January 2022 – Patricia McLellan's Blog

2022-01-31

January Walk – Checking in

Today is the last day of January and finally the weather was pleasant enough to go for a walk in the woods. We’ve been having snow, rain and sleet, but today there was little wind and light cloud so I was tempted out for a walk.

I like to have a goal for my walk, somewhere I turn around, though I don’t have to go back the same way that I came. In Trøndelag, Norway, there is a tradition of having a mailbox, possibly fastened to a tree, in which there is a book in which to write your name. These “turkasser” (tour boxes) are usually put out by the local sports club to encourage people to get out walking. They would normally be some distance from a car road, so that you are required to walk there. The books in the boxes usually last several years and one writes the date one comes, and one’s name. Some people like to add the time of day, comments about the weather and even the dog’s name. In the one that I visit most, I often write the accumulated times I have visited the place during the current calendar year.

Bjønnbråtte

One of the most common walks that I take is to a place called “Bjønnbråtte”. Here there is a gapahuk, a primitive lean-to. It is a type of shelter, usually open on one side. This one would sit about three adults at the opening and you have to watch that you don’t hit your head when you stand up again. A Norwegian gapahuk, or lean-to, comes in many sizes and can be large enough to sit ten to fifteen people inside, or small like this one. We have lived here for 32 years and this one has been here all of the years we have lived here.

There is enough height to sit at the front. Today it was dry, but the last time I came here, snow had blown into it so I was not able to sit down. On the inside of the far wall, there is a box in which a book is stored. The box keeps the book dry. The lean-to is made out of logs and planks and sits on a foundation of mountain rock and large stones. The roof is covered with sod.

During the summer months, this is a check-in place for Inderøy Walks, but I also use it as a check-in place and turn-around place in the winter. Having a check-in place makes a good goal for a walk, and I find that it gives me the feeling of having gotten somewhere. Living in the country, walking to a store or other municipal facility is not possible.

The tour box has been opened and the book taken out to write my name in it. Today was the fourth time I have visited this spot in 2022. When we first came here, the book that was used at the time was just kept in a plastic bag to protect it from the weather. A couple of years ago my husband decided to make something more weather-proof and the result was the current box made out of used terrace boards.

The information sign inside the gapahuk/lean-to.

Why is this place called “Bjønnbråtte”? The Norwegian word, “bjønn” means a bear. So the sign gives the story of a bear, as retold by Jens Ness who was born in 1872. “A bear came across Ulvingrenda hamlet, crossed Leirdalen valley and came past Ness-sand, where a boy herded cattle at Ness. The bear killed a heifer which he started eating. Eventually, a lot of people gathered there and the bear was chased over the “halleren”, across the Bjønndalen valley and on top of this plateau.” It is not known whether they killed it there, shot him or scared him over the cliff. This is supposedly the last bear seen in the village.

Inside the lean-to, there is also a sign warming about forest fire danger. Between the 15th of April and the 15th of September it is forbidden to light fires. The telephone number for reporting fires is also given.

Rotsveet

After reaching my goal and writing my name in the book, I turned around and headed home. The first part of the trail I have to just retrace my steps, but I stopped to read one of the information signs along the way.

Norwegian at the top and English in small print at the bottom. You can also read all the signs for this walk between Vangshylla and Straumen at https://www.inderoysti.no/kart-og-tavler/.

(English translation of the sign) Once upon a time, this area has been used for cultivation. We see stones that are at the lower edge of the plot from when it was cleared, and as the name suggests, it was cleared by flaming, and used to grow root crops. (The word “sveet” means method for the clearing of land by burning and flaming.)

It was common to have land like this in the forest – where it was protected from the weather and the climate was good and warm. Another conclusion we could draw is that at that time there were no moose or deer. The root crops would then have been animal food and not human food. This has probably never been a place of residence.

Just below there is a great and airy view point out towards Norviksundet and Ytterøy island.

The stones that are mentioned in the text. There is a viewpoint straight ahead, on the edge of a cliff.

The viewpoint, looking towards the island of Ytterøya. I didn’t go too close to the edge when it was snowy and possibly icy. There is a sheer drop down many meters to the fjord.

You can just see the sign on the right of the path. It is relatively flat here, so one can see why it might have been cultivated at one time. The viewpoint over the fjord is off to the left from where I am standing.

