The Fuzzy Light of Winter

Darkness comes early in winter and with the setting sun there are colors to tease the mind. Living on the North Carolina coast means that light gets to play even more tricks because water is everywhere and our complex waters reflect the light in ways that are almost bewitching.

Sometimes just before dusk our sounds and rivers will spring alive with golden hues mixed with rich blues. The colors are such that you wonder if you eyes are seeing things correctly.  Just to make things more intriguing, the colors change rapidly as the sun starts slipping below the horizon.

It reminds me most of the Northern Lights that we used to see on late night trips back to our farm in Tay Creek, New Brunswick.  Northern Lights that close to the United States-Canada border are so ephemeral that you are almost positive that you never saw them.  The quick changes in colors in a coastal sunset and the lingering doubts that you saw what you saw are the same as with Northern Lights.

Winter on the coast is a fuzzy time in itself.  It is rarely winter but not quite spring and you know fall has already slipped away.  Our crocus patch started blooming in December and we picked our last tomatoes on January 17, but it is still too cold to plant spring lettuce or onions.  Just as the fading light cannot decide whether to be blue, gold or something in between, our seasons often go off course as winter becomes spring and spring falls back to winter.

This year even the birds were confused.  Our bird feeder went begging except for chickadees for nearly all of January.  Now as spring is just around the corner and winter's back is destined to be broken, the birds have decided to come back.  Now the marsh is alive with chirping and birds zooming from one tree to another.

Fortunately the indecision that wraps itself in our winter is never fatal but it does slow our response to the warm days of February.  The memory of the dampness and the chill of winter can cause a hesitation in tackling the adventures to search for the real signs of spring that tell us that the first fruit of the season is not far away.

Even spring can be unsure of itself as winter lingers around the edges of the not yet warmed waters of the marsh.  Last year at the end of March much like a few years earlier, a late but hard frost killed many of our tomato plants even as they were protected with pots and ready to ride the steep curve of warmth that sometimes tries to roast us along the coast well before the heat of mid-summer.

Then with the late frost just a memory,  all of sudden the water is ready for us and spring is here but even then before we know it our evening light is often blurred in the humidity that rarely leaves until fall.  The coastal seasons themselves are sometimes just as fuzzy as the last light of winter.

The good news is that the changes in light and weather make for some great photos and interesting years as we cope with life here on the sandy edges of North Carolina.  With weather that borders on being a riddle but is sometimes so nice that it should be bottled,  our coastal paradise is a great place to be a photographer especially if you can handle all the photos that demand to be taken.

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Thanksgiving Arrives With Wind & Rain

Raymond's Gut, whitecaps of the White Oak River in the distance

It seems like fall just arrived and my friend Scott in his post, We Was Robbed, is hoping for his Carolina friends or actually me to "get plastered by the big storm" that just passed us.  Perhaps I upset his midwestern soul by offering to send him some tomato plants as this November was drawing to a close.

I guess that I can publicly break the news to Scott that while the storm huffed and puffed and threw some rain at us, our little piece of paradise along North Carolina's Southern Outer Banks survived.  Morehead City and Atlantic Beach which are both about twenty miles east of us did get visited by a confirmed tornado.  The general area damaged is close to the big bridge across Bogue Sound just over the word City in this map of directions to Harkers Island.

Eastern North Carolina is no stranger to tornadoes but they rarely reach the intensity of ones seen further inland. Our subdivision, Bluewater Cove, just off the White Oak River only got some soggy ground from the storm which visited just as Thanksgiving guests were arriving.  Our wet ground from the storm's 1.7 inches of rain will be gone by tomorrow.

We did not even have to empty our rain gauges for that storm unlike the one which visited us in September, 2010. That localized rainstorm which still defies description gave us 20.25 inches of rain in less than 24 hours.  After that storm I decided it was far better to live in area where the drains are big like the White Oak River's nearly two mile width than it is to live in the mountains where three or four inches of rain can cause flooding.

In the seven years that we have lived on the Crystal Coast, one waterspout coming off the river turned into a tornado that brushed our subdivision.  Tornadoes are scary events and almost no seems out of the reach of them these days.  Our friends in the mountains of Southwest Virginia, near Pulaski can testify to that.

