writing right there. Thank you for this and your other posts.

Cutting NOAA staff is another example of the utter chaos brought by President Musk and his portly pet. WTF is wrong with the voters of this great country of ours?

I agree about the balance. Street trees should be managed by arborists with their very high level of education in tree pathology and risk assessment. Foresters are all about growing trees as crops and their education level is not in the realm of individual tree health. CT recently upped the municipal tree warden education and experience requirements so that 1st selectmen and their appointees (often the road foreman) aren't making arboricultural decisions which often led to bad outcomes. People like their street trees. I am completely on board with balancing risk in street tree management but we are nowhere near that right now.

I've been involved in this Northeastern issue for several years. It's essentially welfare for contractors as it is grotesque overkill. Federal funding covers 90% of it so state DOT grant managers are thrilled even if it means destroying the landscape aesthetic - their interest is in grabbing every grant they can get, needed or not. The states and federal government could literally save millions by simply having arborists tag hazard trees for removal but they don't do this, they senselessly clearcut. It is out of control across New England and beyond. The income from the trees is insignificant because they are sold below market rate or given to the contractors "for disposal". A recent project in CT produced 16,000 logs pole-to-sawtimber size and the gross receipt to the state was $22,000 ($1.38/tree gross). Most of the contractors have invested in multi-million-dollar specialized machines for clearcutting roadsides instead of hiring manual cutters so the jobs impact of these programs is limited. DOTs say that they are creating pollinator habitat in the deforested areas, ignoring the fact that they are creating sink habitat for insects because, you know, a zillion cars cruising by at 70mph. I've been doing habitat restorations for a living for over 30 years and a key tenet of ecological restoration is don't create production habitat within or adjacent to kill zones. For example, the foraging range of a honeybee is 2 miles (1 mile radius from hive), so ... splat. Additionally, these cleared areas become densely populated by non-native invasive plants whose #1 vector of dispersal is ... roads. These plants are disturbance-specialists and are highly adapted to quickly exploit the macerated soils of the cleared sites. So these roadside-clearing programs are not only contrary to good science and the landscape aesthetic, they greatly aid in the spread of invasives, a phenomenon called "the greatest threat to biodiversity after habitat loss" by E.O. Wilson. But to end on a positive note, we just finished a project in NW Maine that permanently protected 3500 acres in the Mahoosucs. Most of it was paper company land and it will now be forever wild. Onward.

JFC. How stupid of me to think that all fellow weather fanatics would universally accept the science of climate change. But at a time when every PhD and university is considered an "enemy of the people" and a kakistocrisy has taken control of the government, I should not be surprised.

Jiminy Peak, 9:30PM, 1.5 hours into the storm. We were all blown away by how good it got in such a short time.

4deg F in NE Litchfield County, CT.

It won't be hard to get soon. The non-native invasive beech nematode Litylenchus crenatae McCannii is in the process of essentially extirpating the species in the Northeast and the state forestry agencies are starting salvage cutting on state lands and encouraging private landowners to do the same (which contravenes good science but they aren't about science so....). Anyway, add American beech to Eastern hemlock, White ash, American chestnut, and American elm. We're losing the Eastern forest in both structural and functional realms.

NWS forecast for the Berkshires is for 2.5" to 4.5" of rain between today and Wednesday night.

Colebrook, Litchfield County, CT, 6AM, 22.8degF, 0.75" new snow. Roads are iced up here.

0.93" in Colebrook for the period. Wicked. I've been writing conservation easements in New England for over 30 years. We never considered landscape-scale fire issues in the contingencies. We were taught in forestry school that droughts like this happened here on 600-1200-year cycles. I just finished drafting the first fire contingency language for a conservation easement project yesterday, allowing 150' of tree clearing from structures, the building of firebreaks, permitted motorized use in firefighting, and allowing fire-control access to water features. Essentially, the California model except we don't allow salvage logging beyond hazard trees. Crazy stuff.

I like how Stowe puts out detailed daily reports like this. It informs and builds the stoke. I wish most mountains did it.

22degF at the moment in Colebrook, Litchfield County, CT.

Wildcat reporting 13" of fresh powder in the 6AM Conditions Report and snowing like hell.