Daybreak Tuesday, 1/20/26

Mostly sunny, colder. There’s some Arctic air making its way into the region (though it’s nothing compared to what we’re due to see over the weekend), and as an area of low pressure clears out and high pressure works in, we should see decently sunny skies at least this morning. There’s a passing disturbance this afternoon that may bring more clouds—and, possibly, a little incursion of the lake effect snow that’s way off to the west. Highs today in the upper teens, lows in the mid single digits.

Night colors. A few days ago, the sun launched a powerful solar flare that reached Earth last night. The result?

Who needs Daybreak? When you’ve got a weather forecasting stone like Don McCabe’s in Norwich, anyway. As his sign says, when it’s wet, it’s raining. When it’s dry, it’s not raining. Don’t even ask how you can tell if it’s a tornado…

Vital Communities executive director to step down. Sarah Jackson took over at the wide-ranging nonprofit in the fall of 2020, at the height of the pandemic and just as Upper Valley Everyone Eats—the effort to get money to farms and restaurants in exchange for food for people who needed it—was ramping up. During her time there, the organization took on everything from trying to expand markets for local farms to encouraging more accessory dwelling units. She leaves April 10, writes Liz Sauchelli in the Valley News, to move to Abu Dhabi, where her husband is building a dhow, a traditional Arab sailboat.

Upper Valley Habitat for Humanity: creating “a guarantee that there’s a starter home available in the community for less than $400,000.” There’s no question that demand is high: The local chapter of the international home-building nonprofit can put up one house a year, and there were 20 applicants for its current project on Nutt Lane in WRJ. The group’s new director, Ashley Andreas, walks Seven Days’ Courtney Lamdin through what it takes, including keeping costs down, what the Nutt Lane house will bring to the neighborhood (it’s a 3-bedroom for a young family) and the tradeoffs of making it modular, and what’s coming next.

At the Post Mills Airport, “If you want to fly year round, you’d better have skis.” Not for your feet, of course, but for where a small plane’s wheels go the rest of the year. In General Aviation News, Thetford’s Kevin Brooker reports on the winter flying scene there. “Once the lakes freeze, the snowmobile maps come out to see where to find lakes with access to fuel and food. Once the ice thickens enough for fishermen to drive their trucks onto the ice, the real fun begins. Flying to a popular lake and parking multiple airplanes alongside the snowmobiles is really fun.” The goal: 50 lakes in a single flight. So far, the record’s 38. Filled with detail and advice. (Thanks, IS!)

SPONSORED: What the world needs now … is this show by Mark Morris Dance Group and Music Ensemble. “The Look of Love” is a dazzling dance and live music tribute to the timeless songs of Burt Bacharach, whose beloved hits were featured in iconic films and cherished across generations. Spend an evening with chart-topping songs like “Walk on By” and “I Say a Little Prayer” at the Hop, January 30 & 31. Get tickets here or at the burgundy link. Sponsored by the Hopkins Center for the Arts.

“We may lose sugar maple, but we may gain hickory oil.” Clearly, Lionel Chute—manager of the Sullivan County Conservation District—is a glass-half-full kind of guy. Hickory trees are moving north with climate change, and as it happens, champions of bitternut hickory trees “say that their oil is as healthy as olive oil and that its nutty, buttery taste is even better,” writes Amanda Gokee in the Boston Globe (paywall). The trees are hardy—“It’s a tree that we think of as somewhat – and I don’t want to jinx it – but somewhat bomb-proof,” says Chute’s counterpart in Bennington County, and farmers in VT and NH are raising hickory orchards in hopes of catching the wave.

Turns out, there’s nowhere a mouse can go that a weasel can’t. They’re remarkable animals, and in his latest Another Morning in Paradise blog post, naturalist and writer Ted Levin gives them their due. For one thing, he writes, they run in high gear and never stop—”A long-tailed weasel is the poster mammal for ADD. Highly energetic. Easily distracted. Sometimes fatally curious.” They “have blast-furnace metabolisms” and have to eat 40 percent of their body weight each day—which is why no mouse or chipmunk is safe. “I watched a trail cam the other day that showed a long-tailed weasel dragging a numb timber rattlesnake out of its rock-slide den,” Ted writes.

