Continued warm, some clouds and what our colonial ancestors did in the fall
This morning we have partly cloudy skies with a high near 65ºF. Winds are from the E at 5 to 10 mph.
Tonight we’ll have partly cloudy skies followed by cloudy conditions overnight. Areas of dense fog will likely develop and a low of 49 ºF. Winds will be light and variable.
The readings from my weather instruments are:
Humidity is 80%, the Dew Point is 42ºF and the outdoor temp is 47.8ºF.
The wind direction is North Northeast between 2.5 MPH and 4.8 MPH, with a wind chill of 43.3ºF.
The Relative pressure is 30.29, the Absolute pressure is 30.08 and rising with a weather graphic indicating sun.
The UV rating is 1 out of 16, Sunrise is 7:03 a.m. Sunset is 5:43 P.M. Moon rise is 9:37 p.m., Moon set is 7:45 p.m., and the moon phase is waxing crescent being 7% illuminated.
The RAW METAR readings from Augusta’s airport are:
METAR KAUG 221153Z AUTO 01007KT 10SM CLR 08/05 A3044 RMK AO2 SLP310 T00830050 10100
Visibility is 10.0 Miles / 16.1 kilometers with clear skies.
We didn’t receive any rain here over the past 24 hours.
Space Weather for this morning is:
Today’s Solar flux is 72, the solar wind speed is 441 Kilometers per second and the chance of a solar storm is 1%.
I’ve been posting various kinds of recipe on this blog since last year and decided that I wanted to work in a different kind of blog post once in a while. So, with the end of October looming large, I wondered what our colonial New England ancestors were doing this time of year. I have it on very good authority (from my genealogist wife) that they were most definitely NOT getting ready for hordes of trick-or-treating ghosties and Ghoulies at their front doors.
As you may expect who did what was determined largely on the lines of gender. Yes femanists everywhere, that’s just how life was back then. In October the men and boys were very busy doing chores like cutting and splitting wood to keep warm all winter, gathering in what was left of the harvest, finishing up farm home repairs, preserving the tools needed to grow food next season, making sure the livestock had enough food to eat for the winter, Hunting for meat, salting any meator fish that has been brought in and… get the picture?
Women, on the other hand had it every bit as hard. The URL below takes you to an article that gives you just a hint of how much work “the womenfolk” had to do during the colonial era.
https://roleofwomenincolonialtimes.weebly.com/food-preservation.html
In sum, as one of my grade school teachers said to us back when I was a little boy, “It really didn’t matter if you were a man or woman back then, the work was very hard and focused on staying alive for the winter. Simply stated, if you didn’t work and “get things done” before winter hit, you could starve or freeze to death. Having said that, that was then, this is now, so…”
I think we should all reflect on the foregoing when we start to complain about the WIFI going down or that the screen of our smart phone is cracked. It helps us stay focused on how much better we have it these days. At least I don’t have to go out and shoot a moose for meat to carry us through this winter.
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