Help Keep Provintown Beaches Clean By What You Do On Commercial Street

This emblem reminds us not to put anything into the storm drains in PTown streets

This "no dumping" emblem has appeared on curbs all along Commercial Street, letting people know that the storm drains in the road lead directly out to Provincetown Harbor.
Anything poured into these large, square, iron-grated drains will flow straight to the harbor through the system of pipelines that run beneath the roads and emerge on the beach, right at the edge of the water.

Cigarette butts dropped on our streets end up in our storm drains.

Cigarette butts flicked into these drains will wash out onto the beach with the next rainstorm. Popsicle sticks, sugar packets, gum wrappers, plastic straws and coffee stir sticks all wind up on the beach, hundreds per day, dropped on the street, and even right into the drains, by folks looking for a convenient spot to get rid of small bits of trash as they're walking down Commercial Street.

Any sort of debris, including small twigs and even windblown sand, can clog these drains as well, leading to flooding on Commercial Street and beyond, as we saw this past winter.
Please, everyone, help us keep any kind of chemicals, waste or debris out of the world's fragile oceans, by keeping these things off of PTown's streets and out of our storm drains. Mother Earth thanks you!

Harbor Ice Lingers After Storm as Flooded Provincetowners Shovel Out

The Truro shoreline, and My Yot in the ice, seen from the beach at St Mary's Church.

Former fishing vessel My Yot was seen in Provincetown Harbor surrounded by sea ice last Saturday. From Saint Mary's beach, looking toward the Truro shoreline, the anchored boat appeared to float gently amidst the gradually melting floes of ice left behind after the so-called "bomb cyclone" storm that had ripped its way up the East Coast the week before.
A weather condition known as bombogenesis occurs when a very big drop in air pressure happens in a very short period of time, creating a storm of explosive strength. The sudden drop in pressure causes air to be drawn spiraling into the center of the growing storm, only to be rapidly pushed out through the top of the system.
If the amount of air being sucked into the storm can't keep up with the amount being blown out of the top, the pressure drops even farther and the system grows that much bigger, sucking in more air from farther, and still farther away. Our storm was so strong that it drew in moist air from as far away as the Caribbean.

Folks, and pets, are happy to walk on the beach again, as ice shifts with the tides.

Bombogenesis is achieved when the air pressure drops at least 24 millibars over a period of 24 hours. In this storm, there was a pressure drop of 59 millibars in those 24 hours, which set us up for a storm so strong that it may actually have broken previous records.
PTown saw storm surge and flooding, window-rattling winds and some very cold temperatures, yet we came out pretty well, since the heart of the storm was very far out to sea, where scientists estimated possible 50-foot waves. A blizzard warning had been issued from Virginia to eastern Maine. Even parts of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina got six inches of snow, which is a huge struggle for them.
JFK airport had to be closed for a bit due to 55 mph winds, Islip airport on Long Island got snow at the rate of about three inches per hour, the shoreline and islands of Massachusetts recorded winds over 70 mph, and as the storm was strengthening in New England, Boston was nearing tides at an all-time record high.

Harbor colors are actually enhanced with all the white spots to play on at sunset.

Communities farther inland got their share of extreme weather out of this event, too. Immense temperature drops were felt from the East Coast to the Midwest as this epic storm jostled the polar vortex.
It pulled in masses of frigid air from Siberia, the North Pole and Greenland all at once, causing a rapid drop in normal, regional winter temperatures by as much as 40 degrees in some spots.

So PTown really was quite lucky, despite flooding in many Commercial Street businesses, homes, restaurants, and the UU Meetinghouse. We live in a town where the electricity goes out when someone sneezes in Wellfleet, yet we escaped the serious, lengthy outages that are so dangerous in extremely cold weather.
All in all, we did alright. And as temperatures warmed up a bit, folks could get back to strolling along the harbor, stepping around the ice floes that settle on the flats when the tide rolls out, and enjoying these spectacular, unusual sights.

If the beach becomes impassable, take the stairway up to Fanizzi's, reopening today.

As we were reaching low tide on this day, the sun was getting ready to set as well, making for some lovely scenes of sea ice glistening as it came to rest on the tidal flats circling around Provincetown Harbor.
The beach in front of Fanizzi's had slowly begun taking on its usual late-afternoon pinkish, golden glow, but with a lot of extra sparkles and colors appearing in that rare, temporary art form that Mother Earth had floated on the water for us.
After closing while they worked to recover from heavy flooding and storm damage, today sees Fanizzi's Restaurant once again opening its doors, resuming their usual schedule, complete with early bird specials, Friday Night Fish Fry, Sunday Brunch, that stunning view, and all the things that make this resilient little spot a favorite neighborhood hangout. Stop in and warm up a bit if you get a little chilled on your beach walk.