SPONSORED: Brrring on Winter Fun at the Montshire! This Friday is Montshire After Dark’s night of Winter Olympics Physics, and Brownsville Butcher & Pantry is bringing meatballs, lasagna & tiramisu. But don't warm up just yet, because the Museum is also holding their Igloo Build day on February 7 (with a no-snow backup date of Feb 21), and there are still a few spots in February Break Camp (Feb. 23 - 27) for children ages 6-10, grades 1-4. Sponsored by the Montshire Museum of Science.

In South Royalton, RB’s Deli reboots. In December, reports the VN’s Marion Umpleby, Daisey Darling, who’d owned it since 2014 along with her now former husband, decided to close it. She asked its founding owner, Brenda Cohen, who also owns the Chelsea St. building that houses it, to take it back. Cohen did—and found a new owner, whom she hasn’t identified yet, to take over. The general store business is brutal: “Darling estimates she made a net profit of $700 last year, after paying staff and bills and buying product for the store,” Umpleby writes. But even so, Cohen and a crew of friends are getting it ready for its next life, hoping it can open in April.

In NH, VT, and ME, Chicks on Cliffs grows fast. Hannah Kothari, a senior at Bates College, only founded it in November, but it’s already got nearly 6,000 Instagram followers and is leading groups of women on excursions in the White Mountains and elsewhere nearly every weekend, reports Molly Rains in NH Bulletin. It began last fall, which Kothari spent hiking mostly alone, posting on social media—and then answering questions from other girls and women about feeling safe, traveling solo, and the like. That led to meetups, hikes, and, last Friday, an intro course on safety in the backcountry led by two avalanche experts—where women could “lean into the experience of being a backcountry beginner,” Rains writes.

Rochester will become home to VT’s first multiuse, adaptive outdoor recreation center. Vermont Adaptive Ski and Sports and the Vermont Land Trust announced the project last week, reports VTDigger’s Greta Solsaa, with an eye toward serving people with disabilities, veterans, students, and locals. The land already has trails in place that connect to the Ridgeline Outdoor Collective’s trails as well as the long-distance Velomont trail network; most of the 125-acre property will remain open to the public for hiking, mountain biking, cross-country skiing, and snowshoeing, while about 20 acres will go to the Vermont Adaptive project.

Racquets, boards, bats, and the athletes who wield them. The year’s off to a lightning start with the 2026 World Sports Photography Awards. Football (both types), tennis, and track, sure, but also martial arts and motor sports, fencing, golf … Petr Slavik’s “Razor” (in the Aquatic category) and Alexandr Kryazhev’s “Iceboating Competitions In Siberia” are notable for their rich texture and symmetry. Admire the sheer grit of a dangling jockey in Skip Dickstein’s “Left Hanging” and dangling climber in Lorenzo Roccato’s “Priapos 7c Kaymnos.” There’s mud galore and some dramatic aquatics. Competition was stiff among athletes and photographers alike. 

The Tuesday Crossword. It’s puzzle creator Laura Braunstein’s little “mini,” a tidbit for your morning. And if you’d like to catch up on past puzzles, you can do that here.

Today's Wordbreak. With a word from yesterday’s Daybreak.

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HEADS UP
Dartmouth’s Irving Institute and Dickey Center host “Power Politics, Energy Security, and the Future of Venezuela”. Three scholars and a former ExxonMobil India CEO dive deep into the big questions swirling around Venezuela: “How should we understand the evolving U.S. approach? What are its goals, and are they reasonable and attainable given the global geopolitical landscape?… What role does oil—and concerns about ‘energy security’—play in U.S. actions toward Venezuela? Will private firms be able to rapidly increase Venezuelan energy exports?” And more. 4:30 pm in Haldeman 41.

At Sunapee’s Abbott Library, “The Common Loon: A New Hampshire Icon”. A presentation by NH’s Loon Preservation Committee about the biology and life history of loons, the threats they face, and the committee’s efforts. 5:30 pm in the activities room.

And prose in the Tuesday poetry spot.

There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a reverie, amid the pines and hickories and sumacs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window or the noise of some traveler’s wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time.

I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance ... For the most part, I minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished ... This was sheer idleness to my fellow townsmen, no doubt, but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting.

— From Walden, by Henry David Thoreau.

See you tomorrow.

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