If you live on the coast, you are no stranger to serious weather.  Hurricane Irene was an impressive weather event and I am happy that Irene is the only serious storm to visit our area since we have been here.  Irene taught us to be prepared for dangerous weather, but it certainly did not shake our love of living along the coast.  It turns out that few places are immune from bad weather.

We were months away from finally selling our longtime home in Southwest, Virginia in the summer of 2012 when the area was hit with a Derecho.  The power in our mountain home was out for over a week since the storm took down some of the power transmission towers from West Virginia that provide electricity to Roanoke.  Until that summer when we moved, Roanoke seemed one of the safest places on earth.

Coastal weather sometimes appears to be a riddle that few can decipher.  We have the dry spells that inland areas often endure but we can also get some serious wet spells.  Like most places we take whatever the weather brings us and try to go about our lives with minimal disruption.

However, we can count on the North Carolina sun to give us a long growing season.  My Northern friends are likely upset that I will be ordering my tomato seed this weekend.  The plants will go into the ground around the middle of March when we often get wonderful weather.  We usually have plenty of tasty homegrown tomatoes by the end of May or early June.  I had so many tomatoes in 2011 that we loaded them in boxes and took them inland to some relatives that who were still waiting for their first tomatoes as July rolled around.  We even had enough that year to supply the tomatoes for our church's Fourth of July cookout.

The last few years we have enjoyed wonderful crops of winter lettuce.  I am hoping we get a regular winter instead of one of those old fashioned winters which could put a damper on our middle of the winter lettuce.  We are just getting ready to cut our first heads of fall Romaine.  We have already enjoyed some arugula and our butter crunch lettuce is not far behind.  We still have high hopes for our peas and of course we are still cutting broccoli from our fall plantings.  Our cabbage have just formed their heads so we will likely have one of those soon.

All of that sounds like we have a huge garden, but that is not the case.  We just use all the space that we have available including planting lettuce between our ornamental bushes.  We have a small lettuce patch in an area we call the solarium.  We grow tomatoes in the same spot during the summer.  Along our driveway we have another lettuce patch.  The same area is used for tomatoes in the summer.  Our English garden peas are in an area along our bulkhead where we grow green beans and cucumbers in the summer.  We also have a few spots where we grow herbs.  While some of our winter vegetables get a little frosty they usually recover without any problems.

Our biggest challenge is that some of our ground gets very little rest.  We are trying to get ahead of that problem with composting and perhaps even expanding our garden area with some additional raised beds next year.  I am hoping to have some cherry tomatoes in January of this year.  I have one plant that is in the ground near the water where our ground stays frost free the longest.  I have resorted to covering it during this colder than normal November, but so far it has not only survived but is blooming.  I have another couple of cherry tomatoes that are in pots.  They go out in the solarium most of the time and come into the garage on cold nights.  One of them actually has tiny tomatoes on it.

I wish my friend, Scott, lived closer to us than Chicago.  We have some beautiful Romaine lettuce and nearly perfect broccoli that I would love to share.  He could join us for a peaceful Thanksgiving along Raymond's Gut and leave the holiday madness of the city far behind.

However, he is going to miss this year's turkey so hopefully he will not be upset if I send him pictures of my cherry tomatoes when they get ripe in January.

The Muggies

It is that time of year when it becomes challenging to tout our weather here on the Crystal Coast.  It is usually pretty warm, humid or just plain muggy.  There are a number of reasons that this is one of my least favorite times of the year. They might surprise you.

1. It is hard to get really nice colors in your pictures and I spend an inordinate amount of time keeping my camera lens from fogging up.
2. The water in our river, the White Oak, is almost too warm for fishing.
3. We are sometimes without any breeze.  Having spent years in Nova Scotia, I am actually quiet fond of a decent breeze.
4. It often looks like it is going to rain but it rarely does.
5. We are between early and late crops of tomatoes.
6. Our tourists seem to worry that summer is disappearing and get a little more frantic.
7. We often get tropical downpours even if the hurricanes miss us.
8. It is the least comfortable time of year to mow my yard.
9. Our centipede grass is starting a quick downhill slide and I have to start fighting weeds.
10. Until the kids go back to school, this is the worst time to find a parking place at the beach.

