How's Your Weather?

What's your weather like today?

It snowed about 8" overnight for me. I only got the snow shedding metal installed on half of the greenhouse roof, so I get to go out today and rake off the snow from the other side. I had a roof collapse after receiving 3 feet of snow in a couple days, and then getting rain on top of that. So I want to avoid that again.

We hit 93 degrees last week. Mostly 70s and 80s here in central texas. Pear tree has leaves. Asparagus is coming up.

Very weird.  73 on Saturday, then a torrential rainstorm with a tornado (in February, in New England).  Still too warm to be seasonable here (high in the 50s today) but cooling down.  The ground went from muddy soup yesterday to frozen solid this morning.  Trees are budding and some bulbs are poking through, but everything else seems to be keeping its head down for now.  I'm hoping we don't have a repeat of last year, when a winter thaw followed by a cold snap meant there was no stone fruit harvest in the region.

We are snowing, AGAIN!

So frustrating this winter.  But the slime mold said it would be nasty.

Thing is, this time last year, I was planting out some of my summer crops.  I even direct seeded some squash.  But this white stuff... too frustrating.  

Just got another 8" or so with about 7ft of snow on the ground up here in the Sierras…  Personally I'm loving the snow, but also a bit worried about how all this is gonna melt and how my roads are gonna look once we switch from show-shoes to vehicles. Thinking I might be waiting until June to start planting more growies this year!

This time of year, we usually get 'snow'.  by snow, we mean the petals of fruit blossoms and ornamental cherries make driving dangerous because there are so many and they pile up in slippery 'snow drifts' on the road.  

Instead, this year the fruit still hasn't opened it's buds and we have a strange white stuff falling from the sky.  

I wrote a poem about the weather.

Dear Eastern Canada,
We found your snow.  
Please come and get it.  
Yours truely, The West Coast.

Sunny and 75-80 here in north central Florida. 40's-50's at night. The peach tree has full flower and a couple peaches the size of golf balls already... Fortunately, we seem to be getting adequate precip so far this year. Last year was about 25" down from our usual amount of rain. We've had adequate cool... But no real cold in last 2 winters. Not below 30* here this winter... Our last-ish freeze date usually 3/22, and frost date 4/20. Unusual... But in my 33 years living in this area that is the latest I've observed that happening... So, time to plant! But.... Our downfall is April and may usually dry time......:/

Overcast, breezy, 68° F, and a promise of rain. It is so dry here that I'm begging for rain! So it's frustrating seeing rain squalls passing me by right off the coast only a few miles away. What a tease!

Hoping for a rain shower tonight.

A more typical winter for us this year.  The past couple have been mild with little snow.  We are up over 5 feet of snow now and temps have been more in line with a real winter.  Coldest has been -33*F so far, but not for long, couple of days only.  I'm starting to run out of places to plow snow to in some of my tighter areas.  I'm ready for spring, but alas, it's still close to two and a half months away.

This morning in the Seattle area it started out snowing. That slowly turned to rain. Now we are getting a steady hail that is sort of a soft styrofoam like kind of snow hail.

A rather weird weather day here.

Last week I was cutting wood up to my waist in snow, then on Friday (a week later) I was cutting wood in a t-shirt because it was 57 degrees out. They said we hit a record here, 72 inches of snow in 10 days time. But now its all gone. I even came up with a new word, "Snud", as in Snow-Mud because the ground never froze this winter. When I come out with wood the skidder churns up both mud and snow!

I did feel bad for a major maple syrup producer as he was late to the early party and did not get his sap tank ready in time. He missed a few days of really strong sap flow.

Travis Johnson wrote:

I did feel bad for a major maple syrup producer as he was late to the early party and did not get his sap tank ready in time. He missed a few days of really strong sap flow.

I was wondering if people around here were going to tap trees already. Seems early but the weather is right for it, I guess.  

