GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
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Warm, rain showers, and a windy night. So much going on up there today and tonight! Over the course of the day, temps will rise into the upper 50s as air moves in from the southeast, with several bands of rain arriving with it; rain likeliest this morning and tonight. But there’s also a sharp cold front headed our way from the west, due to arrive sometime after midnight—so that by the time we wake up tomorrow, temps will be plunging toward freezing. That front will also bring strong gusts this evening and especially after midnight, up into 40-45 mph territory, so outages are possible.
Sine wave snow piles. A little roadside mystery: Up until recently, the plowed snow alongside Goodfellow Road in Hanover was what you’d expect—an even, smooth line. Now (well, before this morning’s rain, anyway), it looks like the photo Kathy Jones sent in, and she’s wondering why that happens. Any insights? Just hit “reply”…
Another fact of life right now: thixiotropy. That’s the phenomenon, writes Li Shen in Sidenote, where a substance like a gel or, for our purposes, the mud on a dirt road is semi-solid it’s vibrated, shaken, or stirred. This, Li explains, causes it become temporarily liquid. And it’s one big reason why dirt roads are getting posted right now: “the shear forces and agitation exerted by a truck's wheels cause mud to become, well, muddier. The mud reverts to its semi-solid state when allowed to rest.” The other reason: Roads thaw from the surface down, but underneath, the sub-surface is still frozen, and that water’s got nowhere to go. Dirt roads in mud season at the link.
“If I’m in Vermont and I’m awake, I’m behind a register”: In the White River Valley, Harpreet Singh’s shops are growing. The owner of shops in Bethel, Rochester, and Stowe, earlier this month Singh—who also lives part-time in NYC—added a fourth to his roster, reports Maryellen Apelquist in The Herald: the Pitt-Stop along Route 100 in Pittsfield. In a profile, he tells Apelquist he values what he’s found—”Everybody is very nice, community-oriented, and everybody likes to help each other out”—but has also been dealing with shoplifting in Bethel’s Central Market, including of dog food, which he tells Apelquist he would give for free “if someone simply asked.”
The challenges of running an Upper Valley restaurant post-pandemic. Earlier this winter, David McInnis closed Wicked Awesome BBQ, his longtime spot off Sykes Mountain Ave. in WRJ. With rising food prices and a constant struggle to find staff, writes Marion Umpleby in the Valley News, “Already thin margins have become even smaller post-pandemic.” Umpleby tells four food industry stories: Austin Junker’s at Casa Brava Tapas inside Six South in Hanover; McInnis’s and his wrenching decision to close his restaurant; Nora Rice’s, as she turns to family to help her get Randolph’s Seasoned Skillet going; and former Skinny Pancake exec Ian Rose’s, as he runs food services for Windsor-area schools—with the help of other former restaurant workers.
In Concord, 74 bills bite the dust without even a vote. As Ethan DeWitt writes in NH Bulletin, “It’s a cherished State House maxim in New Hampshire: Every bill gets a public hearing, and every bill gets a vote on the House or Senate floor.” But not last Thursday. As the GOP leadership faced a midnight deadline to get 344 bills voted on, they decided to give priority to bills that had gotten a committee recommendation to pass—effectively putting GOP-backed bills first. Democrats fumed and slowed the process down, which in turn frustrated Republicans. In the end, 74 bills never made it to the floor. DeWitt and his colleagues run through the measures that didn’t make it.
VT’s sole 2026 Paralympian: It’s time to settle down. When he was in the womb, Pittsfield’s Spencer Wood suffered a stroke—and has been dealing with the after-effects for the 29 years since. “As other children ran around in sneakers, he lumbered about in a brace that looked like a ski boot,” writes VTDigger’s Kevin O’Connor. So his parents, who were ski instructors at Killington, took him to work, “where everyone had similar footwear.” He was racing by the time he was 5. Now, after a decade of competing globally and with the Milan-Cortina games done, he’s coming home. “I asked a coach, ‘When did you know it was time to retire?’ and he said, ‘When you feel content.’ And that’s how I feel,” he tells O’Connor.
The Monday Jigsaw: Back to mud season. As the Norwich Historical Society’s Cam Cross writes on his Curioustorian blog, “Dirt roads are everywhere hereabouts. We had a preview this week of the big mud to come. Imagine how it was in the 1920s, when fewer than 10% of Vermont roads were paved. Many farmers simply stayed home and worked making maple sugar, mostly, not syrup. Even today in Vermont, most towns have many more miles of dirt roads than paved roads”—of Strafford’s 80 miles of roadway, for instance, 66 miles are dirt. Or, today, mud.
Today's Wordbreak. With a word from Friday’s Daybreak.
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And for today...
Just to get the week off to a sprightly start whatever the weather: Brazilian guitar great Yamandu Costa, who specializes in a seven-string classical guitar, and Russian-born classical guitarist Vera Danilina, who now lives in Paris, with Mozart’s “Rondo alla Turca”.
See you tomorrow.
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