The North Idaho Front Porch (gangs, reservation, Mormon)

[mistyriver]

Originally Posted by banjomike

Yup. But the best part of the year for me is just beginning! I love Indian Summer!

So far, all we've gotten down here is just enough rain and cold to mess up the harvest. No snow yet at all.
But I think we got the hard freeze the farmers need for their spuds last night and that's good.

I liked your picture, Misty. I've never lived next to a lake, so I never knew a dock had to be stored. Goes to show how much I don't know about stuff, I guess. Can you skate the lake or go ice fishing in the winter?

Not everyone takes their dock out but on Windy Bay where we are, there have been times when the bay froze and thawed in a way that jacked the pilings right out of the lake bed.

https://www.krem.com/article/mobile/...lene/429365704

We are getting new steel pilings next spring but better to lose just the pilings and not the dock too.
Our bay did freeze last year but I’ve not seen anyone skating. It doesn’t really look thick enough.

I love Indian Summer too.
Fall is my favorite time of year.

[volosong]

I've become friends with a nice lady with a house on lower Twin Lakes. The other week, she hauled her jetski and boats/kayaks and moved the gangplank to the dock onto shore well above the waterline. She leaves her dock in the water. Last year, the lake froze over and was thick enough to support ice fishermen and even some ice huts, (the portable type). With the snow on top of the ice, it wasn't optimal for skating.

[mistyriver]

Originally Posted by DCCougar

Same here (but that's soon to change). I was also surprised that they lower the water level of huge Pend Oreille over the winter, which then gets refilled (and sometimes overfilled) by the prodigious amount of snowmelt in the spring.

I’ve been more conscious of lake level since we bought our place and it’s amazing how different the water levels are between summer and winter. At least this past year CDA was up much faster than Pend Oreille. I’m not sure why though.
If you look at my picture, the piling closest to shore is completely on dry land come winter, and in summer the water completely covers the rocks and gravel on shore.

[Clark Fork Fantast]

Happy Thanksgiving to Porchers and Lurkers! I hope everybody gets safely to where they're going. It looks like NID is in for a cold but dry Thanksgiving Day. We' re having a major early winter storm down here in SoCal, with the snow level down to 3000 ft! Such a relief after the long, hot summer with the hottest day of the year just a couple of weeks ago.

[banjomike]

Happy Thanksgiving to you too, CFF.

Yup- Idaho missed the big storm. I hope you and yours will have a most excellent Thanksgiving.

My best to all here too as well. I have a lot to be thankful for as always, but this year, it's especially so for me and mine.

[Clark Fork Fantast]

I was looking at the First Street webcam in Sandpoint this morning to check the weather (rain), and it dawned on me that something was missing: no pretty little string lights in the trees anymore--because there are no trees anymore! All the sidewalk trees are gone! At least within webcam range. Maybe it was necessary for all the road work, but what a shame. I hope there are plans to replace them. Trees in a cityscape make a huge difference.

Maybe it was the fact that the trees were missing when the street was all dirt, earlier in the fall, that made me think it looked like an Old West street--but the missing trees hadn't occurred to me until now.

[Cnynrat]

There is still a lot of work left to do on this year's downtown project. Apparently, they ran very late due to difficulties encountered with underground utilities that were not always where they thought they would be. They put down a quick layer of pavement this fall to get the streets back for winter, and from what I understand plan to pick up the project again next spring. I suspect trees will come back then.

And yes, it's been warmer and wetter lately. I just saw this news item from KREM this morning, which doesn't give me a lot of hope that the predicted 200" snow year will happen: Scientists monitoring new marine heat wave off West Coast that resembles 'the Blob'

Dave

[Reziac]

That so-called heat blob is nothing unusual. The ocean has deep circulating currents that move warm and cold water around but it takes several years to complete the slosh cycle -- long enough to forget when the last "heat blob" banged up against the coast.

But it sure makes a good scare tactic when they're trying to raise your electric rates.

[Cnynrat]

The article makes it pretty clear that this is a recurring phenomena. See Pacific Decadal Oscillation for more info.

The last time this happened was only 5 years ago, so well within my memory. Those were years of low snowfall and hotter than average temps. Time will tell if that pattern repeats itself.

Dave

[Clark Fork Fantast]

Originally Posted by Cnynrat

There is still a lot of work left to do on this year's downtown project. Apparently, they ran very late due to difficulties encountered with underground utilities that were not always where they thought they would be. They put down a quick layer of pavement this fall to get the streets back for winter, and from what I understand plan to pick up the project again next spring. I suspect trees will come back then.

And yes, it's been warmer and wetter lately. I just saw this news item from KREM this morning, which doesn't give me a lot of hope that the predicted 200" snow year will happen: Scientists monitoring new marine heat wave off West Coast that resembles 'the Blob'

Dave

Oh, that's a relief! So maybe they will plant new trees.