ThunderSnow.us

Parts 1 and 2.
21) What was the total rainfall here last year? No clue. Weather Underground tells me that in Portsmouth it was 67.26″ in the past year and 57.46″ last calendar year. (While I was playing with this, I compared the year-to-date rainfall levels for Portsmouth and Seattle. Seattle’s gotten 22.90″ of precipitation this year, but Portsmouth has gotten 38.28″. It was a seriously wet spring.)
22) Where does the pollution in your air come from? Mostly from the Midwest, particularly cars and power plants and other combustion.
23) If you live near the ocean, when is high tide today? Well, it was low at 2:45 this afternoon, so it was high at 8:45 (ish) this morning and will be high again at 8:45 (ish) tonight.
24) What primary geological processes or events shaped the land here? The upheaval that formed the Appalachians 100 million years ago, and then the Wisconsin glaciation 20,000-12,000 years ago that scoured all the topsoil off, formed lakes and ponds, and dropped boulders all over the place.
25) Name three wild species that were not found here 500 years ago. Name one exotic species that has appeared in the last 5 years. In the last 500 years? Coyotes, purple flag, common periwinkles, green crabs, Asian shore crabs. I can’t think of anything that’s 5 years recent, though, although I have a niggling feeling that I should. Anyone?
26) What minerals are found in the ground here that are (or were) economically valuable? Here as in right here? There’s a gravel pit in town… I’m not sure what they’re digging up, though. NH is the Granite State, but there’s not really so much granite around here.
27) Where does your electric power come from and how is it generated? There’s lots of power plants in NH. Many of them are coal or oil-burning. There’s at least one hydro plant at Amoskeag. There’s a nuclear plant in Seabrook.
28) After the rain runs off your roof, where does it go? Most of it goes into the reclamation ponds that are right next to our building. Those filll right up when it rains. From there it either soaks back into the ground or overflows into the storm drain system, which empties into the Lamprey River.
29) Where is the nearest wilderness? When was the last time a fire burned through it? Hm, define “wilderness”. The White Mtns (or at least parts of them…) qualify, I would say, and I don’t think there’s been a big fire in the Whites in hundreds of years. There’s little fires every summer, though.
30) How many days till the moon is full? Hmm, 20? It’ll be full on the 9th of August. That’s 19 days from now.

New toy!
bestthing.info: comparing apples to oranges and oranges to racecars.
Created by xkcd, and the purty design with the fruits is by spinfire.

More.
11) From what direction do storms generally come? From the west.
12) Where does your garbage go? We put it in the compactor for our apartment complex, and it’s picked up by WM, but I have no idea where they take it.
13) How many people live in your watershed? I guessed 60,000. It’s more like half of that. Newmarket, Newfields, Epping, Nottingham, and Deerfield are almost entirely within the Lamprey River watershed, as well as parts of Durham, Lee, Candia, Barrington, and Raymond.
14) Who uses the paper/plastic you recycle from your neighborhood? No clue. The Newmarket recycling center is out on Ash Swamp Rd, but I don’t even know if the materials that are picked up from our apartment complex go there or elsewhere.
15) Point to where the sun sets on the equinox. How about sunrise on the summer solstice? Nope and nope. According to NOAA’s solar position calculator, it’s pretty much due west at sunset on the equinox, and about east north east on the solstice. I think my mental diagram of how this works is wrong, cause those aren’t what I would’ve guessed.
16) Where is the nearest earthquake fault? When did it last move? Hm, well, something made the Appalachians, but those are old mountains. And there’s small earthquakes around here every couple of years. The nearest true plate boundary, though, is the mid-Atlantic one. USGA has some information, and links to a very interesting discussion of why we get “intraplate” earthquakes.
17) Right here, how deep do you have to drill before you reach water? A guess? Fifty feet. Maybe less. USGS groundwater data has two measurement sites in this area, one with water 29 ft below ground level, and the other 36 below. Those measurements are from a couple of months ago (remember May?), so it may be lower now.
18) Which (if any) geological features in your watershed are, or were, especially respected by your community, or considered sacred, now or in the past? Well, the Lamprey is a big important river, powering a mill industry in several of these towns. I can’t really think of anything else that I know is important.
19) How many days is the growing season here (from frost to frost)? Late April to mid-October. Roughly 170 days.
20) Name five birds that live here. Which are migratory and which stay put? Blue jays, goldfinches, mallard ducks, chickadees, cardinals. The ducks migrate - all the others stick around.

Kevin Kelly has posted a thirty-question quiz asking about your location in “the big here”. Go take it yourself before looking at these.

