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Since my Rhino and I are relegated to be the voluntary snow removal crew, weather plays a major roll, even an obsession, in the winter. To that end, I’ve put together my own Cocolalla, Idaho weather-web page consisting of resources that I can use to predict the weather to help plan my day. http://testinprogress.com/weather.html . To the locals who sometimes read my rants here, maybe you’ll also find this useful.

Thomas gets his geek fix. After two years I’ve finally found a group of others who enjoy science. Science Cafe is a loosely organized group that gets together once a month and enjoys a presentation by a scientist. Yes, even in this pocket of urban life their are some folks who enjoy this sort of thing. This month’s presentation was given by an inventor from the Idaho National Laboratory of a new kind of battery. Suffice it to say that this one will be much better than the one in your iPod or cell phone. The most amazing part for me was that there were about 60 people gathered to share in the geekness.

Well, someone finally turned on the winter machine. Compared to last year, we feel we’ve been graced with about 22 days extra days of fall. We’ve had a few light snows but nothing that stuck. Today however, all that changed as a major winter storm slammed about a foot of snow on us over night. We won’t see temps above 20 for the next week as an arctic blast is heading our way. The first official plowing with the new Rhino went very well. Preparations paid off in spades.

Migrating eagles have a feeding frenzy during December around Lake Coeur D’Alene as the kokanee salmon (I think I spelled that right?) spawn and die along the shoreline. Peek viewing is in late December but even today we were able to spot about 25 eagles in about an hour (maybe 25 sightings of the same one, who knows). I’m definately going to get out there again if anyone wishes to come along. Here are just a few of the better shots.

Click on the thumbnails to enlarge.

I just needed a quick reference to the weather around here.  This is actually for Sandpoint, but close enough.
Average Temperatures

Snowfall

Monthly average snowfall in inches beginning in January and ending in December.

Yearly total: 70.8

Being on the East side of a mountain, we don’t get to see sunsets. But sometimes, the sunrises are just as good. Here’s a shot from outside our bedroom.It’s fall and the days are very short and usually cloudy. When there is sunshine, it rises around 7:30 a.m. and goes down behind the mountains around 2:30 p.m. We’re counting the days until mid-December when the days will get longer again.