The beach at Rotvollvika

To make my walk a round trip and to give myself two more uphill stretches, I often walk down towards the fjord. Today I caught sight of something unusual for our local beaches, but probably a result of the recent storms. Where I grew up in British Columbia, beaches were often littered with logs that had gotten loose from log booms. There are no log booms in the area here so there is very little driftwood on beaches.

The tide was relatively high when I came by. Seeing a floating stump in the water is unusual here. One can also see a smaller stump higher up the beach and some branches that have been put on the beach by either a higher tide or waves.

Looking eastwards along the beach, one can just see the piles of seaweed, deposited on the beach at high tide. Now is it covered by snow and ice. In the foreground there is a stream.

This stream has always fascinated me as it flows under the red boat house at the left.

I was probably out for an hour on my walk today and it was good to get outdoors and get both fresh air and exercise. I hope you get out for a walk today too.

2022-01-282022-01-28

The Weather Machine: A Journey Inside the Forecast by Andrew Blum

Particularly in the winter months, I am one of those people who are constantly checking the weather forecast. Is it going to snow or rain? How cold will it be? Can I get out for a walk when there is no precipitation? How much clothes do I need to wear? I consult my weather app on my phone daily, if not several times a day. I’ve also noted that the weather forecasts are much more detailed (it will rain for the next 90 minutes and then clear up) and more accurate (it actually does rain for 90 minutes then stop).

I found this book by Andrew Blum very interesting as he goes into the history of weather forecasting and how it has come to the point it is now, with very reliable forecasts for the next 24 hours. If you find this topic interesting, I recommend this book. It is relatively short (about 130 pages of text) and well written. The language is simple so that anyone can understand what he is writing about and he has stories of people which make it easier to connect to the history he is telling. If you don’t like spoilers, you can hop over the rest of this blog. If you want to learn more about the book and its contents, continue reading, as I will summarize the main points of the book. Many of the expressions that I use in my own text are taken from Blum’s book.

Much of the book is about the history of how weather forecasting developed and as a resident of Norway, I found it interesting how much Norway was part of this history. The Prologue gives his reasons for investigating this topic, then the book is divided into four parts:

Part I: Calculation – two chapters
Part II: Observation – four chapters
Part III: Simulation – four chapters
Part IV: Preservation – one chapter

Part I: Calculation

The book starts off with a visit to the Norwegian Meteorological Institute in Oslo in June 2015. Because Norwegians are at the mercy of the cold and the wind, and is a relatively rich country, forecasting the weather and understanding the mechanics of the atmosphere has had a long tradition in Norway.

With the invention of the telegraph in 1844, communication between various points in a country became much easier and current weather conditions could be compared with places far away. People’s understanding of weather began to develop and it wasn’t just what people were experiencing right then. A map could be made of what the weather looked like. Seeing a map of what was happening allowed people to start thinking about probable changes and therefore how the weather might be in the future.

So the collection of weather observations became part of the weather service. The collection and sharing of this information was the next development. In 1873, the first congress of what later became the International Meteorological Organization took place in Vienna with representatives from twenty governments. Standards, protocols and rules were developed.

By 1895, just the collection of weather observations was not enough, it had to be put into a new system of understanding how the weather worked. Vilhelm Bjerknes, a Norwegian, took this understanding one step farther by suggesting that the weather could be calculated using physics and mathematics, making meteorology a modern science: verifiable, repeatable and mathematical. Bjerknes’ equations weren’t easy to solve, but it was a start towards understanding the connection between the atmosphere and the weather.

This led to the idea of a weather factory where calculations were made, based on weather observations, that could lead to a forecast of what the weather would be like in the future.

Part II: Observation

The first chapter in this part of the book is about how weather observations are made. Some weather stations are manned as there are some observations that only a human can do. Some observations are made on land, some on the sea, some on aircraft and some from satellites. The author decides to visit a manned weather station and visits the island of Utsira off the west coast of Norway, between Bergen and Stavanger. This has been a weather station since the 1860s. Things that Hans Van Kampen must record, several times a day, include type of precipitation, sky height, visibility and cloud type.

The second chapter in this part is how the view of the weather changed, driven by technological developments and military needs, primarily in World War II. Among other developments was the sending up of rockets with cameras mounted on them, taking pictures of the earth that they were leaving. Now came the idea of having instruments up in the atmosphere, above the clouds, to get a larger view of the weather systems. Such was the start of weather satellites that are now used as one type of weather observations. The World Weather Watch was born and was to be used for peaceful purposes only, as the atmosphere is borderless.