It's usually winter, sugar season, mud season, spring, black fly season, deer flies, then horse flies...  then summer.   LOL
I heard the first of the song birds back yesterday and have been seeing robins for a week at least.  Strange weather.  I guess it's time to get out the pruners and the grafting gear.  Time to make mutant apple tree monsters.   My chickens have been gorging themselves on all the slow, cold bugs that are defrosting and my house is full of lady beetles that are waking up from their slumber in my walls.  I have so many lady bugs inside that my house plants are feeding stations for them to make it through the winter.  I leave apple and cucumber peels near the window sills for them to snack on, just so I don't have to vacuum them off the floor later when they are starved and all dried up. HA!  what a strange problem to have. right?    

My chickens hate snow.  They seem to think that if the weather is really, really bad they can come in the human house.  Poor little things.

Even the ducks wanted in.

It has been mostly rain and snow at night and the temp mostly 35 - 45F so the now melts rapidly.  The chicken in their tractor and I have been able to do lots of preparatory work. Will start planting some of the tractor strips with flax, amaranth, or millet but not plant all at once in case the soil doesn't warm up.

R Ranson wrote:We are snowing, AGAIN!

So frustrating this winter.  But the slime mold said it would be nasty.

Thing is, this time last year, I was planting out some of my summer crops.  I even direct seeded some squash.  But this white stuff... too frustrating.  

Oooooo, could you please explain your slime mold theory. I live down in Washington, and would love to see if I can apply your theory to my slime mold. Thank you so much!

The past two days off I had around 75 degree Fahrenheit temps 23-45 mile per hour winds and today due to working tonight was 54 degrees Fahrenheit and 14 mile per hour winds. was to windy and sandy to do anything on my days off.  I really need some wind breaks on my land.

This morning was 60 F.  The forecast high for Saturday is 20 F.  Then back to the 50s for Monday.  New England has a history of roller-coaster weather but this is extreme.

It was cold and snowing early this week. Now the snow is gone, and by Saturday it will be in the upper sixties, with nights staying above freezing.

Before this last cold spell, almost all of February was warm and dry here. The ground was dry, and the grass had greened up. Trees were starting to bud out. Then the cold came back.

We'll probably keep switching back and forth between summer and winter until the end of May. Hard on the trees.

there's a cold dry northeast wind blowing here, expected to continue for another week or two.  I think its about 12 degrees outside and the highs are in the 20s.  Its a below average cold march, and the whole winter has been colder than average here, mostly the highs have been below freezing since November, but there have been a few thaws, and I'm grateful for those- they usually come with a rain that fills our water tanks.  A nice thing about it being cold and clear now is we are burning less wood because the sun is heating up our passive solar cabin.  Also there has been a glow of northern lights on the horizon most nights. We are gaining 7 minutes of light per day now, and the sun angle is great to blaze right into our little cabin.  We had a fire last night as our little converted sauna loses heat fairly fast when its cold and windy, but we won't have one today, because there are no clouds and the sun is starting to heat us up.  We are conserving water now, as our outdoor tanks are mostly frozen, the liquid water has been accessed by axe and extracted by pump, and there is no rain in the forecast.   I have been amazed at how long liquid water persisted in the outdoor tanks even with continuous freezing temperatures.  It seems the ice that forms around the outside insulates the water inside.  Its been consistently freezing all winter, but it has never dropped below 0 F here all winter and probably 75% of the time it has not dropped below 15 F.  Only a handful of times has it been below 10F, once it reached 0.  The green onions we planted from the store last summer look to be alive still and ready to grow when it warms up... Next month??? I hope so....

It's rained! Glorious rain! Water is one of the prime staples of life on my farm that often is in short supply. I got a bit over a half inch, enough to moisten the garden soil 6"-8" down. The plants loved it. I'm happy. Life is good. 😀 I surely could use more, but I won't complain. Now I'll be mowing for most of today, creating fresh mulching material in order to top off all the growing beds......want to keep that water in the soil so that the sun and rain doesn't steal it away.

