Drought Warning

Although we have had a few droughts in New Jersey over the years I can't remember one like this where there has been almost no rain for a month an a half. We had no mensurable rain in October and only slightly more than that so far this month. Since I live close to the Manasquan reservoir I pass by it on a regular basis, on my bike rides, and have seen its level drop over the last few months. Here is a picture I took by the marina back in July 2017 and is normally how the dock looks.

Notice the relationship between the pilings and the dock. Here is a picture of the same location from a different angle in Sept 2022. This is when they took the level of the reservoir down to do some work on the dam and marina.

This is was the lowest I have seen it until today. 

This is what it looked like today

Again look at the relationship between the pilings and the dock. It's only got a few more feet before the entire dock is just sitting in the sand. There is some rain in the forecast but it is going to take a lot of rain (over a foot last time I checked) to get us back to normal.

Wildfire Update

 

I did a ride this week past Rova Farms to check out the remnants of one of the wildfires that have been popping up because of the dry weather. As I mentioned last week there was a wildfire in my area called the Shogun fire. It was on S. Stump Tavern Rd and was started by a person firing a shogun at a firing range using ammo called "Dragon's Breath" which has some extra magnesium in it so that the blast is brighter and has more sparks. First that ammo is illegal, second using something that creates "more sparks" when the fire danger is this high is plain stupid. They did find out who started the fire and he has turned himself in. However the damage is done with over 300 acres burnt. 

The burnt forest isn't as badly damage as I suspected. Yes most of the underbrush is gone or burnt but most of the trees looked undamaged. There are scorch marks on the trunks of the trees but that is about it. The Jackson fire department did a good job of containing the fire. 

The main reason I wanted to check out the damage is that the back of my house faces a forest so I wanted to know how dangerous that could be given the current conditions. During the Shogun fire the Jackson fire department did have to protect a few houses that were in the path of the fire. The created fire breaks around the houses and had fire trunks in the neighborhood to put out any fires that threaten any homes. There was no damage to any structures during the fire so I suspect that the fire department could prevent a fire from damaging my house if there was a fire was in the area. Of course I am hoping for a lot of rain so soon so that I won't have to worry about that possibility. 

On a completely different subject. I led an off the books ride this Saturday up to Jamesburg. We found a good coffee shop that would makes good muffins and fritters so I may head up that way more often. While we were in the area we stopped to check out on of the posse members that we haven't seen in a while.

We snuck into his community and did a surprise visit. He didn't join us on today's ride because he was providing some narration for a production in his community which I know he will be good at. It was good to see him and hopefully he will join us on our rides again soon. 

The Fall Riding Season

You know it is fall when you have to put on a jacket to do a ride. For the past few weeks I have been enjoying some fall rides. We haven't had any rain in over a month so there has been no excuse to not get out and ride. Even with the dry weather the foliage has been pretty good. The leave are mostly off the trees now but we had a couple of good weeks of color. 

Besides rides through the Assimpink and the Pinelands to see the foliage I also did a couple of rides to see the Halloween display. 

The decorations in Lambertville were the usual strange displays. I was a little disappointed by the ones in Bordentown. I did a few extra passes through the town on my normal Bordentown ride but did not see anything spectacular as I have seen there in years past. A lot of people are just buying some blow up monsters or skeletons so there wasn't anything real original.

The weather has been warmer than normal for fall. We actually have a few 70 and 80 degree days that I took advantage of. The dry conditions have led to a few wildfires in my area. There was one fire called the Shotgun fire (caused by some jerk who used illegal magnesium in his shotgun shells which caused the ensuing sparks to ignite the firing range) that is only 7 miles west of where I live. Although there is no danger of the fire coming my way it has made the air unhealthy at times when the wind it blowing in the wrong direction. 

Now that the leaves are off the trees I know the weather will be getting cooler and my rides will be getting shorter. Hopefully the mild winter predicted will be true and I can get through the winter without having any major interruptions in my riding.