GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
And a quick note… No Daybreak Thursday or Friday this week. But back as usual with CoffeeBreak next Monday.
Meanwhile, looks like it’ll be getting sunny out there. Hard to believe right now, but hey, that’s what they say. We’re looking at dryness today and most of tomorrow, at least around here (there are snow showers this morning in the mountains). This morning’s clouds will give way for a bit this afternoon, and with warmer air on the way, we’ll be getting into the low 40s during the midday hours, upper 20s overnight.
Let’s reflect on the water. With two river photos from late last week:
Along the Connecticut, the water mirroring the world above it, by Jim Alberghini;
And along the Ompompanoosuc as it parallels Buzzell Bridge Road in Thetford, by Barbara Woodard.
And a box truck in the water. On Saturday morning, a northbound truck driver from Massachusetts lost control and went through guardrails along I-91 and off a bridge into the Ottauquechee River. Amazingly, the VT State Police say in their report, “he did not report any injuries as a result of the crash.” Probably the most dramatic photo was posted by Sabil & Sons, the Hartford-based company that’s usually the first call when something bad happens to a truck. It’s on FB, and if you can’t get to it, try this ungated FB compilation from the Windsor County Sheriff’s Department.
Despite challenges, new spots mean you can grab a bite in Woodstock every day of the week. “We’ve had fasting on Mondays in Woodstock for the past two years,” Chamber of Commerce director Beth Finlayson jokes to Marion Umpleby in the Valley News. But no longer. As Umpleby writes, the opening of Ranch Camp, Farmer and the Bell, and the new outpost of Positive Pie have given a jolt to the town’s dining scene—especially its east end, where the first two join the Ottauquechee Yacht Club, Worthy Kitchen, and Cambodian restaurant Angkor Wat. “I just feel a good energy going on,” says Farmer and the Bell’s April Pauly.
Out of a long-ago story, a new kids’ book based in Sharon. The story was told to local author and storyteller Michael Caduto one night at the Beaver Meadow Chapel in West Norwich, writes Justin Bigos in the Standard. Caduto was leading a Christmas service there, and one audience member told him how, unable to afford gifts when they were young, they made cookies “and shaped them into the likeness of people they knew, and decorated them to look like them,” then gave them as gifts. That tale stuck with Caduto, and forms the basis of his new book, Enchanted Night Before Christmas, with illustrations by artist Igor Kovyar. Bigos profiles Caduto and the book.
“It is crazy, yeah. She got picked out of the whole the New Hampshire.” That’s Lebanon fifth grader Brooke Yaroshevich talking about her friend, Mahima Singh, whose many-things-NH drawing was chosen last week as one of six “I Voted” stickers (from among 2,800 entries) for the state. Fellow Upper Valleyite Nirali Batra of Etna was also among the six. At the burgundy link, WCAX’s Adam Sullivan was at Lebanon Middle School last week as Singh’s class celebrated with powdered donuts and mini-muffins. And over at Artful, Susan Apel has all six winning entries, including Batra’s.
Ahem. Remember Friday’s story in The Guardian about mountain lions? The big cats are closer to us than that story suggests, writes Ted Levin. “Young males regularly wander east looking for territory and a mate. Lions are regularly spotted in IO, KA, MN, and MI. One was tracked on trail cams and DNA from kills and toilets from the Black Hills of SD all the way to CT, where it was killed by an SUV on the Wilbur Cross Parkway. The nearest breeding population is definitely not North Dakota. There's a population in the panhandle of Nebraska (Sand Hills) and another in South Florida, the well-documented FL panther.”
In Portsmouth, NH, an equally rare sighting. The common cuckoo, despite its name, is almost never seen in these parts: It breeds in Europe and over-winters in Africa. But on Friday, Tori Simpson-Tucker was out for a walk in Portsmouth’s South Cemetery and noticed a bird resting on a headstone. She sent it along to a friend, whose husband identified it. As you can imagine, word’s gone out in the birding community. WMUR’s story at the burgundy link. Here’s the original report on iNaturalist, and here’s a series of photos on the NH eBird page for the common cuckoo.
“What makes for a good day in the outdoors?” That was just one of many questions the creators of the first-ever White Mountains Almanac tried to answer as they set about creating a month-to-month guide changes in the mountains’ ecosystems and weather. A joint effort by the Mt. Washington Observatory, the Appalachian Mountain Club, and the Hubbard Brook Research Foundation, the almanac covers everything from winter temperatures (January)to thunderstorms (July— and it turns out there are more of them over Mt. Washington than there used to be) to tree leaf phenology (October). Almanac at the burgundy link, NHPR interview about it here.
And what makes for a good way to measure that weather? Steel—or at least, so the Observatory’s staff hopes. Turns out that weather monitoring equipment has been mounted on aluminum frames, which have a habit of buckling under extreme weather—”particularly above 4,000 feet on a mountain where, in winter, top wind speeds may approach (or exceed) 100 mph on a daily basis,” writes NH Bulletin’s Molly Rains. So the observatory and the Cog Railway are teaming up on a new steel tripod station. “It’s very much a trial-as-you-go situation,” says the observatory’s Jay Broccolo. “There’s very few places on the planet that experience the weather that this place does.”
Killington may switch to every-other-year World Cup hosting. The usual Thanksgiving weekend race on the women’s circuit is taking place in CO this year as Killington pushes to complete a new chairlift and other upgrades, along with $22 million in infrastructure work aimed, in part, at making its snowmaking more efficient. But as VTDigger’s Kevin O’Connor reports, the mountain’s leaders are also looking to cut back on World Cup racing there. “It’s an expensive operation,” Phill Gross, a lead Killington investor and private capital manager, told a community meeting recently. “It takes cash flow away from the development of the mountain, as good as it is for the brand.”
Ku-plink. It was kind of a Blueberries for Sal moment right by the entrance to the Super Bravo Quad base station at Sugarbush early Friday morning as, on one side of the gate, a lone skier huddled in the cold as he waited to catch the very first chair of the 25/26 season… while on the other side, a family of bears investigated a trash bin. Neither noticed the other until the skier suddenly popped up and everyone skedaddled. Sugarbush has the cam footage, via FB (X out of the popup if you need to).
The Monday jigsaw: Norwich’s Bicknell Schoolhouse. As the Norwich Historical Society’s Cam Cross writes of the 1827 structure, before all those iconic schoolhouses we all carry around in our minds, the “earliest classrooms could be rough indeed.” This one was on Bradley Hill Road, but at one time, he writes in his Curioustorian blog post, there were 20 scattered around town. At that post, he goes exploring.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from Friday’s Daybreak.
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HEADS UP
VINS’s Forest of Lights opened this weekend. It’s thousands of lights all over, with a set of new displays this year, like the Sparkle Dome, the Fiery Tower, and Under the Black Light Sea. Runs through Jan. 3, and you’ll need reservations.
And for today...
Seems only fitting — by Hawaiian surfer-turned-musician Jack Johnson and collaborators Hermanos Gutiérrez.
See you tomorrow.
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