Click above for a detailed forecast for Mustoe.
Click above for a detailed forecast for Mustoe.
Last Update: 8 February 2010
5 February 2010: Another major snowstorm is covering us up today. Snow from the previous storm still clings to the kitchen roof, sliding very slowly down and melting just a bit, forming a cornice and a curtain of icicles outside the kitchen window. Note the bird (a bluejay) flying towrd the feeder in the lower right corner. A few hours later, as the cornice continued to grow, the icicles leaned inward. The longest one is just touching the siding. Shortly after I took the second photo, the whole thing broke off. The second row of photos shows a bluejay (left) and a red-bellied woodpecker and another bluejay (right).
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2 February 2010: Snow began falling in late morning and continued for 12 hours, totaling 4.7". The temperature hung just below freezing, causing the snow to cling to everything. I went out at midnight to take the photo of our winged euonymus bush, below left, cloaked in a veil of white.
The frigid spell that began on New Year’s Day lasted for nearly half of January. Then it warmed up and rain quite a bit, taking away most of our snow cover, before the snows began again near the end of the month. During a brief sunny interlude between the rains and snows, I caught Beth enjoying breakfast in bed. She is getting along in years and has quite severe arthritis, so walking is difficult. Generally she eats standing up but on this day she cleaned up the entire pile of hay without without getting up.
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3 January 2010: The Big Snow finally totaled out at 25.8", the greatest for a single event since I’ve been recording data. It has now melted back a bit but it turned into a glacier in the past couple days. New Year’s Day was nice but it turned cold in the evening and blew in a little more snow. From then through today the high was 15° and the wind blew relentlessly, bringing wind-chill temperatures of –20 to –30° continuously and it certainly hit –40° in gusts. I’ve been feeding the livestock double rations and we’ve been burning wood at a prodigious rate. Neither are sustainable but this arctic blast can’t last forever. I hope.
19 December 2009: It started snowing mid-afternoon yesterday and has been at it continuously since then. The photos below were taken at 1020, at which time 21.5" had fallen and it has continued for 3 hours more as I write. This probably exceeds the great Maple Festival blizzard of March 1993, which was around 18-20" in this area. (I was not taking official measurements until a year later.) It is now approaching the great snow of January 1996, which totaled 25.4" here in Mustoe.
Snowfall paused for about an hour between 1500 and 1600, at which time the storm total was 25.4", the same as 1996. It started snowing lightly just after 1600 and has been doing to for the past 2 hours, assuring that the record will be broken, at least by a little bit.
18 December 2009: I have finished our news summary for 2009 (though it will probably get updated once more), with more and larger photos than in previous years. [620 kB] It is still a reasonable download, even for dial-up users. Our 2009 Christmas Letter (in PDF format) is also ready for download. It is a much-condensed, printable version of the news page. Char has contributed more to the letter, so be sure to read that for her take on the year’s events.
8 December 2009: We’ve had quite a mild fall, which made it easy to get the pre-winter chores done. Now it is winter. We had 8" of snow on Saturday, then it was 5°F on Sunday morning, which was quite a shock to the system. It has not stayed that cold but today we had rain mixed with snow, sleet, and fog, so it was a perfect day to sit at the computer and update the web pages.
Our news summary for 2008 is somewhat smaller than recent years [125 kB] despite major happenings. I did a lot of caving early in the year, then spent most of the rest of it remodeling our kitchen. We got our solar collectors up and running, Kathy bought a house, and Char had another stroke.
Char’s stroke in early October 2008, more serious than the first one in November 2006, put her in Roanoke Memorial Hospital for two weeks, then four weeks at Friendship Manor rehabilitation center, also in Roanoke. Daughter Kathy was instrumental in looking after her while she was there. She came home in mid-November and has been doing quite well. She has shed all of her community involvement to concentrate on making a full recovery. She tells about this at some length in our 2008 Christmas Letter. [pdf, 200 kB]
The house renovation project that has taken center stage for two years is finally completed, not that we won't find more to do as time goes by. It has resulted in a new bathroom, laundry room, kitchen, dining room, and pantry, as well upgraded electrical service, a solar hot-water system, and radiant heat in the floor of the new part of the house. Following are links to the various project pages:
Our news summary for 2007 has lots of photos of our year’s events. [240 kB] Cleo died and we became great-grandparents. We began remodeling our house and bought a new tractor. John went on quite a few caving trips while Char spent most of her time battling the after-effects of her stroke. Much more.
Our news summary for 2006 has lots of pix. [190 kB] Clarence died, a granddaughter married, Char had a stroke, and Cleo got sick — plus all of the usual farm chores, musical events, and caving ventures.