The third chapter in this part describes the two types of weather satellites, geostationary orbiters (which appear motionless as they follow the earth’s rotation) and polar orbiters (which fly lower and circle the planet from north to south and from south to north). Most of these satellites are owned by governments. In Europe, EUMETSAT, the European meteorological satellite agency is an independent organization funded and overseen by the meteorological services of thirty nations.

The fourth chapter in this part gives more information about satellites, how they are made and what they do, including a visit to Vandenberg, in California, to see the launch of a satellite.

Part III: Simulation

In the first chapter in this part, the author visits the Mesa Lab, outside Boulder, Colorado, where we are given information about how the weather models work, how the observations are used and turned into a forecast of what most likely will happen in the future. Supercomputers are now used to take the observations and make calculations, and provide reliable forecasts of what will happen in the near future. These weather models are constantly being tweaked to improve them.

In the second chapter of this part, the author travels to the Weather Centre in Reading, England, actually called the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), which opened in 1979. (This is also the source of the weather forecasts used in Norway by yr.no.) We are given information about the history of this centre, plus we get insights into how it works. What is impressive is how the model that is being run here becomes more accurate as time goes on. This chapter gives interesting insights into how such a weather center functions and how forecasts are created by supercomputers.

The third chapter of this part discusses how weather forecasts have become available to us users since the first forecast appeared on the internet in 1991. The importance of forecasts is in being able to use them. The introduction of smart phones changed the need to have forecasts available constantly, and not just once a day for the evening news on television.

The four chapter in this part is about what makes a good weather forecast as well as what a weather forecast is good for. The weather forecast is being primarily generated by computers, but humans are still need to get the information out to users, whether it is an individual needing to know whether it’s going to rain, or the media that can warn the general public of a major storm that is coming, or emergency services that have to be prepared for the big storm that creates problems.

Part IV: Preservation

The last chapter of the book is concerned with the future of weather forecasting and who is in control of it. Though forecasting has improved a lot in recent years, there are still a lot of hurdles in the way. One of the concerns is who owns the data that is being generated, whether it is individual observations or observations made by private networks. International cooperation has been the basis of the work so far, but will this cooperation continue into the future?

To quote Blum’s conclusion: “The weather machine is a last bastion of international cooperation. It produces some of the only news that isn’t corrupted by commerce, by advertising, by bias or fake-ness. It is one of the technological wonders of the world. At the beginning of an era when the planet will be wracked by storms, droughts, and floods that will threaten if not shred the global order, the existence of the weather machine is some consolation.”

I really enjoyed this book and I recommend it to all of my readers. Enjoy!

2022-01-24

January Walk – Weather

When I walk on my own, I often write blogs in my head, but they don’t all make it onto the computer. Today I was thinking about the weather and how I have always been fascinated by it.

When I went out for an hour’s walk today, it wasn’t raining when I left the house, but I knew it could. After several days of rain, I knew the ground would be soggy and wet, so I dressed in rain gear including gumboots. Gumboots mean that I don’t have to worry about the puddles on the paths in the woods.

The weather affects us all, and I often will check the weather forecast on my phone several times in the day, either to decide when to go out for a walk, what type of walk I will get and whether to stay indoors. I also use it to plan activities for later in the week. A heavy snowfall reduces how much I am willing to drive. Rain after freezing temperatures will make roads very slippery and dangerous. A promise of sunshine will improve my humor and get me outside quicker. Cold days are good days to bake and use the oven to add heat to the house. Warm days mean that I cook less and put less heat into the house from cooking. At this time of year, January, I think more about rain, snow and ice, than about it being too warm.

Again we have had quite a bit snow that has melted with the rain. When walking on paths in the woods, this means that the paths often become streams.

The path in the woods today was also serving as a stream. Water runs downhill to about the middle of the picture, from both the foreground and the background. The water drains off from the puddle in the middle of the picture, off to the right and on down the hillside to the fjord.

I tried following the water upstream to see where it was coming from and found a small waterfall.

Wherever the water was coming from, it was definitely going downhill.

There are many times when running water creates a problem, both for the environment and for humans and animals. Running water has considerable force and can damage things. Flooding can be a result when there is more water than the water channel will hold. With the climate changing all over the world, flooding is becoming more of a problem, especially where people have built their homes on a natural flood plain (the area that a river needs to have when there is more than normal amounts of water in it).

One of the effects of running water is to wash away the sand and small pebbles in the ruts of gravel roads. This road leads to three cabins but the rain and melting snow, on a slope, have washed away some of the gravel and sand.

