There is frost on the truck windows this morning, and a light skim of ice on the water from our dock out towards the river.  From the backside of the dock to the end of the gut, it is mostly clear because of the warm spring waters.

I got a note from a friend last night.  He lives in Blacksburg, Va. and was saying how tired he is of all the snow.  He closed his note with a question asking how much snow we have?

That was an easy question to answer since we have none.  I did tell him that we should be due another "coastal snow storm" sometime in the next five years based on the last two being six years apart and our last one being January of 2009.

Those answers are probably not what he wanted to hear as he walked his dog this morning on a windy Blacksburg morning.

Here on the coast are seeing colder than normal weather, but at least we get up into the forties or fifties each day. When you wear sneakers without socks and the lightest fleece that Lands End makes, you cannot complain very much about winter.
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Last night we got pictures from my daughter of snow in Northern Virginia.  My wife and I were talking about them at the table this morning.  She sort of felt left out by not being there for the storm.  Personally I did not miss shoveling all that snow.  I might have suggested that how much shoveling you do has something to do with how you might miss a storm.

As I walked to the end of the driveway to get the newspaper this morning, I thought the north winds had a special bite to them.  Perhaps blowing across 3 feet of fresh snow adds something to the cold.

I know that having that much snow to the west and north of us will make spring a little later this year.  Already the area farmers are talking about the wet weather preventing them from getting their onions and potatoes in the ground.

My tomato planting is about seven weeks away, so there is time for things to dry up before then. 
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It has been a long winter for water birds.  There was a time in January when the quiet water around Bluewater Cove was frozen for almost two weeks.

We have had only a few really sunny days like Wednesday of this past week.  Mostly we have had to endure rain which would be okay except all that freshwater drives the saltwater fish to the sounds where the winds are worse.

Maps at Water.Gov show Carteret County has seen ten inches of rain since the first of the year.  That comes on top of the 35 inches of rain that came this fall.  Forty five inches of rain in four months is a lot of rain even for water birds.

Last night it rained so hard that it sounded like houses were being pressure washed.  We had some nice temperatures.  The mercury even got up to 61F before falling to 39F this morning, just eight hours later.  read more »

Today is a day to be thankful for a home on the Crystal Coast.  Our neighbors to the north and west of us are once again getting snow.

The picture in the post comes from Roanoke, Va. and was taken just before noon today.  Roanoke is on the line between the heavy snow and the really heavy snow.  By this time tomorrow they could have anywhere between six inches and over a foot.

I have had a number of calls from relatives and friends in North Carolina.  It appears that the area of state south of Interstate 40 is getting rain at least as far west as Interstate 77.  The area north of Interstate 40, east of Interstate 77, and west of Winston-Salem had four or five inches of snow this morning, but the snow had changed to rain and freezing rain just before 10 AM this morning.
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I think I am a little like the rest of the folks on the east coast of North America.  This cold weather is getting a little old.  All the stories about below average temperatures are not helping.  The pictures of the ice and snow to the west of here are depressing at best.

We had a few minutes extra yesterday afternoon, so we headed across the bridge to Emerald Isle.  A friend in Atlanta had sent us a picture of a beach house which he thought might be interesting.  I wanted to track it down and see the actual location.  As I suspected because of its address, the driveway was on Emerald Drive.
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Given how cold yesterday was, I was not surprised to awaken to some ice on the water behind our home.  The water is part of Raymond's Gut which flows into the White Oak River.

A gut is a narrow passage or waterway according to the dictionary, but to us it is our watery road to the river. 

During warmer times it is a nursery for an amazing amount of aquatic life.  In the winter we have herons and pelicans who come to feed on the small fish.  When the gut is frozen they have to find other feeding grounds.

The freezing pattern on the gut this morning is more typical of freezes we have seen in other winters.  It is completely different from the pattern we saw during the serious early January freeze which lasted for several days.

When we have a serious freeze, the warm spots where the springs enter the gut freeze over instead of staying open like they did last night.  read more »

Last night as we listened to the news, I was impressed by how worried the weather broadcasters were about all the wet stuff freezing on the highways.  It was just at 32F when we went to bed.

I was a little surprised to find it at 23F this morning.  It had cooled so quickly that the last few raindrops had frozen in our window screens.

Even stranger is the small heron pond next door to us.  I have watched this morning as it freezes over in front of my eyes.  I keep doing a double take as the ice expands.

When I went out to get the paper, the dock was coated in ice and some of the last rains had frozen as they tried to drain across the driveway.

There were a few wisps of snow on the driveway.  If you look closely at the blog picture, you can see some white stuff on our roof.  From the flag and my frozen face, I can tell you that we still have a strong northerly wind.  read more »