The train

8:00 AM  temp: 37
Yesterday: 55/33
Normal: 50/29

Freight train heading west. Photo taken earlier in March.

Between my house and the lake is a rail line over which about 45 freight trains and two Amtrak trains run each day. I like watching the trains go by, and I figure I can tell a lot about the world economy from what is being hauled back and forth across the country.

When I moved in last summer, the first thing that struck me was the high percentage of containers with the names of Chinese shipping companies on them: Hanjin, Yang Ming, China Shipping, COSCO, CSCL. Lately I don’t notice this as much; what catches my eye is the number of shiny black tanker cars going by. Whole long trains of tankers that look brand spanking new wind through here, presumably headed for the Bakken oil fields on the eastern edge of Montana and in North Dakota. So far we don’t see coal trains here, but that could change if those who want to ship Montana coal to China are successful.

Snow falling on swans

8:00 AM temp: 25
Yesterday: 39/27
Normal: 48/27

There are a couple dozen swans on the lake this morning. I’ve been watching them through the telescope, white bodies floating on the gray water with snow lightly falling. It’s beautiful in a Japanese, wintry sort of way.

Tundra or trumpeter swans? I can’t tell from this distance.

Still waters

8:00 AM temp: 31
Yesterday: 50/29
Normal: 47/27

Mountain reflection

Yesterday evening we walked down by the lake after a rainy afternoon. Water had pooled on top of the small amount of ice that is left, creating a still surface for reflections.

It wasn’t so still along the edge of the ice, however. There the waves were causing the ice to fracture and were pushing smaller pieces of ice on top of the larger slabs. You could hear a tinkling sound, like ice cubes in a glass, as the waves jostled the ice fragments against each other.

Ice breakup

The mountain

8:00 AM temp: 30
Yesterday: 44/16
Normal: 47/26

A February morning on the mountain

Despite the mild winter, the local ski hill has had a pretty good snow year. As of today, Whitefish Mountain Resort, formerly known as The Big Mountain, has a snowpack of 112 inches (285 cm) at the summit (elevation 6817 ft or 2078 m), and 30 inches (77 cm) at the village area (elevation 4464 ft or 1361 m). That’s a little less at the bottom of the hill than in recent years, but very respectable at the summit.

Most of the lifts and ski runs are on south-facing slopes, which may make the area particularly vulnerable to warming temperatures in coming years. Fingers crossed that we have many more winters of skiing there.

Bird chatter

8:00 AM temp: 26
Yesterday: 43/27
Normal: 46/26

Morning sun hits a ribbon of cloud

There was a conclave of goldeneyes on the lake most of the morning, a large number of them rafted together. I also saw a handful of snow geese in flight, and the neighbor pheasants were squawking and walking down the road. Several eagles were gathered on the edge of the ice over by City Beach.

After seeing deer in the yard daily during the summer and fall, they have disappeared for the winter. These days, it’s all about the birds.

Spring wind

8:00 AM temp: 33
Yesterday: 49/28
Normal: 46/25

Sun and clouds

It snowed this morning and clouds obscured the mountains for much of the day. In the afternoon the clouds lifted, the wind picked up and there were pockets of sun.

The afternoon wind sent waves smashing up against the ice, breaking off chunks. I watched a pair of Canada geese standing on a piece of ice about the size of a surfboard, bobbing in the waves, then navigating their way among the ice chunks back to open water.

Receding ice

8:00 AM temp: 45
Yesterday: 54/30
Normal: 45/25

For Tess it’s swimming season again. For the rest of us…well, we’ll wait.

The ice by City Beach shrank noticeably the past couple days, but hasn’t broken up yet. Usually the Whitefish Lake Institute has a fundraiser where they suspend a large rock above the ice and people guess which day in the spring the ice will melt enough that the rock falls into the water. Typically that day is in April, but that part of the lake never froze this year.

Early spring

8:00 AM temp: 32
Yesterday: 55/34
Normal: 44/24

I’m seeing lots of goldeneyes on the lake again. They are hanging out along the edge of the ice, sometimes sitting on the ice and sometimes in the water paddling along and bobbing under.

Yesterday at dusk we saw a large flock of geese on the far side of the lake, lifting off in waves, circling, and landing again. They looked small for Canada geese, making us wonder if they could be migrating snow geese. It was too dark and they were too far away to tell. We’ll keep our eyes open the next few days.

There’s big melting going on with this warm spell. It’s supposed to reach 55 again today. I can see patches of ground in the yard again, reminding me that I need to do something about landscaping – last summer’s repair work on the house left much of the yard torn up. Time to make a plan, a good task for early spring.

The melt

Puddles on ice

There are puddles on top of the frozen part of the lake today. The forecast highs for the next couple days are in the 50s. How much longer will this ice last?

Warming up the Big Sky

8:00 AM temp: 37
Yesterday: 36/27
Normal: 43/26

A March 5 article in The Missoulian had an article by registered nurse Beth Schenk about the effects of climate change on human health. A factoid that caught my attention: Montana has warmed an average of 1.5 to 1.7 degrees F over the past century. Schenk cites NOAA as the source for this data.

