NEW CASTLE SALTINES
Illustrated bites of Island news

Jim Cerny, reporting and photography

Public occurrences … Parks report … Winter scenes … Shiver me timbers … Piscataqua ship spotting … Quick index to back issues

Public occurrences …

• Police update. The department continues to work on recruitment and training. Meanwhile Erik Rappolt, whom we've pictured previously in this section, is no longer with New Castle.
• School budget. The proposed school budget will be presented to the Town Budget Committee on February 3 at 5:30 p.m. Then there will be a public hearing on the budget on February 16 at 7 p.m. in Town Hall. The school district meeting, at which the budget will be voted on, is scheduled for March 16 at 7 p.m. in the Macomber Room of the Library.
  
• School building. The school board is forming a committee to take a fresh look at building needs, influenced by the success of the Safety Building committee. The intent is to spend this year developing a plan for presentation to the budget process in 2011.
  
• UNH Marine Facility. Jonathan Pennock, Director of the UNH Marine Program, reports that there are plans to make landscaping improvements this spring around Battery Farnsworth and Walbach Tower. Then attention will focus on interpretive signage for the structures. Contact him if you are interested in assisting.
  

Parks report …

On January 22 the New Hampshire Division of Parks and Recreation released the final version of the Ten-Year Strategic Development and Capital Improvement Plan. The Seacoast Area includes these parks and historic sites: Fort Constitution, Fort Stark, Hampton Beach, Jenness Beach, Kingston, North Beach, North Hampton, Odiorne Piont, Ragged Neck/Rye Harbor, Wallis Sands, Wentworth Coolidge, and White Island.

The report is a well-organized assemblage of information and anyone interested in these parks should look at it. There are over 100 pages of material, consisting of a basic 65-page report followed by 19 appendices.

The most basic point is that the self-funding model is not working, resulting in a growing backlog of needs, on the order of $100 million over 10 years, with several million dollars of short term needs. While some savings can be made by more efficient operation of the Division, that will not close the gap, which grows nearly every year.

In the Seacoast, the main park is Hampton Beach in terms of producing a surplus of income, but also requiring the most maintenance and development. Some places, like the Fort Stark historic site in New Castle, involve very little expense, benefiting from an active volunteer group, the Fort Stark Brigade often shown at work in these pages. Even so, money is needed at Fort Stark to expand parking, install a new gate, and improve interpretive materials.

Winter scenes …

These pictures were taken on a sunny winter day with fresh snow for making of a fort and sliding at the Maude H. Trefethen school.

Shiver me timbers …

How cold has January been? Based on the Durham records, both real-time and historical, it has not been particularly cold, especially in terms of overnight lows. Durham is used as the closest source of well-maintained continuous records and of course most of the time New Castle will be somewhat less extreme. All temperatures discussed here are in Fahrenheit degrees.

In Durham there was only one night in January, 2010, when it went below zero, and that was -1.4 on the 10th, just at sunrise. The Durham record goes back to 1893 and there have indeed been some remarkable Januarys.

The month of January, 1957, when I was in junior high, was an extremely cold month. I remember trundling off to school when it was -20 and then the next day when it was -20 again we stayed home because the school boiler broke! That month (in Durham) it went below zero 12 times and three of those times it was -20, -21, -24.

However, the worst cold outbreak in the Durham record, in terms of January lows, is one I don't remember — it was 1971 and I was in southern Rhode Island. That month saw the second-coldest low in Durham at -30 (the coldest is -35 in 1935) and there was a consecutive run of daily lows of -18, -22, -24, -30, -12. Shiver me timbers! Durham has not gone to -20 since 1994 when -22 was recorded.

What I regard as the most anomalous temperature extreme (outlier) in the Durham record was not in January, but on March 19, 1967, when it went to -18. I was in school at the time and distinctly remember the event — there was a snow cover and it radiated heat insanely that night. Let's hope it is never repeated in any future March!



Weather fans may be interested to know that there is a complete online archive of daily US weather maps, going back to 1871!

Piscataqua ship spotting …

The SWATH research vessel, Ferdinand R. Hassler, is still projected to arrive at the UNH marine facility in New Castle in late 2010. Check out this video clip of it being lowered into the water at the Halter Marine site in Mississippi in September, 2009.

The Atlantic Arrow was seen loading scrap metal at the State Pier in Portsmouth, just as it was back in November 2009.



The Tsuru was also spotted as a repeat visitor, last reported here in January 2010.

Quick index to back issues of Saltines …