My answers:
1) Point north. Easy enough. It helps that I live just off a north-south road.
2) What time is sunset today? My guess (yesterday) was 20:30, and the actual time was 20:22. Not bad.
3) Trace the water you drink from rainfall to your tap. We drink town water, which comes from two wells and is treated and chlorinated. I’m not sure where the treatment plant is.
4) When you flush, where do the solids go? What happens to the waste water? Hm. Some (all?) of the water is treated in town and goes back into the Lamprey River/Great Bay. I don’t know where solids go.
5) How many feet above sea level are you? Dan’s and my ballpark guess was 150ft, and as far as I can tell from peering at TopoZone, that’s pretty close.
6) What spring wildflower is consistently among the first to bloom here? Among the first? Hm. Dandelions are pretty reliable in late April, but that can’t make them first. There’s some buttercups that bloom pretty early, and trillium and Canadian mayflower in the woods. Apparently there are also bloodroots and trout lilies. I had to look those up to figure out what they are, though.
7) How far do you have to travel before you reach a different watershed? Can you draw the boundaries of yours? Well, the boundary between the Lamprey River watershed and the Oyster River watershed crosses NH-108, right around the boathouse, because that’s where the flooded Lamprey went over the road and into the Oyster watershed and caused all sorts of road damage in May. I don’t know the boundaries of the Lamprey well enough to draw them, but the Lamprey River Advisory Committee has quite a nice one.
8) Is the soil under your feet, more clay, sand, rock or silt? I guessed rock (native New Hampshirite here). Dan guessed silt. Playing with the NCSS Web Soil Survey (which is a way fun, if annoyingly slow, tool/toy), I determined that the hill we live on is thoroughly rocky, but that Newmarket in general is sandy/silty.
9) Before your tribe lived here, what did the previous inhabitants eat and how did they sustain themselves? Hm. People who have lived here before “my tribe”: People of European descent working in the factories in town. People of European descent who farmed. People o.E.d. who fished. Abenaki and Penacook indians. I think I have a pretty good idea of how all those groups lived.
10) Name five native edible plants in your neighborhood and the season(s) they are available. Dandelions, all summer. Cattail tubers, but no idea what the season is.. late summer? Blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries. July and August. Are tiger lilies native? They grow wild all over the place.

More later.

Re this, last week I received from UNH a certificate stating that I have “been designated a Presidential Scholar“. A certificate! Ooh boy!
This feels like middle school.

Misuse thereof.

This morning I woke up and rolled over and enjoyed the sun coming in the window… and suddenly said “Oh crap it’s 8:30 and it’s Monday!”

It woke me up, anyway.

I was filling out an ILL request, which is a long (and slightly annoying, because obviously, the library should subscribe to Every. Journal. Ever.) form, and I was slightly startled by this:

Not the question, the question makes sense. But that menu… *twitch*

I stumbled, today, upon the Prairie Muffin Manifesto. It squicks me, and I was trying to figure out why. I mean, when you subtract out the hard-core Christian stuff, they’re espousing many values that are very close to mine. Patience, living simply, working hard, not losing it when bad stuff happens, making things better in small ways. Eventually, I realized that they’re saying these are things we should do because we’re women, rather than because they’re people, and that men have an entirely different set of responsibilities.

And then there’s bits such as

2) Prairie Muffins are helpmeets to their husbands, seeking creative and practical ways to further their husbands’ callings and aid them in their dominion responsibilities.

9) Prairie Muffins do not reflect badly on their husbands by neglecting their appearance; they work with the clay God has given, molding it into an attractive package for the pleasure of their husbands.

17) Prairie Muffins place their husbands’ needs and desires above other obligations, arranging their schedules and responsibilities so that they do not neglect the one who provides for and protects them and their children.

Squick! Seriously, this just creeps me out. I mean, sure, I don’t wanna be a full-time homemaker, but the women I know who do want to don’t go into it with this “I will sacrifice my every need to my so-superior husband’s” mindset.. right?

And finally, this:

36) Prairie Muffins are happy to be girls—they rejoice in the distinctives which God sovereignly bestowed on them which make them feminine. They are also happy that their husbands are masculine, and they do not diminish that masculinity by harping on habits which emanate from the fact that boys will be boys, even when they grow up. In addition, Prairie Muffins are careful not to use their feminine, hormotional weaknesses to excuse sinful attitudes and actions, but learn to depend more and more on God’s grace and strength in the midst of any monthly trials.

Don’t get too hormotional, girls.

I hereby declare thundersnow to be (more-or-less) live. *smashes champagne bottle over colobus*