Climatological Peak Dates

[powderfreak]

Just one more week.

I can't NOT do something when it's light out, so I have gone for a lot of midnight runs. We also did a night hike during the solstice. Pretty amazing.

Got back from Denali last night a little after 2am. Around that time, the northeast sky is starting to brighten up.

I hear that...when I was in Norway in June for two weeks the sun would set for like 1-3 hours depending on what part of the country I was in. I found sleeping very difficult when the sun comes up at 245am after setting at like 1am.

It's pretty cool to experience but I'd probably kill myself in the winter with 1-2 hours of daylight.

[powderfreak]

Looks like PSF doesn't peak until 7/25 at 79° F for a daily max. Can't wait to begin the descent into fall.

I love the cool, crisp nights of fall and the turning of the leaves even if it does mean sacrificing daylight. I would imagine the leaves will drop early this after a rather dull fall foliage because of the dry conditions. Last year was too wet and many of the maples caught some blight and defoliated without ever turning color. This year the drought will likely be a detriment to our foliage by muting the colors some. Regardless, I still think it'll be better than last year since the fungus on the leaves caused the leaves to go from green to brown whereas even with drought conditions we should still see some color. Obviously if we can get some rain soon, it may help matters.

Hopefully, I'll pull of a 100"+ winter this year (as with others in elevated interior SNE). '93-'94, '95-'96, '02-'03, '10-'11 were all 100"+ years here. I think '00-'01 may have been but I'm not sure. If it wasn't, it was close. I'll have to go hunt down some records. Basically, it winds up about being 1 in 5 or 6 winters here.

I gotta imagine you were over 100" in 00-01.

And yes the crisp air of fall is great...feels like that tonight with a slight breeze, 60s and dropping, dews in the 40s, and a forecast low in the low/mid 40s.

Regarding foliage, I've been thinking we are pretty much screwed for color. Dry conditions should lead to an early leaf drop and lots of muted brown/gold color. The leaves will most certainly be early this year unless it starts to rain, as trees will just cut their losses and drop them. No reason to try and sustain growth when it's not raining, so they'll just go dormant early this year and hope for more rain next year.