Category: Williamsburg
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Hurrication at William & Mary: from Gloria to Florence
Last week William & Mary closed up shop and students were sent packing due to the threat from Hurricane Florence. This semester I’m teaching Weather, Climate, & Change (GEOL 100) and the Earth’s Environmental Systems (GEOL 110), in both courses we discuss hurricanes (typically at mid-semester). For obvious reasons, Hurricane Week 2018 came early. On…
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Let It Rain
I’m teaching Weather, Climate, & Change (pdf) – a COLL 100 course – to 40 enthusiastic students who are in their first semester at W&M. Nearly every day in class, I play the Song of the Day — it’s a musical interlude intended to add some rhythm to class (literally), and the song lyrics connect,…
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Paddle Trip Report 3 – The Long Dash for Home
The last post ended with my canoe trapped and broken on a granite outcrop at the base of the Fall Zone in Richmond, Virginia. I was on an 8-day journey by canoe from the Blue Ridge Foothills to Williamsburg; a middle-aged journey to mark the 30th anniversary of my arrival as a student at William…
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Paddle Trip Report 2 – Across the Piedmont and Fall Zone
At the end of my last post we’d completed the first two days of an 8-day canoe trip from the Blue Ridge Foothills in central Virginia to Williamsburg, and were tucked in on a gravelly island in the middle of the Rivanna River. DAY 3- Rivanna Rain The rain returned during the night. Day 3…
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Paddle Trip Report 1 – Through the Foothills
We successfully completed our 8-day paddle trip from the foothills of the Blue Ridge to Williamsburg. It was all the adventure I’d hoped for. In this first of three posts, I report on the highlights, rough spots, and geology along our journey. This was a personal trip completed with my old friends and goodtime buddies,…
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A Journey Thirty Years in the Making
In 1985 I enrolled at William & Mary. I remember bits of that summer day in which my mother and I made the journey from our home in Albemarle County (west of Charlottesville) to college in Williamsburg. That seems a long time ago. During the past thirty years I have made the journey from Albemarle…
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Going Low, W&M’s Keck Lab Measures Its Lowest Temperature Ever
The eastern half of the United States is gripped by intense cold, and William & Mary’s campus is wrapped in snow and ice. Earlier today, the Keck Environmental Field Laboratory registered its lowest temperature ever as the thermometer bottomed out at -16.9˚ C (1.5˚ F). The Keck Lab’s weather station has been operating since 2003,…
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Williamsburg’s Triple H’s
Welcome to William & Mary, it’s the middle of August and the weather in Williamsburg is… Williamsburg’s Triple H’s- HAZY, HOT, and HUMID. For me August is not Williamsburg’s finest month and I’m not the only one with that point of view. Faculty colleagues who, in August, moved to Williamsburg from New England, northern California,…
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Williamsburg is Not Flat
Spring has arrived and the William & Mary landscape is especially captivating. When asked to describe William & Mary’s landscape, many students, faculty and even administrators use the words flat and swampy. To be sure, parts of campus are flat and some of the bottomland is swampy, but this landscape description is incomplete. A measure…
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A Snow Day, For Real?
For the first two months of 2009, Williamsburg escaped any measurable snow. There were opportunities for snow, but invariably snow went either to the south or north (see posting of January 20th). Close but no cigar. Last Sunday, the snow goddess played a cruel trick; the snow fell fast and furious, but the big fat…
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To Snow or Not To Snow
January 19, 2009, 7 p.m. William & Mary may start the spring semester under a blanket of snow. That’s a big deal around here. Snow is not common in Williamsburg, and depending on your perspective, it is an unusual winter treat or unexpected headache. I am quite pleased because the arrival of snow would be…