By Bob McNitt

Unless you have some scorpion blood flowing through your veins, the past few Sahara-like midday temperatures made being outdoors, whether working or playing, less than enjoyable. Even the most diehard outdoor enthusiasts opted, if possible, to spend most of those days either indoors, near a fan or A/C, or seeking shade. Water sports may have been okay, but only if you were actually in the water, not atop it. At the risk of being flogged with beach towels, Iím admitting that summer is not my favorite season. And especially so when itís like it has been the past few days ñ scorching hot.
The positive side of this – if you look hard enough – is the heat, on the heels of all the rain, has caused flora to flourish. If you donít have a garden or lawn to keep weeded or mowed, you may not have noticed just how lush and rapidly growing all the vegetation is. Old-timers use to say, during periods like this, they “could hear the corn grow.” Well, I can almost hear the lawn grass growing and could easily mow it about every couple of days. Sadly, many valley basin farmers had their corn crops severely damaged by the recent flood.
I’m not complaining, because this overabundance of rain certainly is desirable to the withering effects of a drought, like many areas of the country have been experiencing. Many of us seniors can recall a few years when it was so dry that the State either closed or threatened to close the woodlands to hunting, hiking and camping. But considering the weather of the past month or so, a compromise in both rainfall and high temperatures would have been more than welcomed.
We came very close to breaking the all-time record high this week in Norwich. The all-time (official) record high is 101 set in July 1936 and the all-time record low is 32-below in January 1957. Comparatively speaking, those aren’t too far off the state’s records of 108 in Troy on July 22, 1926 and 52-below on February 18, 1979 in Old Forge. Perhaps itís just coincidence, but there was major flooding in central New York in 1936.
While the flora has benefited from the excessive rain, area rivers and streams have not – at least for the next year or two. An inspection of local trout streams readily reveals the damage the roaring waters caused. Streambeds and banks have been scoured and altered, in the process destroying much of the aquatic bottom cover and life, especially nymphs, hellgrammites and crayfish. The flood also removed extensive amounts of the bank cover that trout and other fish used for cover and shade. The makeup and personalities of our rivers have also been changed, although not as severely as streams. Fishing once-familiar sections will seem like being on a new river, as many of the old familiar pools will have disappeared and new ones will have appeared in different locations.
Normally, this midsummer period would be the perfect time to forgo the daylight angling and opt to fish at night, when itís cooler and most fish are more active. But even after this heat wave breaks, the overabundance of mosquitoes we’re “enjoying” this year would make even that a test of endurance and insect repellent effectiveness. This swat and squirm scenario would be made even worse since most nighttime insects, including mosquitoes, are attracted to bright light, such as is generated by anglers’ flashlights and lanterns.
How the flood affected wildlife remains to be seen and probably wonít be apparent until late summer or early fall, when the dense foliage begins to wither and the young-of-the-year become more active and visible. However, wildlife species tend to be tougher and more adaptable than many people would suspect, and as water levels increased during the flood, most species instinctively sought safer environments. I’ve had reports of people seeing deer, woodchucks and even squirrels swimming to drier ground to escape the flood waters. Generally speaking, nature is quite resilient and can survive natural disasters far better than we might think it can.
To put things in perspective, on Tuesday I was at the dentist for my six-month cleaning and checkup. When getting my next appointment afterwards, I had to chuckle – it will be February 1, 2007. Potentially, the temperature swing between last Tuesday and the day of my next dental visit could be more than 100 degrees. One thing about living in central New York is the seasons are seldom boring.

Diseases Hit NYS Fish And Birds
Anglers fishing Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River this year have reported catching fish or finding dead fish that had ugly sores on their bodies. In June, the DEC announced the discovery of viral hemorrhagic septicemia (VHS) virus in several fish species from those waters. And in July, it was confirmed that disease was killing gulls and terns in these same waters.
The fish species most affected are the round goby, muskellunge, and smallmouth bass. The VHS virus is a pathogen of fish and does not pose any threat to public health, and swimming in Lake Ontario or St. Lawrence River waters poses no risk to human health from either botulism or the VHS virus.
At about the same time, dead birds, primarily terns and gulls, began washing ashore in these same waters. The DEC confirmed that this was due to an outbreak of Type E Botulism, which had spread from the eastern part of Lake Erie where, during the year 2000, thousands of dead water birds had washed ashore. The disease has not been found in any fish from Lake Ontario or the St. Lawrence River, and the DEC is continuing to gather sick and dead birds and fish to check for botulism or other diseases.
One can’t help but suspect the overabundance of cormorants might have something to do with this, since most of the birds that have tested positive for botulism came from the Little Gallo Island area, where hoards of cormorants have decimated it with their acidic droppings.