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Posted by David Sherman on Tuesday, July 01, 2008 at 22:25:17 :
In Reply to: David Sherman posted by Jerry in Idaho on Tuesday, July 01, 2008 at 20:52:31 :
It looks real dark to the northeast, but the sun's still shining here. We didn't get any thunderstorms here yesterday even though they got a lot to the west. I guess we'll just see what happens. I just painted an old dry bench up at the mine tour mine, so I hope it dries before the storm hits, if indeed it hits. I thought the paint would dry fast in this hot weather, but the humidity is high and there's not a breath of wind, so it's not drying very fast.
Other than that, the woods are still pretty wet, and even the sunny sides of the hills are still green. I don't think we have to worry about a fire spreading any at this point. That'll keep things safe on 4th of July too. It's been hot and humid all day, and a storm to cool things off would be nice. The weather radar shows plenty of storms on the Montana side of the line right now, but not much activity over this way.
Have you gotten out in the woods yet this summer? I haven't been off the roads much, but even just along the road between here and the Joe and up to my cabin, I'm amazed at how many winter-killed elk I'm finding. I've probably seen half a dozen just along 20 miles of road, whereas in past years it would be rare to see one. Since those are only the ones that died in the road, there must be hundreds more off in the woods. I don't know if they starved and froze when the snow got too deep for them to move, or the wolves finished them off once they were trapped. I've seen places where they ate all the needles off of small fir trees, the bark off of full-sized aspens, and the ate aspen, willow, and maple branches up to an inch in diameter. Usually they just eat the buds off the branches and the tender bark. It's clear that once they got trapped by the snow, they ate absolutely everything within reach. The deer seem to have come through fine, maybe because they were smarter about coming into town and letting people feed them, and of course the moose aren't bothered by the snow or the wolves at all.
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