I could go but you get the idea. Obviously there is not really anything very significant to complain about in my list but it does mean that I have to work harder to see the bright side of things.

I am a very visual person and what I see early in the morning often sets the tone for my day. When I go for my morning walk, I love to find a great photo or two.  Getting a great shot of a bird or the water can add just enough excitement to get me pumped up for the day.   I find late July and most of August the most difficult months for great pictures.  Even the sun when it sets often slides down behind a persistent cloud bank.

Our coastal weather can be puzzling but it can keep you on your toes except when the muggies are here and our weather gets in a late summer rut.  It is still possible to have some magic days on the water.  However, they just seem to be a little harder to find as we get into August.

When we had a house in the mountains, we would often retreat there until September slipped into view. While the mountains in the South often have the same problem, sometimes a change of scenery and some cooler mornings can work wonders.   September can sometimes have a bad case of the muggies, but you know that better weather, the fall season, is on the way.

Many of us who live here along the coast of the Southern Outer Banks rate fall as our favorite season.  The fishing is often great and the beach becomes a little less crowded.  As fall arrives I tend to get some great sunset photos.  This album of photos taken early one October is a great example of the dazzling light that we get in the fall.

If you have children who go back to school in the fall, coming to the beach is pretty difficult, but everyone else should at least consider visiting the coast in September or October.  October especially can be a spectacular month with slightly cooler air and still warm waters.

If you need some specific advice on a beach visit, you can now order a paper copy of my Emerald Isle Travel Guide.   It will also be available on Amazon in a few days and we just have reduced the cost of the updated 2013 digital version to $3.99.

Andrea, The First Storm Of The Season

Cape Hatteras, North Carolina

It is that time of year for those of us who live on the North Carolina coast.  The first storm with tropical characteristics is headed up the coast.

When you live just up the river from Swansboro, North Carolina, it is impossible to ignore coastal storms.  Yet in the almost seven years that we have lived just  a few miles from the Atlantic Ocean, we have managed just one serious storm, Irene, and a brush with Sandy.

As most coastal residents will tell you, beyond the line of homes that are oceanfront or right on the sounds, the areas which get the most damage are often far inland.  Once you get fifty miles inland, rivers do not have the size to handle the torrential downpours that often result from tropical storms.

We live three miles up the White Oak River and the river is between one and two miles wide depending on where you measure it.  It is also a tidal river.   When our tides go out, we lose a couple of feet of water.  If a hurricane is going to hit us and cause flooding like Irene did, it has to hang around for a while.

The worst flooding that we have endured here on the Crystal Coast came from a freak rainstorm in September 2010.  If you compare these pictures with ones from Hurricane Irene, it is a little hard to tell, but I can guarantee you the rainstorm flooding was worse.  Of course there are not many rainstorms that deliver 20.25 inches of rain in less than eight hours.

Fortunately when our nearly two foot tide went out, our flooding from the rainstorm disappeared. If a hurricane surge hits at high tide, it can cause more problems but hurricane flooding is very complex once you get into the coastal rivers.  Wind direction and the angle of the river in relation to the storm's track become very important.

Sometimes a storm surge goes right by an inlet because of the direction of the wind.  Those of us living in newer homes take some consolation from the fact that our houses are built above the level of one hundred year floods, but you still know that the possibility of flooding is always there.

On the flip side of tropical storms is the beneficial moisture that they often provide.  Our area was extremely dry during the month of May.  We received only one third of an inch rain in the whole month.  While the sunny skies were great for vacationers, they were a problem for those growing crops.  Fortunately we got eight tenths of an inch  of rain this first week of June.

That rain probably saved the area's corn crop, and if we get a nice dose of rain from this tropical system it will help us make it through June and into July.  Our sandy soils need about an inch of rain a week to keep our plants growing.  In that respect, we will welcome Andrea.

In July of 2011 it was so dry in Eastern North Carolina that we had some swamps which caught fire.  Given the choice of a scenario of swamps burning or rains from a tropical system, I will pick the tropical system.

Of course that choice is highly location dependent.  A few inches of rain are not a big problem with our sandy soils and river drains that are a couple of miles wide.  Tropical moisture has caused massive flooding in the mountain valleys near Roanoke, Virginia area where we used to live.  Mountains concentrate rain into narrow rivers which break from their banks when they run out of room.  Sometimes the flooding in narrow valleys can turn into deadly flash floods.

