back to work

The highway department is back to resurfacing North Carolina's Route 276 Forest Heritage Scenic Byway at the southern extremities of Haywood County. Route 215, the next road to the west, was completed earlier this year. 215 is also a Scenic Byway.

I really love seeing my road on a map of spectacular drives.

Twice a day, at least five days each week, I drive down and back up this great road, often thanking Lisa once again for bringing me here. Having it completely resurfaced will be icing on the cake.

The sinkhole was filled promptly a few days ago after I sent a followup email to my contact at the county, as I mentioned in a previous post. So far, so good, though we haven't had any significant rain. In fact, we are running rather dry here, despite 7.90" of rain in July.

The creek below my house is running pretty weakly. My first thought was that they had plugged up the feed from the mountain with their patch, leaving only the other several feeders running, but the creek wasn't backing up across the street. It is running weakly as well.

Now that I've been hiking up around the area from the Devil's Courthouse to Black Balsam Knob, Tennant Mountain, Grassy Cove Top, Flower Knob, Shining Rock, Stairs Mountain and Cold Mountain, an arc of peaks that create our weather most of the time, I can get a lot more out of weather radar, and I know what to look for and often what to expect.

It's fun and sometimes you get to see something pretty cool.

A few weeks back, my landlord was here to cut the acre or so of lawn. I went out and we chatted for a couple of minutes, but it started raining. "It always does this when you're here, doesn't it?" I said, and we parted. I went in and looked at the weather radar. A storm was forming over my mountains and heading east over and past us. It crossed Mt. Pisgah and went on its way, growing in size and strength as it moved over the sun-heated mountains.

Not long after that, there was a warning on the Weather Channel's website about a strong storm coming from our direction at a speed that matched my storm.

I got to see the birth of a warning-worthy storm! Woo-hoo!

Oh, and I have to work tonight. I'm only getting one night off this week because the guy who covers my nights off found a real job. That's OK, I need the money. But it's Tuesday, jam night in Cruso! Somehow I have to play and work too.