I have been digging around various web sites associated with NOAA and the National Weather Service, looking for this type of data. Yikes, there is a complex, not always user-friendly tangle of products and data out there. While wandering through the climate cyber-wilderness, I came across some graphs from the National Weather Service that are a good visual representation of recent local temperatures compared to normal.

The first chart shows at a glance that there is a whole lot more red than blue, meaning a whole lot more temps above normal. The really interesting piece of information is in the second chart: the green line shows the mean difference from normal is 1.73 C. That’s 3.1 F warmer mean temps for the past month (Feb 11-March 11).

Slush ahead

8:00 AM temp: 30
Yesterday: 49/27
Normal: 44/24

It’s snowing now (11 AM) but is supposed to turn to rain this afternoon and through tomorrow. Ugh. Have I mentioned that March is my least favorite month here?

There are big chunks of ice floating in the lake today. Presumably they broke off from the sheet of ice covering the City Beach area and floated out into the lake. I got out the telescope to take a look at some gulls standing on a piece of floating ice across the lake. There is definitely more bird activity on the water the last week or two.

No pretty pix to post today, but I added some graphs to the Monthly temps page. The one for this winter is interesting, so I’ll post it here as well.

Snowy peaks

8:00 AM temp: 33
Yesterday: 47/21
Normal: 43/23

Cris settles in for lunch, looking into Glacier National Park at the Livingston Range

Tracks

It was a bluebird day Saturday and we were dazzled and humbled by the peaks of the Livingston Range as they strutted their stuff.

As usual there is a lot more snow in the North Fork than at home. Taking skis off and taking a step landed you thigh-deep in snow in a hurry.

The snow depth seemed typical for this time of year. I checked the snowpack data for Montana, compiled by the Natural Resources Conservation Service. They don’t have a data collection site for the North Fork of the Flathead River, but they do collect data for the Flathead River basin as a whole, which on March 10 was spot on at 100% of median for moisture in the snowpack (snow water equivalent).

We saw some interesting tracks winding through the meadows. My guess is two mountain lions. There’s an intermittent straight line, which I’m guessing is a tail dragging. Anyone else have a theory?

Snowpack research team

Good day, Sunshine

8:00 AM temp: 25
Last 24: 46/21

Sunny Day

It’s sunny. It’s Friday. ‘Nuff said.

It’s here!

This weekend I will be heading out into my extended back yard, the North Fork area along the western edge of Glacier National Park. This is one of those blessed pockets of America that is still off the grid (no water or electricity service for the folks who live there) and has no Internet or cell phone coverage. I’m taking cross-country skis and showshoes with me, so I’ll be checking out the snow pack. Typically it is colder and snowier up there than here in the Flathead Valley. I’ll report back when I return.

March…the lion part

8:00 AM temp: 32
Last 24: 35/32

New snow March 7 2013

In addition to the hard ice covering the bay at City Beach, there are patches of a thin slush on the lake this morning. The forecast high is 39, so the slushy patches will probably disappear by afternoon. There have been other similar days this winter. Looks like that’s as close to ice as most of the lake will come this year.

A new snow is always beautiful, as is the early morning blue light of such wintry days. We always have a lot of gray weather here in the winter, but it feels to me like this winter has been particularly gray. There is sun in the forecast the next couple days…I hunger for it.

Melting Glaciers

The glaciers in Glacier National Park have been shrinking since about 1850, the end of the Little Ice Age. When the area was established as a national park in 1910, there were 150 glaciers. Today, there are 25, and these are expected to disappear entirely by 2030.

Glaciers have been present in this landscape for 7,000 years, so we are witnessing the end of an ecological era.

As someone who has lived near the park and hiked its trails for 25 years, this prospect causes a lurch in my gut. Two USGS scientists, Dan Fagre and Lisa McKeon, created an exhibit about the disappearing glaciers called “Losing a Legacy.” That name captures the sadness many feel about the extinction of these ice fields. But, as depressing as the idea of a Glacier-Less National Park is, that is only the beginning.

As a park naturalist explained, once the glaciers are gone, the entire ecosystem will change. The bright turquoise color of glacial lakes, caused by light reflecting off the silt, or “glacial flour,” created as the glaciers grind against the rock, will eventually fade once the supply of silt dwindles. Without a constant flow of water from glaciers through the summer, vegetation will change, including those gorgeous green subalpine meadows filled with wildflowers. As the vegetation changes, wildlife will change its patterns and follow its food sources. Forests will become drier, and more frequent and more intense wildfires are expected.

No one knows what Glacier National Park will look like in 50 years, or 100. But Fagre and McKeon of the USGS have done a great job capturing what the change of the past 100 years looks like. The images above from their web site (http://www.nrmsc.usgs.gov/repeatphoto/overview.htm) look down on one of my favorite hiking destinations, Grinnell Glacier.

Below are photos I took at Grinnell Glacier in 2009. They show a ground-level view of the ice-melt lake, the glacier, and the striated rocks visible in the 2012 photo above.

Grinnell Glacier and ice-melt lake 2009

Striated rocks where Grinnell Glacier has receded, 2009