6:30 in the morning, post-breakfast, and Tobie is agitating for his morning walkie. But the view over the porch railing says it’s not time yet…
It’s February, the days are palpably getting longer and it ought to be plenty light for walking by now, but no. Considering how the wind blew all night long and even now is half a gale gusting to a full gale on the ridgetops, I figured we’re probably in for some weather.
And maybe we are – but forty-five minutes later…
…the clouds were actually looking like they wanted to break up. The forecast says this won’t last, so I don’t know what to think. And in fact experience says you make your plans based on a pessimistic appraisal of what’s going on around you now rather than on what a weatherman a long way away says about a town ten miles away in different terrain.
Yesterday I thought I was going to have to drag the generator out of the cabin to charge the batteries – the batteries turn five this year and now that I have the ability to keep them charged I’m inclined to do so rather than stress them out of laziness – but the sun came out and let the solar panels do their jobs. Today it’s again forecast to be gloomy all day – we’ll see what it actually does and I’ll act accordingly. But yesterday was also windy and raw all day and today’s starting out colder, and that’s likely to continue to be so. Might snow, might not. All in all, a good day for a good book.
The weather sure has been a little wonky these days. I’m glad you have that little Honda, anyone living the rural life is silly for not having a backup power source.
Have you considered an auxiliary set of amorphous solar panels? They produce at least some electricity even in poor light conditions. I have two sets of the Harbor Freight Thunderbolt panels for this and taking the camper out beyond actual campgrounds. The kits come with 4 panels plus the cheap versions of the gear to make them work on their own. They’re light weight, so you don’t need a heavy duty mounting solution. You can buy them a set at a time until you have enough for your purposes. And HF puts them on sales /has a coupon for them on a regular basis.