We will not take Andrea lightly since we have just returned from trip that took us from Ocracoke Island to Nags Head.  There are still some signs on the Outer Banks of the damage to Route 12 from last fall's brush with Hurricane Sandy. 

Whether Andrea ends up being welcome or unwelcome all depends on where you live.  We are hoping our spot on the Southern Outer Banks remains a good one to weather the storms which are a normal part of summer at the beach.

Life by the River

Living on a coastal river is a very different experience than living on a river in other places.  One thing is that coastal river are often very wide.  The river near where we live is close to two miles wide.

While rain often causes flooding along rivers that are in the hill country or the mountains, if you live on a coastal river that is close to the ocean, the tide can often take care of a lot of problems.

In the summer of 2010 I wrote a piece called How to Enjoy a Coastal River.  Now that I look back at it, I was only beginning to understand the White Oak River when I wrote that post.

It is no joke to say that a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since the summer of 2010.  In September of 2010, we had a freak rain storm in Bluewater Cove, the subdivision where we live.  We got over twenty inches of rain in less than twenty-four hours.

I have seen the Roanoke River where we lived in the mountains have serious flooding with less than half that amount of rain.  Fortunately for us the day we got the twenty-plus inches of rain on the coast, it came just as the tide was reaching its peak.  As soon as the tide turned, the high water at my dock started dropping even as the rain continued.

That the tide could take away all that water left a lasting impression on me.  Still the river had other lessons to teach.  In August of 2011, Hurricane Irene came for a visit.

Irene was an impressive storm, but our area came through in good shape.  Our power was out less than four hours.  The day after Irene came through the area, we went over to Emerald Isle and enjoyed ice cream cones.  I am certainly not belittling the power of hurricanes in saying we managed to survive in "good shape."   Another day things could have been different.

However, hurricanes are not strangers to the area.  People try not to have too many trees close to their homes here.   People in areas that are flood prone have foundations that let waters move through them.  Fortunately our beaches and marshes have not been over developed.  There is plenty of vegetation on Emerald Isle compared to many other coastal areas.

Our geography also helps us a little.  Just a little north and east of us, the Neuse River is much more subject to flooding because there is no land mass to slow the water of Pamlico Sound from blowing into the Neuse when conditions area right.

Even with these advantages life on the river has still been full of surprises.  On May 30, 2012 a very rare event happened.  We were brushed by a tornado.   Before May 30, I had heard that tornadoes normally dissipate as they approach the ocean waters.  It turns our that while it is very rare, we can have tornadoes just like the rare tornado that visited our friends in the mountains by Pulaski, Virginia.  Fortunately both in Pulaski and here in Peletier no one died from the tornadoes.  Our tornado lasted less than a minute.

The lessons of the last few years have taught me to prepare for the worst while hoping for the best.  No matter where we live, we all live close to very powerful forces of nature.  Those forces are closer than we care to admit.  We just have to realize that we cannot control mother nature.

In spite of getting a close hand look at the power of nature, I would not trade where we live for any of the many places that we have lived or even the ones that we have visited.  There is incredible scenic beauty here on the coast.  While there are times to be very respectful of the forces that surround us, there are other times when it almost seems that nature opens its arms for us.

The third week in April of 2012 I anchored my kayak in the middle of our river.  Sitting there are the oyster rocks, it was hard to think of a more peaceful place.  Especially one that can so easily renew your appreciation of the world where we live.

It often seems like our world along the Southern Outer Banks of North Carolina is one which has no walls.  There are times that the water, the horizon and the sky seem to merge in a world of blue.

Because our water is so accessible, it is a big part of our life.  The morning of June 25, 2012 on my boat ride down river I saw hardly any ripples.   The same river nine hours later is a mass of white caps and foam.  The morning river ride was a wonderful pleasure.  Yet even I wouldn't challenge the river and its impressive whitecaps later in the day.

Respecting the weather and the water comes naturally when you have seen the awesome power that mother nature can unleash.  That the calm water pictured in the post can have whitecaps on it in the same day is just one of the wonders of being alive.