It won't stop snowing on my spring!

It. Keeps. Snowing. On. My. SPRING!!

It won't snow on my spring! We need snow!

Though I'm enjoying the warm, sunny weather, of course! But watching the trees all budding out is disconcerting. When the snow comes back in April, we will be in trouble.

I'll try to send it your way, Gilbert! I'm all done with it.

Two photos, both taken March 5th.  

The first from last year, 2016 - a fairly normal winter for our parts



The second this year, 2017 - winter

So what's up with the weather on the West coast?

Basically, it's stupid. Spring just won't come! We've had unprecedented snowfall this winter where I live. It's snowing right now, as a matter of fact. Last year we had an early and gorgeous spring, but a cooler and wetter summer than usual. Now this. Who knows what's coming next. Hopefully summer.

Gilbert Fritz wrote:So what's up with the weather on the West coast?

We have both el nino and la nina happening at the same time at different parts of the Pacific ocean. This is playing havoc on the water currents and if it's isn't sorted out pronto can cause some major stuff that we will have to move over to the cider press to talk about.  The last time something like this happened (in the Atlantic that time), Europe was plunged into an ice age for about 500 years.  During that ice age, snow was very common here.  Winter used to be so cold that they built wooden structures on the ice in the inner harbour (brackish water) in the fall and took them down about now, when the ice started to melt.  

Now, a 'normal' winter means a couple of weeks of wool coats around New Years and maybe digging out a pair of gloves from the back of the sock drawer.  

Yeah, what she said. ^^^ Stupid.

We have June Bugs.  In March.

My problem is that March 5th and November 5th in Denver often looks like R Ranson's first picture (with much less growth due to much less water) and May 5th and September 25th often look like the second, snowy picture.

So even though we have been having mild winters of late, plants just don't overwinter very well.

There are lots of bugs out and about; wasps looking for new homes, honeybees, etc. Crocuses are open. It would be really interesting to see what this would look like if we had had any rain.

Good luck!

Being further south than Tracy and Ranson  I just got three blasts of cold and snow instead of the usual two. It is a record wet winter instead of the record dry one last year.

The killdeer came through at the end of the week, and we saw a robin yesterday. The rhubarb is budding. So there IS hope.

On the other hand, most of the other plants are in a holding pattern. The dock's been up for a couple of weeks, but the leaves haven't unfurled yet. Most of the grass is still dormant. The geese are not finding much grass, and they don't like the snow that falls occasionally, covering what grass there is.

The goats had not been eating much hay for a couple of weeks, but started eating like they were starving last weekend. I knew there was a storm coming, but not when or what. Both questions have been answered; it started raining last night.

I have a forsythia and iris. I don't plant anything until the fosythia blooms, and don't plant tomatoes until the iris bloom.

Turkey Vultures have returned.

I don't plant anything until the fosythia blooms,

OK I am going to monitor that.
In the center of Puget Sound the green grass has persisted all winter to the delight of my chickens. Enough chick weed and cress have shown to add to my kale for greens. Sadly that meens the cleavers [sticky wicked claver weavers] are also growing so I have to start hoeing around my perennials before it starts climbing.

Look up phenology. Forsythia's are pretty much tradition. Iris blooms rarely get caught by frost. We may still get snow after the forsythia blooms, but winter will be over.

The fact that the robins and kildeer are back is promising, but the plants are not growing. Very few of the wild ones are up. We'll see.

Oh, by the way, I think cleavers can be useful. You might start cutting them back instead of getting rid of them.

Yesterday's nor'easter dropped about 14" of snow on us.  That's not common in mid-March but certainly not unprecedented.  Given the forecast with temperatures mostly below freezing for the next week or two, the start of spring will be delayed here until late March.  Grr.

Irises aren't good a good measure of the weather here. The first two years I was in this house we lost the first flush of iris to frosts nearly immediately. These are the bearded iris, so maybe you're working with a different type.