Our old friend the orange blob is back, leaner and shockingly meaner than last March 25. It’s moved closer to home, and looks to be meant more for halloween. This time it’s on a black walnut, and no, I never figured out what it was though I did speculate at that time. This was actually taken two weeks ago, Jan 25, during a warm period.



Yesterday was clear and sunny in the mid morning, and the slanting sun accentuated the three dimensional quality of the water and banks along Goulding Creek. So naturally I thought of -yes- stereo pairs! I suppose the flat images are fine (and document the creek levels 42 hours after the peak) but the last two, at least, are stellar as 3D. Click photo for crossed eye stereo images (opens in new page). (Instructions for Viewing)

Not bad, with the shadows of the trees curving up over a fine sand bed replenished by Friday’s flood. It’s true that the waters are muddy, but this is always the case for a few days after a flood. And it is characteristic of southern creeks and rivers, but after that first few days the water clears nicely.



A little farther down, a nice curvature where the shadows show the effect of the bending of the creek. High banks on the outer side of the bends, with beach deposited on the inner side.



I’ve pointed out this little pool before, last time a year ago, and it’s still there after several big floods. I have no idea how it would continue to persist. There is a lot of depth to the stereo image for this shot both in the vertical and in the horizontal from foreground to background as the creek winds away.

The snow folks are getting to our north started out like this for us, early Friday morning. Temperatures remained a few degrees above freezing, so water did not achieve a crystalline state here.

Since Friday midnight, we’ve had 2.94 inches of rain, which along with the rain a few days ago puts us within an inch of normal for the month already. The rain wasn’t heavy, but it was relentless for thirteen hours. Athens reported a record rainfall for the date. Lots of occasional puddles, so let’s take a look.

The large gully southwest of the house always fascinates me. The drop in this photo is about eight feet.



Stereo Saturday. We haven’t done this in a while. Click photo for crosseyed stereo images (opens in new page). (Instructions for Viewing)

Temperatures were around 38 degF during the rain, yesterday. It was quite misty and dark around 3pm. This stereo image has a bit of a problem in the foreground where the water is moving differently between the images in the pair. It’s actually the same fall as viewed in the first photo above, but from the top of the gully looking down. It’s hard to tell from the flat photo but (again) the drop is about eight feet.

Below, I’ve stepped back from the brink a bit to get a wider view of the gully at its head. This is a very satisfactory stereo pair. Even the tree at foreground left comes into focus, and at upper right the continuation of the gully to its conclusion at SBS Creek can just be seen.



The water draining from farther uphill accumulates in puddles awaiting the drop into the gully at center right. This is another very satisfactory stereo pair.


One thing you’ll notice in the image above is that the litter has been washed into piles, leaving the underlying surface bare. We’ve seen a lot of this in the last few months! It’s especially evident in the stereo pair below.



We couldn’t leave without the requisite photo of Goulding Creek. It didn’t go over the upper banks but certainly submerged the lower shelves and undoubtedly rearranged the creek bed a bit. We’ll see as the creek goes down.

This is yet another look upstream at the creek from this angle. We’ve seen it from here during drought and flood, in snow, and in winter and full spring growth.



We’re looking downstream at the same point in the creek.



Farther downstream the creek has come close to the level of the bank. About four feet below the surface is what is usually a sandy beach that extends out several feet from the bottom of the bank.



Remember that normally Goulding is only a few feet wide and averages only a foot or so deep.

It’s The Month of January, Number 48 in a series. The word for January here was *cold*. What’s your word for January?

This time, they’re hiding the usual temperature anomalies product here, at the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center. Below is the difference in the average temperature for this January above or below the average for January over many years, plotted in colors.



In December, just about everywhere was cooler than usual, except the extreme northeast, portions of the southwest and northern midwest, and the Florida peninsula. In January the picture takes on a more typical El Niño pattern, with much warmer than usual temperatures west and north, and very cold temperatures from the central midwest southward. Florida, as you’ll recall, had damagingly cold temperatures.

We find the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center’s precipitation plots here these days.



As in December, there was a lot of precipitation in numerous locations. The Atlantic and Gulf states received at least normal precipitation. The Rockies and southern California received more precipitation than usual, with even more precipitation extending eastward across Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Some dry areas are noteworthy in the central part of the country as well as south of the Great Lakes, and then that curious little area centered over Louisiana.