To avoid this kind of erosion on driveways and gravel roads, it is important to lead the water away from the ruts. Here on our own driveway, I have cut into the side of the gravel so that the water can run into the ditch on the left. It seems to be working well this winter.

On my walk today, the streams (as well as the pathways) were full of water.

A local stream as it comes out of the woods and crosses the beach at low tide. My intention had been to cross the stream on the beach, but the water was flowing so quickly and I would have to have put my feet on uncertain ground, that I changed my mind and crossed the stream where it went in a large pipe under the road.

As you can see in this picture, there is at least one channel on the beach where the water is flowing very quickly and I was uncertain as to how deep the water was.

Eventually the sun came out, about the time I came out of the woods and down onto the beach. I was able to push back my hood and enjoy a bit of sunshine. The last bit of my walk is all uphill, so it went slowly as I was enjoying being outside, in the fresh air and the sunshine.

As I was thinking even more about weather, I noticed that while I had been experiencing rain, on the far side of the sound, and at higher levels, there had been snow on the tree tops.

On the far side of Skarnsund, there was a dusting of snow on the trees at the top of the hill. On the open fields of the farm at Duklett, there was still plenty of snow that had not melted, even though at sea level there was very little snow left.

Once home again, I decided to look and see what books we actually have about the weather and I found three (though there could be more that I didn’t find) from different time periods.

I found the subtitle of this book, published in 1960, very interesting – calling meteorology a young science.

This Norwegian book about weather forecasting was published in 1982 and is a translation of a German book published in 1977.

Published in 2005, this appears to be a translation of a book originally published in English in Australia. This book, titled, “The Weather” claims to be a “visual guide to meteorology” and has a lot of good pictures that illustrate the weather phenomenon discussed.

Today, it is easy to look up information about the weather on the internet, so I doubt if I would buy another book about the weather. How we get our weather information, both locally, or internationally, has improved immensely in the last ten years. The weather forecast that I can get on my telephone or computer will show when precipitation is expected, what the temperature mostly likely will be, wind direction and air pressure. The forecast for the next 24 hours is usually reasonably accurate. Bad storms are given a lot of publicity in news media so one can be prepared.

Today I was relatively lucky with the weather. I got out of the house while it wasn’t raining. Most of the rain came while I was in the woods, in the relative shelter of the trees. Once I was out at the beach, the sun came out. I managed to get out in one of the short breaks in the rain. At the moment of writing, it is raining again, almost constantly.

I hope you can get outdoors today too, no matter what the weather.

2022-01-13

January Walk – Flooding

After a day of heavy rain and not getting outside at all, I decided to go for a walk today and see if there was any damage nearby.

This storm is bad enough that it has received a name, “Gyda” and it is affecting a large portion of Norway from the mountain passes in the south to northern Norway. Roads through mountain passes are closed, airlines have cancelled flights, ferries in vulnerable locations have been cancelled, roads are closed due to flooding or landslides and basements have been flooded. In some locations people have been evacuated from their houses as rivers have gone over their banks. At the time of writing this blog, the storm is not over and it is expected to continue to rain at least until tomorrow, but I think the worst is over for us, at least as far as water levels are concerned.

We live on a rocky hillside and though there is a stream not far away, it is on the other side of a small hilltop so even when it floods it does not come our way. We almost always get a mild period in January, when the snow melts. If rain comes at the same time, and the ground is still frozen, the melting snow and the rain water only run across the surface and can not sink into the ground.

We got snow on the 24th of December and we have had several snowfalls since then. There have been nice stable winter temperatures and the snow has piled up.

The accumulated snow on our terrace. This picture was taken on 5 January 2022 at 3 pm, just after sunset.

When I got up on Wednesday, the 12th of January, it had already started to rain and it rained almost constantly all of Wednesday. The temperature eventually rose to about 8 degrees Celsius. With the warm temperatures, as well as the rain it didn’t take long for the snow to disappear. As you can see in the picture above, there was about 20 cm of accumulated snow when the rain started.

We live in an area with a lot of cabins and few residents. I decided on my walk to see what was the status of the area. As I went on my usual walk towards the woods, along a road that goes to some of the cabins, I noticed two cars driving partway along this road and then backing up. Oh, oh. Something must be wrong. As I continue along the road I notice that the water has been much higher and crossed the road, instead of flowing under it.

This car stopped, then backed up and disappeared. You will notice that there is a slight dip in the road at this point. You can see the water pouring across the road. There is an intersection here and there is one road that comes towards me and one that goes off up the hill. In the picture, both roads will be heading off to the right in the picture.

