C For Ceiling

Day 158: "C for ceiling, G for ground." That's the mnemonic my mother taught me to help me remember where the base of a stala-C-tite or a stala-G-mite was rooted. There are variations to this simple memory aid, but it's surprising the number of people who refer to either formation as a "stalactite" regardless of its roots.

The Longmire ice stalactites have fallen thick and fast under this recent spell of summery weather. The roof "glacier" has retreated into non-existence from the Administration Building porch and the deadly sharp icicles have dropped from the eaves to collect in piles of brittle jackstraws at the foundation. I haven't heard any reports of visitors being impaled, but the obliviously curious may just have been the lucky sort.

It's a little weird here at home, stepping out the back door into 70 degrees to find snow still lingering in the shady spots of the yard. Up against the woods, it's still several inches deep, confusing the current invasion by Robins who expected to find bugs in the freshly turned soil of spring molehills. That said, it won't last long. Next up is a round of rain, something we hope is confined to the lowlands lest it inspires a flood of melt from the masses of snow in the high country.

Now This Is An Icicle

Day 83: Now THIS is worthy of the name "icicle," and no, you don't want to know what I did to get this shot, maybe doubly so because I had just been in a safety meeting in the conference room outside which it was hanging. No, it didn't extend to the ground. It terminated at the porch roof where its diameter wasn't much smaller than at this point. I had nothing handy to give a sense of scale other than some portion of my anatomy and I needed one hand to operate the camera and the other for stability. If you view the webcam at Longmire, you'll be able to tell that I was just a few windowpanes to the north. We only keep the icicles from obstructing the view directly in front of the webcam. More snow coming this week!

Hangin'

Day 48: Yesterday afternoon, the temperature dropped so quickly that icicles even formed at the tips of the Japanese maple's few remaining leaves, and today, it has not risen above freezing. The good news is that it should be warmer tonight, if only by a few degrees, and will mark the start of a slow warming trend until we're back to rain by the end of the week. You can't win in the Pacific Northwest. If it's dry, it's cold. If it's warm, it's wet.