For Athens:

For Athens, cold temperatures prevailed, and for the fifth month in a row we were remarkably wetter than usual. Although El Niño winter temperatures can vary, this is classic. Over the next month we can expect severe storms on occasion.

Here is my plot of low temperatures for the month of January in Athens. (It seemed appropriate to present low temperatures this time.) As usual, the black dots are for the 18 years 1990-2007 (black dots), 2010 (green line), and 2009 (red line).



We broke no records, although nightly temperatures during the first half of January were remarkably cold. We had a warm break halfway through January, and then more or less normal winterish temperatures.

We had 5 days of high temperatures that were at least one standard deviation higher than average, and the usual number of such days is 5.3. But we had 13 nights below the standard deviation for our usual lows, compared to 4.6 such nights, and that’s worth mentioning. More, we had a longer consecutive series of very cold days and nights (for us) than in quite a long time.

In January we had a continuation of the rains that have fallen since September 2009. This has been discussed here, so I won’t belabor it except to say that we continue our exceptionally wet period of the autumn and winter.

The figure below shows the Athens data which are official for our area. As usual the green line shows our actual rainfall, the red shows the average accumulation expected. The black dots are rainfall over the last 19 years, the vast river of peach shows the standard deviation.

Even though the first half of the month was dry, things picked up in the latter half. The blue emerged as surplus during the last week of January - we ended up with a little under two inches of rain over the usual 4.6 inches. It’s not the delirious amounts of Sep-Dec, but it’s still more than a standard deviation above the mean when all is said and done.



We’re now up (down?) to only 10 inches of deficit since the drought intensified four years ago. At the worst moment we were 31 inches below normal, in midsummer 2009, as that climbing blue line shows:



I’ll continue to link to this neat prognosticator in which you can get variously timed precipitation and temperature outlooks. El Niño is dancing all over us now, and you might want to check that out. The current 1-3 month option shows us having notably cooler temperatures, and possibly wetter precipitation. In my mind, that means snow!

Geekstuff:
NOAA’s weekly ENSO update has not changed since last month. We’re now well into an El Niño event of continuing strength. It has continued to intensity, and is projected to last through spring 2010, and possibly into summer. Here we can expect strong late winter and spring storms with lots of tornado watches.

Relive your favorite weather events of the year 2009, courtesy of NOAA. NOAA has a neat State of the Climate product. By clicking on the year, such as 2009, you can get to monthly and even weekly reports and zero in on regional descriptions that are much nicer than my own.

As with their biological cousins, you seldom come to know how you caught a virus, or how your computer became infected with an electronic one. Despite all the precautions and adherence to good common sense, it has happened. Maybe from a virtual toilet seat, but no doctor would believe that, now would they? Mmm hmmm. I claim dust on my mouse, which at least sounds credibly dirty. The cursor wandered, I think, without my awareness before I clicked, to the side of the page of a trusted blogger who chose without concern to let advertisers take over that very clickable side of his (her) page. The equivalent of that toilet seat. Mmm hmmm. Sho 'nuff.

This one was a particularly noxious virus. It popped up yesterday as “XP Guardian 2010,” goes by several other names, and as I gradually discovered, set about disabling my usual antivirus software so it couldn’t scan. It emerges everytime you attempt to execute a program, and will not allow you to use a browser. Ironically it emulates trial windows antivirus/firewall protection software, periodically presents a list of fake infections, and popup windows every thirty seconds or so telling you you are infected, invaded, infested, and basically screwed. But you know that by now. The only cure, it would seem, is to give them your credit card number so they can send you the whole package.

Fortunately Glenn’s computer was not affected so he was able to do the dirty work and come up with a solution. My Anti Spyware had a set of directions, only the slightest bit complicated, that had me load a little fixit routine into my registry and remove the rogue’s distortions. Then Malwarebytes, suitably downloaded and executed, scanned and rooted out the offending virus. That was it. I was expecting a long treatment of arsenic for syphilis and what I got was a quick antibiotic.

It does make me sweat to have to deal with the registry. *That's* scary. But the script from My Anti Spyware worked perfectly to repair it.

Our antivirus software, from AVG, apparently did not have this particular signature on its definitions, since the virus gained a foothold unimpeded. Once activated, the virus disabled AVG so it couldn’t take action even if. It was a little like CDC failing to include the very flu virus that actually wreaked havoc in 2008 in its triple flu vaccine for that year.