Let’s have a look at what has happened. We live in an agricultural area with farm fields. When the snow melts, or it rains a lot, the water will run to the lowest lying area and continue on downhill until it gets to the fjord. At some point in the past, the farmers owning these fields have put in drainage pipes and the stream has been put underground. This allows the farmer to have more cultivated land. Unfortunately, when the ground is frozen, melting snow water and rain can not go down to the pipes, but instead flow across the field.

Here the water is starting to collect, at the bottom of a ploughed field. Note that where the stream is flowing, the ground has not been ploughed. This will be deliberate. Probably once a year, most likely in January, this flooding will occur.

At this point, the stream is supposed to be underground, but as has happened before, when the ground is frozen, snow melt and rainwater run across the surface. There was quite a flow of water, and from various signs in other places, the water level was already retreating a bit. There isn’t much snow left, so there is just the rain water now.

Looking back the way I have come. There is not normally a stream here, even when it is raining.

Here is where the water running across the field joins the stream as it comes out of a pipe (the pipe is difficult to see but at the left in the picture). The water was flowing quite quickly. The stream heads off to the right, makes a few bends and has quite a few trees along it.

Here, the small stream has more water than it can hold and has flooded its banks. No major problem here as there is plenty of room for the water to spread out.

But the stream is supposed to go under the road here, into a pipe that takes it under the field as well. The pipe did not have the capacity to carry all of the water, so it started flowing across the road. The water flows from right to left in the picture. On my way back, I saw a tractor had crossed the stream, on the road, so it wasn’t that deep, but far too deep for an ordinary car. I went across the field on the left and was able to avoid the stream.

Here the stream has spread out and following its old pathway. In the rainy season, this little section is often very soggy. I’ve never seen such a large pool of flowing water here before. When the children were small, there was sometimes a patch of ice here that they could skate on.

Normally this channel is dry as the water would go through a pipe. But the old stream bed is still there and the stream can use it when necessary.

Here is it quite obvious that water flows were much higher before I came. You can just see the stream on the right. There has been some damage to the road here, but not very much.

The pipe on the left is carrying the water that has come under the field. The water was flowing very quickly and there was also water coming through a pipe, at about the center of the picture, from the stream in the picture above.

I continued on my walk, with the intent of going through the woods. The path was very soggy, but I had gumboots on, so my feet stayed dry. It was raining lightly, but I had rain trousers and jacket on, with a hood pulled up, so it was pleasant to be out in the fresh air. My walk usually takes me up the hill, then around some cabins, then downhill almost to the fjord before climbing uphill again. However, today I did not make the round trip, but ended up going back the way I came. There is a second stream that needs to be crossed twice and I decided not to cross it today.

My turning around point. In the summer, this small stream can be very dry, but today it was full. Usually, it is easy to cross, even when there is water in it, but today the water was flowing so quickly that I decided not to take a chance. If I lost my footing, I would get very wet. In addition, the path that goes down the hill on the other side was also a stream, so the walking there would not be pleasant at all.

I enjoyed my walk, in fact, these pictures were taken on two different walks, one at about 11 am and one at about 2.30 pm. Plus degrees, fresh air (even though it was wet) and something to take pictures of, made both of my walks very pleasant. In addition, I saw that there was no major damage even though car access to the cabin areas was a bit restricted.

2022-01-082022-01-08

Having a hearing disability

I have been using two hearing aids (one in each ear) for over 27 years and my hearing will not get any better. In fact it gets worse as time goes on. The range of sound that I have lost includes the human voice, which makes having spoken conversations with people very difficult and tiring. I have just recently gotten a new hearing aid, which helps, but hearing aids do not replace good ears, they just help make difficult situations better, perhaps.

My newest pair of hearing aids. They now come with a case that holds them both and they get recharged while in the case. The case needs to be plugged in about every three days.

Having a hearing disability is a handicap. I often get very frustrated with trying to follow what other people are talking about. Different people have different qualities to their voices, some are easier for me to hear than other ones. Background noises also influence how much of a conversation I can hear. For example, if more than one conversation is going on in a room where I am, I will probably not be able to hear any of them.

Let me give an example from a television program that I have just been watching. There were several people explaining a subject. The main host had a very soft voice that was very difficult to hear. I turn up the sound to hear him. The first guest was a woman with a very sharp voice that was easy for me to hear. I turn the sound down to normal. But what was very irritating for me was the applause as that sound level hurt my ears and made me turn down the sound level even more. In the end I spend my time reading the subtitles as it became too complex to adjust my hearing aids to the differences in sound level, in the same program.

