Preparing Your House For Winter

Hi All,

Just a quickie post this morning for homeowners.  As you might have quessed, Winter is coming. It was cold last night - it hit about 40*F and the heat was most definitely on in my house....

Now that the cold is here to stay around for the next couple of months, can the snow, sleet and rain be far behind?  Probably not - and as a homeowner, it makes sense to prepare for the bad weather. 

Click on the links below and you'll be ahead of the game when you 'winterize your house'. 

19 Easy Home Winterization Projects - Popular Mechanics - slideshow with links
11 Ways to Winterize Your Home on a Budget - Bob Vila - slideshow of winterizing
35 Ways to Winterize Your Home - How Stuff Works/Home - with links to projects
10 Cheap Tips to Winterize Your Home - Business Insider - bubble wrap idea is a hoot - and clever
50 Ways to Winterize Your Home - Productivity501 - nice simple list of projects
Winterize Your Home: 10 Tips - WebMD - list with a paragraph length summary
Winterizing Your Home - HomeBuying-About.com - #4 - gutters and spouts!

And now for the library plug...click on this link which goes to the card catalog.  Subject of link is 'Dwellings - Maintenance and Repair - Amateurs' Manuals' and I sorted the titles from newest to oldest. Note also that many of these titles will be in the 'Home Sweet Home' section in the library - which is located next to the Children's Room.

Enjoy the links - and now you can enjoy a warm, comfortable home during the winter.

Regards,
Stu

Severe Weather Around the United States

Hi All,

Just wanted to share an interesting weather website called the 'U.S. Severe Weather Map' from the Weatherunderground.  Click here for the link. Users can use the tabs right above the map to choose various regions of the United States to locate severe weather.


Readers might want to visit the website Weather Underground for more weather forecasts, articles, maps, and more.  Click here for the site.

Enjoy the site.
Stu

Weather Changes and Forecasting

Hi All,

I seem to write a lot about the weather in this blog. I wonder if it is because weather plays such a large part in our lives that I write so much about it...hmmmm. I guess that is something to think about during a rainy day....

Anyway, the next few days are going to be very warm in this area of the country. Click here for a 5 day forecast for Long Island and, in particular, Farmingdale.

But the real reason I wanted to write todays' blog entry was to discuss (or at least mention) some of the traditional (and unofficial) methods that people forecast weather.

For example, click on this link for Traditional Weather Signs from a website called Gardening Matters. The author talks about various animals and how there various activities and behaviors indicate weather trends...interesting.

Another website that talks about this can be found here - the name of the site is Traditional Weather Lore Sayings of Britain. There is a whole section of weather lore and various animals - birds, pigs, cats and dogs and what there various behaviors mean with respect to the weather.

To see how far weather forecasting has come from its beginnings, click on this link from Wikipedia that discusses weather forecasting.

Finally, to learn a bit more about weather forecasting today, click on this link from the National Weather Service website - aka Weather.gov.

Notice the tabs at the top of the page...you can find links to Graphical Forecasts, National Maps, Radar, Water, Air Quality, Satellite, Climate and Warnings. Click on any of the links above to go to that part of the Weather.gov site.

So you see...weather is more than just the local weather guy on either CBS or NBC or ABC television.

Finally, this might be a popular blog entry - if so, I'll revisit the topic in the future with another related post - and possibly more detail with the NOAA.gov website...

Enjoy - and stay cool for the rest of the week.

Regards,
stu

Rainy Days - What To Do?

Hi All,

I've skimmed over the last few weeks worth of blog posts and a somewhat regular theme seems to have emerged - perhaps I did it unconsciously, or not. I'm really not sure, but I do seem to post a lot about the weather. As soon as I realized this, I thought of yet another weather-related post.

Lots of Farmingdale residents have children...and the weather (here it is again!) isn't so splendid in the Fall. As a matter of fact, it can be downright nasty what with all the rain, wind, clouds and stuff during this time of year. Now, add to this fact that folks might have children - and they probably aren't playing outside during this type of nasty, cold, rainy weather.

So...what to do with children during the inclement weather? Indeed, we'll come to your rescue and find something to at least keep the little ones a bit amused during this time of year!

Click here to find some rainy day activities for your 6-10 year old. This site has divided up the games into memory games, word games, science games and card games (go figure) and guessing games and more...cute and easy to navigate website.

Click here for a site called 'Kids Can Have Fun During Rainy Days - which is more of a summary of what you can do with your kids during this weather.

Brought to you live, from Helium.com is the next entry: Indoor Rainy-Day Activities For Children. I need to explain a bit about this site. The above link is really a link to a list of pages that discuss what to do with children during the bad weather.

Clicking on an individual link will get you to the actual article itself. In other words, there is a built in extra layer that users - this means you - have to click through to actually get to the material you are interested in. Makes sense? I hope so.

So...for example, I clicked on the first entry by Trudy Brown. Note that you have to click on the title of the article that you are interested in once you get to this page. Click here to follow the link from Helium.com

Finally, click here for a site from AmazingMoms.com and an article called BoredomBusters. Notice that at the end of this article they have more games for children to play during the foul weather.

Okay...here is another site that is very, very helpful. It is called Babycenter.com and I typed in a search in the box at the top right side of the webpage. I used the phrase 'rainy day activities' and the results can be seen by clicking on this link. I suspect that you will now have lots of things to do with your children when inclement weather prevents them from playing outside.

I hope these sites are entertaining and keep your children busy during the nasty weather.

Stu

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