I will say though, that once Glenn notified AVG, they replied immediately with clear instructions for obtaining files of diagnostic data from the infected computer so they could try to figure out a solution. Eventually that came to nothing since Malwarebytes had taken care of the problem but AVG did respond in a productive manner.

It does cause me to ponder the unbelievable degree of sociopathy that it takes to write a rogue virus program that is so thoroughly obnoxious, and to no particular end that does even the sociopath any good. I’ve been told by *revere*’d experts that no one would unleash a potent biological weapon because it would hurt them as much as it would hurt their adversary. Hah.

A few days ago I presented a decidedly low and wet place in the floodplain alongside Goulding Creek in the western portion of the property. In comments we discussed the proper word for this wet area. Vernal pool doesn’t quite make it, for geographic, hydrologic, and seasonal reasons (although different people have different rigors of definition for this term). Still, moderate rains will create standing water that can persist for days, and the pool, although only a few inches deep, harbors right now a multitude of chorus frogs.

Woodland hollow (although it’s not much of a hollow), occasional wetland, and occasional puddle seem a little more descriptive.

Whatever we call it, here’s something I didn’t show. I paced this ditch out to about 200 feet, leading behind me to Goulding Creek, and ahead of me to the occasional puddles. The ditch is about a foot or two deep at most, and runs pretty much straight though land that has virtually no slope to it. The draining water is coming at me in this photo, and the word “draining” seems appropriate.

The pink tape marks the property line. We own the property to the left of the line, although the ditch itself probably marks the boundary.



Because of its straightness and its presence in an area that is fairly level, I’d say this was a dug ditch designed to drain the occasional puddle area. The trees that grow out of the ditch look to be several decades old.

Here’s a rough sketch of the area, which covers (very) roughly an acre or so. Goulding Creek runs west as shown, light green is the floodplain, the brown is a fairly steep rise. I’ve shown just a few of the occasional puddles. The property line runs roughly along the ditch, and then up the rise. There are more occasional puddles in the lower quadrant (outside the property line) that I didn’t show. The letters A-D mark the photos and their directions of sight below. As you look at the photo above (and A below) you can see the rise of the land above the floodplain. You can sort of make out that it dips slightly before the rise. It’s that low area that accumulates water and is, I suppose, the reason for the ditch.

A is a reproduction of the photo above, looking toward the puddles. The neighboring property on the right has occasional puddles as well.

B is on the other end of the ditch, looking back. The occasional puddle marked C is draining into the ditch. You can just make out the pink tape on the larger tree at upper right.



C, below, is a photo of the main occasional puddle, and we saw that in the post a few days ago. There’s a good population of chorus frogs here.

D lies just close by C, and is flanked by extensive puddling that continues around the rise to my right.

Looking at these diminutive photos, I probably should say that I think the appearance of scale has been exaggerated. The puddles are quite shallow, and individually they are not huge - no more than 10-20 feet across.



The adjoining 300 acres is owned now in two portions by a couple of land barons, but at the time I’d guess the ditch was dug, it was owned by Champion paper company. I really can’t imagine why a drainage ditch was dug anyway, except as a kneejerk response to standing water, and perhaps to increase minutely the amount of drier land that could be harvested for trees. There are no plans for development of any of that 300 acres in the foreseeable future, and in any event it would be against zoning to build on the floodplain itself.

So here was my idea. I’d thought to block the ditch, of course, and increase the holding of water in the affected areas upstream. I hadn’t quite realized that the property line doesn’t favor us as far as the ditch is concerned (and occasional puddle C lies on the other side, too). Blocking the ditch along most of its length would also increase the water retention in areas that we don’t own.

But blocking it at the top, as in B above, would affect primarily only our own property, increasing the water retention along a line that marks the boundary between the floodplain and the start of the rise, for a considerable distance. There wouldn’t be much, if any, increase in depth of the puddles - the land is too flat for that, but they would remain puddly longer.

I like the idea - the status quo is acceptable, but it would be nice to enhance the wetland aspect. In just that short time I surprised two herons scouting around for frogs, and two hawks that had been hunting from the trees. More of that just seems like more good.

UPDATE: I think Diane found the term, intermittent wetland. On what I call the floodplain (the flat area between the creek and the rise to the normal landscape levels) it looks like we have four of these. The one I describe here, and another one closer to home are frequent, and standing water persists for some days after a rain. I still haven’t found the limit on the one referred to as Occasional Puddle. Maybe I should call it Persistent Puddle.