A hearing aid is a wonderful, technical aid for those with hearing disabilities. However, my experience (based on almost three decades and several hearing aids) is that they amplify all the noises around me, even the ones I don’t want to hear – car traffic, cutlery rattling in the drawer, power saws, rustling clothing, etc. I often enjoy walking on my own, just because I then don’t have to wear a hearing aid and not get all of those other noises amplified.

Another problem that I have is that my level of tolerance of loud noises is much lower, even without wearing hearing aids. Sound intensity levels are measured in decibels. For example, 20 decibels is 10 times as loud as 10 decibels. Most people will find that 60 decibels is an okay level of noise to tolerate, and at 80 decibels the sound level is unpleasant. Hearing protection should be used if you are exposed to high levels of decibels over longer periods of time, for example, for several hours in a working situation. I will generally find that sound at 80 decibels is painful for my ears and that 70 decibels is the maximum I want to experience.

Now that I am no longer working outside the house, I do not wear my hearing aids constantly. I put them on when I am with others so that I can hear what they say, but I avoid wearing them when I am alone or doing noisy activities. But this can cause problems too. I don’t hear the tap running in the kitchen and forget to turn it off. I don’t hear someone approaching me and I jump when I become aware of them. I don’t mind not hearing the seagulls in the summer, nor the traffic on the bridge near us.

Situations I find difficult

There are quite a few situations that happen on a regular basis where people try to give me messages or information, but I am just not able to understand what is being said to me. It is important that I am aware that someone is speaking to me. I may not be listening all of the time

I have tried to teach the people that live with me to make sure I am wearing my hearing aids when they want to say things to me. However, if I am working in the kitchen, chopping vegetables (a very noisy job), I may have my hearing aids on “mute” and don’t either hear someone approaching me or hear what they say to me. Washing dishes is a similarly noisy job that is louder than normal conversation.

Using the vacuum cleaner is a noisy chore, though necessary. When the children were small, they would disappear very quickly when I turned on the vacuum cleaner. This is the sort of sound that I do not need to have amplified with a hearing aid. Thankfully, we now have a central vacuum cleaner and the machine itself is tucked away in a cupboard on the lower floor of the house. However there is still the noise of the suction which can be at my limits of toleration.

Walking outdoors near traffic can cause problems hearing a conversation. For me, all types of mechanical noise will always be louder than human conversation.

Large groups of people create a lot of noise. For a while I was enjoying attending a knitting cafe for two hours every two weeks. Fifteen to twenty ladies would get together, pack themselves into a small room and begin talking to each other. My guess would be that at least half of them were talking at the same time. After an hour, my ability to concentrate was used up, and I sometimes had to flee the room to regain my sanity. Sometimes I even went outside with the smokers as it was so quiet with them. So now I avoid this type of social activity as it is just too tiring for me.

Things to do when talking to someone with a hearing disability

Look at the person you want to talk to and make sure they have understood that you are going to say something. You can start by saying their name, so that they know that you are wanting to talk to them. If you don’t get a reaction, maybe they need to turn on the hearing aid.
Stand close enough that what you are saying will be heard. How close you need to stand depends on the person and the level of background noise.
Make sure you speak distinctly and don’t mumble or swallow your words. Many people start a sentence distinctly, but the ending disappears.
If you are giving important information, check that the message has been understood, perhaps by asking a question.
When you are pointing to something, make sure you are still facing the person you are talking to and not facing what you are pointing to.

Things NOT to do when talking to someone with a hearing disability

Don’t start talking to someone until you know that you have their attention.
Don’t turn away from someone that you are talking to.
Don’t walk away from someone as you are talking to them.
Don’t try to compete with a lot of background noise, such as water running, traffic noise, or background music.
Don’t assume that because you see a hearing aid in the ear, that it is actually turned on.

Like everything else in life, we learn to adapt to situations. The person with a hearing disability has to learn to live with the handicap and figure out what is important to hear and what can be ignored. People talking to a person with a hearing disability have to learn how to talk to them so that they are heard and understood.

Loosing one’s hearing is common as one gets older. Some of us started the process when we were younger. The degree of loss will influence a person’s ability to adapt to social situations. I now find social situations difficult when there are more than about four people. Please be considerate when you are in a social situation with a person who has a hearing disability.