Thoughts On A Sunday

We had our share of snow from Friday’s storm, with around 5 or 6 inches of light fluffy snow. As storms go, it was a minor one, at least for us up here in New Hampshire. Some schools closed, some went remote, and others remained open. It seemed hit or miss which schools were open or closed. The road crews did their usual good job and the highways and roads were clear even as the snow ended early in the afternoon. However, we will be paying the price since really cold temps moved in yesterday morning. It was 7ºF Saturday morning with a windchill of -10ºF. The high only reached about 18ºF.

There was more precipitation this morning in the form of freezing rain which made getting to church problematic, though the temps during the morning were warmer but still below freezing.

We’re in for some even colder temps on Monday and Tuesday and into Wednesday morning so we’ll need to bundle up a little more than usual.

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The “January 6th Insurrection” meme has been pushed by the Democrats and their media propagandists for all it’s worth. It is interesting considering no one has been charged with insurrection. However, cracks in the insurrection narrative have been cracking and I saw it first here in New Hampshire on the local ABC outlet.

It was during one of WMUR’s newscasts yesterday that one of their weekend anchors, Amy Coveno, talked about the January 6th riot at the Capitol building. She did not say ‘insurrection’. She did not imply a terrorist action. She said ‘riot’, for at worst that’s what the protest action that took place on that day was.

Whether it is indicative of a change in the narrative or some members of the media are realizing the narrative was seriously faulty and are backing away from it is still unknown. Only time will tell.

Update: I also heard the term ‘riot’ used during this morning’s Good Morning America broadcast. No mention of insurrection was made.

Is it a turning point?

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Some of the less informed folks have been trying to place the blame for this past Monday’s I-95 debacle in Virginia on not-yet-Governor Glenn Youngkin even though he had absolutely no power to do anything since he won’t be sworn in until January 15th. Others are blaming outgoing Governor Ralph Northam for his inaction. However, one meteorologist is placing the blame for the incident where it belongs: Virginia transportation officials.

The chief meteorologist for Accuweather criticized transportation officials for effectively ignoring forecasts of a winter storm that hit the mid-Atlantic on Monday morning, saying engineers had adequate warning and could have prevented the I-95 gridlock.

Accuweather’s Jonathan Porter provided screenshots showing that his team predicted six to 10 inches of snowfall in the Washington, D.C., area. Up to 10 inches of snow ultimately fell across the D.C. metropolitan area...marking the highest total the region has seen since Jan. 2019 and one of the biggest snowfalls on record in the city.

Porter said the Virginia Department of Transportation (DOT) could have done more to prevent hundreds of motorists from being stranded overnight on a roughly 50-mile stretch of I-95 running from Richmond to D.C. Accuweather had issued its first snowstorm forecast on Sunday night and another one warning of “rapidly worsening travel conditions” on Monday morning.

Maybe the weather forecast didn’t fit the climate change narrative and therefore was devoutly ignored? It wouldn’t surprise me if that was the case.

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Here is yet another story about the uselessness of masks, specifically cloth masks, when it comes to their ability to prevent the transmission of Covid.

For most of this pandemic, you’ve been told to mask up because masking will protect you and others from getting COVID.

But suddenly the ball game has changed. New studies show that the commonly worn cloth masks aren’t very effective, and experts are saying you need to ditch them.

“We want to make sure that it is not a cloth mask. A cloth mask does not offer protection,” says Asha Shajahan of the Mayo Clinic.

The Mayo Clinic recently conducted a study that found that cloth masks had a negligible impact on COVID transmission in villages in India—about 5%.

The ubiquitous disposable masks have also been shown to be ineffective as well, with one virologist showing us with a practical demonstration. The YouTube video linked in the post has been removed because according to YouTube it violates their rules by questioning anything put forth by Dr. Fauci. Heaven forbid you can show with empirical evidence and a demonstration that masks of that type are nothing more than a psychological sop and do little to prevent transmission. However, there is this separate demonstration showing the problems with the cloth masks that has not yet been spiked.

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There has been an explosion of short term rental properties, many listed via AirBnB, VRBO, and other online listing services here in New Hampshire. I have no doubt that has also been experience elsewhere, but my only experience is with New Hampshire. Some communities have had major problems with these short term rentals and have created rules and regulations to deal with the problems. Some of those rules and regulations have been draconian. Some have outright banned them.

In our town we hadn’t really had much of an issue with them until this past year. They existed, but not in large numbers. That changed over the past 18 months or so with an explosion in the number short term rentals, and with it, an increase in complaints by neighbors, and reports to police and town officials. We saw a considerable number of homes being sold to LLCs, usually for cash and for well above the asking price, some ridiculously so. (One such home, an 1800 square foot three-bedroom, two bathroom chalet with no view, no garage or paved driveway, and no real yard, went for more than twice the asking price due to a bidding war between different LLCs.)

This demand caused two problems, the first being that homes that would normally house families were being converted to short term rentals which added to the already severe housing shortage in our area. The second has been the disruption caused by some of the less-than-courteous transient renters, many who came to “party” and the neighbors be damned. This has driven our town to propose its own ordinances, regulations, and rules to deal with these short term rentals.

Banning them outright was seen as violating property owners’ rights. No regulation whatsoever was seen as violating neighboring property owners’ rights. The town has had to try to balance the two competing sets of rights, enabling the various AirBnBs and VRBOs while at the same time reining in the excesses we’ve been experiencing and giving neighbors some recourse when things go awry.

It’s going to be interesting to see how this will play out.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the freezing rain has moved on, the crews are making sure the roads are passable, and where we’re keeping an eye on the upcoming sub-zero temps arriving overnight.