Winter: Not Dead Yet

 

A decent day today ended with a stray shower that wandered in from the east, and without sunshine the air is still pretty raw. Despite reaching 60° recently for the first time this year, the storms dropping by from the north have yet to relinquish their old habits. They will resume on Thursday and pester our 800-foot elevation in the dark of night with more white rain and perhaps a nearly-measurable amount of snow by sunrise. By 10am it reverts to rain and vanishes.. only to reappear after dark.

Last year we had our first measurable April snow.. will we go for two years of it?

New cameras for '23

Nnnnnnnnnooooooooooooooooo!

Actually it's not really a camera, it's something else: a new-ish phone! So it's more like one camera and two lenses.

We moved to a cellular home router that pulls data from a 5g network. Cool and modern! And yet, I've been using a 4g phone since we got this. Why is that?? 

I blame everyone else. Specifically the phone makers who believe that everyone wants a large paperweight in their pockets. I disagree and refuse to play the game. 

I moved up to a Moto G with its 6.7" 20:9 or whatever ratio phone, and only in my carpenter pants do I have a pocket that's really capable of holding the thing. In a front pocket it looks too much like a (Spinal Tap) cucumber, and my piriformis muscle won't tolerate it in a back pocket. Maybe it's meant to wear like an ID card on a lanyard.. well no thanks to that option either. 

So after a week or two I reverted to my Moto E5 Play, which is nearly my perfect phone size (I preferred the E 2nd-gen but the screen to phone ratio is a bit too low on that one).

After exploring the internet several times, I've come to learn that only the Samsung S and base-level Pixels even try to come close to my preferred size.  And an Apple X or two; I leave that field to my spouse though, I'm definitely a 'droid dude.

The S models are depreciating very slowly, so after a search of those two designs I found a pixel 5 that suggests light wear and somewhat gentle use. Apparently a wide 'normal' phone imager and a superwide are behind the black square. 

As I've mentioned several times, I've never paid enough for a phone that the camera system is deserving of mention; perhaps going to 5G will have changed that 'never' to 'only once'? 

3/14: the pixel has arrived, and it's pretty much ideally suited to me. It's slightly smaller than the e5play, yet the actual screen size fills the phone. It's smaller but looks larger, with many feature updates and more memory. 

Two thumbs up! 

enough already.

I've been through the wringer with the prospective α7 kit. I ordered an α7ii and Minolta lenses, and then picked up an ea3 and ea4 adapter to find what works best for me. 

The answer, sadly, is now None of the Above. 

My brief dabble with an α7Rii seemed to focus with the ea4.. but it had to go to pay medical bills. Now I find the α7ii +ea4 won't focus the Minolta lenses; it just racks from end to end and randomly allows me to take an image, but only one focused to infinity. So whether it's a bad setting on the 7ii or a malfunction in the ea4 adapter, I now have no autofocus capabilities. Yes it's a fun camera with the Pentax primes, but the eM1 now has two excellent AF zooms (Lumices 12-60 +100-300) and a dual PD+CD focus system as good as the 7ii can match.

As to those Pentax lenses.. well I still have the K-s2 body with its unhappy solenoid. While no match for the Sony 36x24 image possibilities, it's a fine little camera - and will be more so once the solenoid is replaced. It can autofocus the 17-28 fisheye and Σs 28-105 +70-300, even when exposure is in M mode with the solenoid issue. And once that foul part is swapped out, the tiny 18-50 and 70 Limited will be play with full automation!

And then we have the happy µ43 kit: the eM1 and two zooms do everything quite well and play cheerfully with the Pentax primes. I even have the .71x PK speed-booster to create more lens options!* 

I believe it's time to cut the energy I'm wasting on Sony and A-mount.

*e.g. the DA70 f/2.4 Ltd is also a 50mm f/1.6

anything is possible..

but weather models can crank out some curious results at times.

We're on the cusp of another 3" snowfall beginning in six hours.. and again the NWS is shading things toward the warmer, less-drastic end of things. Last week when the forecast expected 1-2" NE Portland got over ten inches - that's not in the cards overnight (don't ask about Sunday night!), but odd things are happening. The Winter Storm watch has been dropped here, now maybe 1-2 inches will land at 750 feet. But how's that done?

According to the output at left, for 4-6 hours just after midnight (with temps 31° and dewpoint around 30°) the snow turns to .36" of rain. Not sleet or fz-rain, just rain. That 0.36" would be about three inches of snow if it magically remained frozen - like it shows at 11PM and 6AM. Curious, captain.

If this isn't breaking a law of thermodynamics, it's at least bent or twisted a bit.

Then comes Sunday night, where a low center could stay due west or make land further south. Last week it stalled completely just south of Astoria and spun up moisture that pounded Portland/Vancouver while leaving us the 3" that remains today. While speaking in ominous tones the model output is 1½". 

And the next few days we're in and out of the snow zone, with white mornings and damp sunsets. That'll teach people not to live in our elevation band - though I've never seen a forecast look like that for multiple days around here.

Time will definitely tell.. whatever the models say.

Yet another white February

Februarys on average have been the snowiest month at our 760' home over the past eight years. This month has lived up to its reputation - though it took its time. 

Last week brought about 3 inches of snow to our hill-top, which kept itself chilled on the driveway. I finally shoveled it off after two days of waiting (upsetting my piriformis muscle, oops!) and it melted off swiftly, allowing for a shopping trip.

Yesterday we had another 3" storm. A small bit of low pressure visited the north Oregon coast all day, spinning 10" into NWS Portland and 6" or more to Vancouver. No shopping today!

And now the trifecta: 2-5" is forecast for late Sat through Sunday?!? After that comes a few days of overnight snow and afternoon rain.

Hm. Saturday will be a popular shopping day..

subnormal

 

We're living in dry times around here. How dry?

Not drastically dry - just under 75% for the four-month period. But when you look at the bigger picture, it's been unusually dry! 

In the eight years we've lived up here, we have never seen all four of these months below average in a year. We've had drier Novembers, but Oct Dec and Jan had not been this dry before. More than that, these four months are wet ones: 54.1% of our annual average should now be in the bucket. Each of these months has averaged more than 100% of the PRISM statistical average for this site from the 2016-22 water years. October and February had never seen a sub-100% month.. until Oct 22. 

We shall see what Feb '23 brings us. We've definitely had a few damp months in the springtime too, so our annual number is still in reach. 

If we reach normal though, it won't be in a normal manner. But rarely is 'normal' done that way.

A New Year's Dream

It was very sobering to be tottering about in a hospital,  pretending to be an old guy - and I had plenty to contemplate in the nights of uncomfortable, cpap-deprived sleep.

The easy topic of self flagellation is the pile of camera gear that sits in a back room, awaiting serious pruning. It's time to derail the camera train that visits our porch, settle down and raise some great images. The act of switching systems is expensive, exhausting and takes time away from learning and using the gear at hand. 

It's nuts!

I've had sufficiently excellent gear since my K-5 a decade ago. I've had a dozen or more equally great ones since then, and I have a fairly new one now with more life on its shutter than I probably do. 

• Pick a setup, 
• sell the rest, 
• don't look back!

Please?

Another change has happened with the new year. My weather station's batteries died while I was in the hospital, and no way could it justify sending my wife into a 2" downpour to swap batteries. Given a fairly new station a mile down the road from us (one that includes data my station does not), I'm now just taking data from that site and have taken down site KWALONGV31 /Coal Creek Crest.