In 2005-06 we added a large porch, nearly surrounding the cabin. This page tells more than anyone would want to know about this project. [About 500 kB]
News from 2005 includes Char’s big trip, a fence building project, starting construction of the new porch at the cabin, cutting firewood and playing music, and ends with the sale of our business.
Char began playing with the Allegheny Highlands Orchestra in Covington in 2005. She took some time off from this due to her strokes but participated again in the fall of 2009.
Char made a cross-country trip in May–June 2005 to visit relatives in Kansas, Washington, and Minnesota. Click on the small photo at left to open a photo-diary of her trip. [375 kB]
News from 2004 includes our new tractor shed, fence building, land and road improvements, Char’s musical endeavors, and the national Christmas tree.
One of our annual projects is maple syrup making, or “sugaring off” as it is called locally. This page takes you through the process from tapping the tree to bottling the syrup. Recently updated for 2007 with the addtion of a few new photos. [310 kB]
Click on the small photo of Rudy at left to open a photo gallery of our cats. [460 kB]
Most of our friends know that I have been a rail fan for many years and that I have thousands of photos of trains. I have a page with a gallery of train pix, which is now entirely of a trip in March 2002 on the Durbin and Greenbrier Valley just west of here. I will add more to this page when I have some time.
Even before I was a rail fan I was a caver. My Caving Page presently has some historical photos of Butler Cave 
in Bath County, VA, a trip report for Sinnett Cave, a spring 2007 digging project seeking new caves, and detailed reports on the Water Sinks Subway, a large cave discovered in October 2007. I was involved in its exploration and mapping, which was pretty much completed by the spring of 2008.
Our annual Christmas letters provide a capsule of events year by year.
2009 Christmas Letter in PDF format. [250 kB]
2008 Christmas Letter in PDF format. [200 kB]
2007 Christmas Letter in PDF format. [136 kB]
2006 Christmas Letter in PDF format. [47 kB]
We did not send a letter in 2005 due to moving the business.
2004 Christmas Letter in PDF format. [155 kB]
2003 Christmas Letter in PDF format. [174 kB]
2002 Christmas Letter in PDF format. [198 kB]
2001 Christmas Letter in PDF format. [153 kB]
2000 Christmas Letter in html format. [36 kB]
1999 Christmas Letter in html format. [58 kB]
Several people have asked about our Conservation Easement so we are posting it here for anyone interested. Such easements are an excellent way to protect one’s property from development beyond one’s lifetime and granting an easement provides some immediate tax advantages. Studies are now underway on the rare botanical communities in our wetlands. The subject of another eventual update!
My mother, Mary Heath Sweet, died on 15 July 2003. Please see her web page for her obituary and information about her memorial service as well as photo galleries and other material. She had been in declining health for some time so her passing was expected; however, it came more suddenly than expected due to a fall, which resulted in a broken hip. The hip was repaired but at her age and condition she was unable to make a recovery and died quietly in her sleep three days after being transferred from the hospital to a nursing home.
Road concerns have been pushed to the back burner by the threat of industrial wind development, but we remain concerned about unnecessary and environmentally unsound road projects scarring our landscape. The major issue is US 250, our main artery, but there have been some egregious projects on our secondary roads, shown here in 2002.
One of our best friends in Highland County died in October 2001. For those who knew David Allen I have prepared a rather extensive biography.
In early February 2001 Char went to Anacortes, WA, to be with her sister, Thelma Kallam, to help out as Thelma’s husband, Ralph, passed on from incurable cancer. She arrived just in time, as Ralph died only two days later. She stayed for a couple more weeks to help Thelma prepare to move to Orcas Island to live with her other sister, June. Obituary for Ralph Kallam. Other events from the winter of 2001.
We hosted a family gathering, or mini-reunion, in July 2000. Char celebrated by breaking her leg.
In 1999 we reconstructed our dilapidated little cabin. It turned into quite a project but it was finished by mid-2000 except for some porches, which have since been completed. We continue to be very pleased with the result. If you come to visit you will get to experience it first hand. [~400 kB]
Reconstruction of the dam was our major project for 1998. This is the story of a project that did not turn out exactly as we had hoped but it seems finally to have come to a happy ending. [~280 kB]
It occurs to me that perhaps some of our friends may not know exactly where we live. The map at right highlights Highland County.
We are very close to the WV border, in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains at 2400 feet elevation. Highland has the lowest population and second highest elevation of any county east of the Mississippi River. The closest city is 50 miles away over four mountains. During the summer of 2000 we watched TV reports of triple-digit temperatures and drought in the plains. Here we had lots of rain and the high temperature in 2000 was 85°. For a closer look go to Google Maps. You can also see a closeup view of our local topo map. On this view we are right in the middle of the map. To see a wider area, select the 1:250k series and 1:1,000,000 scale, click “Update Map” and you will see most of Highland County, with us still right in the middle.
J R S
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