Jewels Appear in Melting PTown Snow

When the sun is at just the right angle, it makes jewels appear in the
mountains of snow and ice slowly melting all around Provincetown.

Melting snow and ice turns into heaps of diamonds when the light is just right, in the early morning on one mound of snow, and late afternoon on another.
As the days slowly warm a little, and when the sun hits just the right angle, the light refracts through snow that's been turned to ice by varying temperatures and the rain we've had between snow storms, turning all these banks of snow and ice into potential piles of jewels for anyone paying attention at just the right moment. Keep an eye out for these crystals, appearing briefly, and gone in an instant.

The Spectacular Provincetown Sky, Opus 2

The Provincetown breeze forms a series of rolling waves in the clouds as the sun sets over the rooftops.

If I had turned the corner from Carver onto Commercial Street 30 seconds earlier, or later, I'd have missed this shot of an insistent breeze gently swirling the clouds into a series of rolling ocean waves.
I happened into a crowd that had gathered spontaneously in front of the Aquarium Marketplace, at the beginning of Provincetown's West End, where people were looking up over the rooftops toward the western sky, exclaiming over the sight they were seeing as they fumbled for their cameras. The wind was twirling the clouds into neat little curlicues as it blew them along the horizon. I heard someone say there was a name for this phenomenon, but no one seemed to know what it was.
You might think these clouds have been "photoshopped" into the picture, but there is no trickery here. This is simply Mother Nature doing what she does… turning the natural elements around us into  stunning, elegant little displays that magically appear wherever you go in Provincetown.

UPDATE: My thanks to a reader who e-mailed me a name for these clouds, enabling me to look up some information on them. It turns out this sort of cloud formation sometimes results when there is more than one layer of air above us, moving at different speeds on a windy day. A thinner layer of air might move more quickly over a denser, heavier layer, rolling a bank of clouds into a shape that resembles a series of cresting waves.
These cloud formations are known by a number of names around the world, and are often called "Kelvin-Helmoltz" clouds or billows. They were named for Lord William Thomas Kelvin, a Scottish physicist and mathematician, and for Hermann von Helmholtz, a German physicist, physician and philosopher (say that five times really fast,) both of whom were born in the 1820s.
"Shear-gravity clouds" is another monicker for these whimsical swirls of condensed water vapor that most often indicate instability in the atmosphere, and are a predictor of likely turbulence for airplanes. And they make a dandy bit of sculpture in Mother Nature's sky.

It's Furniture Season in PTown

Treasures are found on the streets of Provincetown as people move to new quarters for the season.
Useable desks, couches, TVs, rugs, lamps, chests of drawers, antiques and more are free for the taking. 

It happens every spring and fall, as people are moving in and out of Provincetown for the season, or have to find a new apartment as summer residents return. I call it furniture season, when you're likely to find any number of decorative lamps, baskets, area rugs or other home furnishings, or major appliances, or furniture for any room in the house, all sitting out on the curb waiting to be carted off to a new home.
Folks moving seasonally are often going into a smaller place, or perhaps to a furnished apartment with no room for their own furniture. Landlords and guesthouse owners are sprucing up for new tenants or visitors, and when they replace a kitchen sink, generally it's easier to give the old one away rather than try to recycle, or pay to scrap it. When a charming little B & B upgrades the tiny refrigerators in each guest room, the old ones can magically appear at the side of the road, sometimes for just an hour or two before being snapped up and put to good use in several different homes.
The chest of drawers above is a good quality piece of furniture that has been neglected over the years. Although the heavily lacquered finish is quite chipped, with the right Chinese silk runner (from the thrift store) thrown over the top, it would fit right into a "shabby chic" decor. Or a light sanding and a quick coat of paint could transform it in a single day. Some folks might take a week or two to thoroughly strip and sand it down to the original wood and give it a few coats of varnish. At any rate, someone got a nice piece of furniture for free, because this dresser was gone within a day or two. In PTown, it pays be friends with someone who owns a truck or a van.
People moving into a new place often buy a new TV or stereo, or other electronics, putting their old ones out for adoption. It pays to be a little cautious about picking up anything electrical, or else to be very quick to scoop it up. You probably don't want to take a chance on a lamp or appliance that has sat out in the rain for a week, but if you come across a TV that wasn't there yesterday, that's a pretty safe bet.
If you're buying a new sofa for your living room, try to time it with the weather forecast. You don't want  to have the new one delivered in a downpour, and you don't want to put the old one out on the curb when it's likely to be raining for a few days in a row.
Finding a new use for household furnishings rather than buying new ones is fun, and it has benefits for the planet. Reusing old items saves new trees from being cut down, saves water and air pollution caused by the manufacturing process, and saves fuel used (and its inherent air pollution) to transport goods across the country to sales floors. So do your best to let someone else get some use out of your old furnishings and appliances, and keep an eye out for useful items you can repurpose rather than buying something new. That way everybody wins, including Mother Earth.