A season of extremes

By Bob McNitt

Unless you have some scorpion blood flowing through your veins, the past few Sahara-like midday temperatures made being outdoors, whether working or playing, less than enjoyable. Even the most diehard outdoor enthusiasts opted, if possible, to spend most of those days either indoors, near a fan or A/C, or seeking shade. Water sports may have been okay, but only if you were actually in the water, not atop it. At the risk of being flogged with beach towels, Iím admitting that summer is not my favorite season. And especially so when itís like it has been the past few days ñ scorching hot.

The positive side of this – if you look hard enough – is the heat, on the heels of all the rain, has caused flora to flourish. If you donít have a garden or lawn to keep weeded or mowed, you may not have noticed just how lush and rapidly growing all the vegetation is. Old-timers use to say, during periods like this, they “could hear the corn grow.” Well, I can almost hear the lawn grass growing and could easily mow it about every couple of days. Sadly, many valley basin farmers had their corn crops severely damaged by the recent flood.

I’m not complaining, because this overabundance of rain certainly is desirable to the withering effects of a drought, like many areas of the country have been experiencing. Many of us seniors can recall a few years when it was so dry that the State either closed or threatened to close the woodlands to hunting, hiking and camping. But considering the weather of the past month or so, a compromise in both rainfall and high temperatures would have been more than welcomed.

We came very close to breaking the all-time record high this week in Norwich. The all-time (official) record high is 101 set in July 1936 and the all-time record low is 32-below in January 1957. Comparatively speaking, those aren’t too far off the state’s records of 108 in Troy on July 22, 1926 and 52-below on February 18, 1979 in Old Forge. Perhaps itís just coincidence, but there was major flooding in central New York in 1936.

While the flora has benefited from the excessive rain, area rivers and streams have not – at least for the next year or two. An inspection of local trout streams readily reveals the damage the roaring waters caused. Streambeds and banks have been scoured and altered, in the process destroying much of the aquatic bottom cover and life, especially nymphs, hellgrammites and crayfish. The flood also removed extensive amounts of the bank cover that trout and other fish used for cover and shade. The makeup and personalities of our rivers have also been changed, although not as severely as streams. Fishing once-familiar sections will seem like being on a new river, as many of the old familiar pools will have disappeared and new ones will have appeared in different locations.