Students Invent Devices to Battle Snow, Ice, Cold
Boston — Winter is bearing down anew, and Harvard University students have been engineering new ways to deal with it. Eighteen juniors representing several engineering disciplines in professor David Mooney’s problem-solving and design class spent the fall semester inventing a robotic remote-control rooftop snowblower, a superheated icicle cutter and a freeze-resistant doormat. The projects grew out of meetings with the university’s...
Business of Agriculture: Winter Greens
We’re experimenting with growing greens like kale and spinach on our farm this winter, and right about now, I’m thinking I should have my head examined. If the door to the greenhouse isn’t frozen solid on a typical morning, I know my fingers soon will be. Despite an occasional frozen thumb, the experiment is showing signs of life, not just on our farm but on farms across the valley and the country. Primarily this is thanks to the...
No Snow, No Snow Business: Slow Start to Winter at Least Allows for Maintenance and Repairs
Enfield — On a gray, overcast afternoon last week Whaleback Mountain was bare. Rocks poked out of the mud, the water of Stony Brook at the mountain’s base rushed with the torrent of a spring thaw. Ski chairlifts dangled motionless from their lines. “I’ve been in the ski business since my youth in the late ’50s and early ’60s. I’ve seen some pretty lean years,” said Gerd Riess, mountain manager at Whaleback. He recalled “one year back...
Competing Theories On Coming Winter
The snow in Siberia has piled up again, and according to one theory this means cold and ice are on the way for the Northeast and other parts of the eastern United States. That is, if the snow can wrestle El Nino into submission. Before the match starts with El Nino, here’s a recap of how the whole winter outlook thing works: It all starts when a large expanse of Eurasia is covered by snow by the end of October, said Judah Cohen, the...
Business of Agriculture: Region’s farmers see more ‘extreme precipitation events’
I was standing in my greenhouse two summers ago, planting seeds for fall broccoli, when the water started rising around my feet. First it was just puddles on the greenhouse floor. Soon water covered the whole floor, and within a few minutes, it was ankle deep. By the time it reached mid-shin, I went outside to see what was going on. I might have gone earlier, but it had been pelting rain all afternoon and I was otherwise dry for the...
