northeast-flora-and-fauna

It's a little hard to think about birds, turtles, and trees today when the dominant nature event this week has been the hazy/smoky conditions resulting from Canadian wildfires. My impression is that both New Brunswick and Quebec have wildfires causing these conditions. Yesterday morning I woke up to cool, hazy conditions but some actual sunlight. The radio warned me that the air quality wasn't good, and that people should limit strenuous activities, especially outdoors. But conditions didn't seem all that different from normal, so I did my usual morning jog [2]. I did shorten my route a little for caution's sake (and felt fine afterwards). June 6, 2023 As the day progressed, things appeared to get worse. I couldn't see shadows at all, and the hazy conditions extended down to ground level, giving the appearance of fog in the middle of the day [2]. I've lived in the northeast my entire life and don't remember seeing a day like this before. I suspect this day w...

Hurricane Ida ripped through my area on Wednesday, leaving lots of damage. My personal experience wasn't bad at all. Although it was raining when I got up Wednesday morning, it was mostly just cloudy during the afternoon. I even did a relatively quick run for groceries in the afternoon without getting wet. Late in the afternoon (maybe a little before 5pm) it started raining, and built to a heavy rain fairly quickly. My smartphone began giving me alerts that flash flooding was a danger, which it continued to do into the wee hours of the morning. This was more annoying than helpful; my apartment is on a hill that's probably 30 feet above street level, and AFAIK the street isn't prone to flooding. Still, I think I saw that NJ had one of the highest Hurricane Ida death counts, so these alerts probably are helpful reminders to at least some people near me. (There was one flash flooding tragedy on Rt 22 very close by.) More concerning was that I got one alert about a tornado. A...