Good Morning.

I just checked my thermometer, and it's 56 degrees here in the Greater Boston area. Yesterday, lakes Cochituate and Quinsigamond finally iced out, although a couple of the smaller bodies of water through Sudbury still had skim ice on them in spots.


I'd like to introduce you to a bizarre local weather phenomenon that happens this time of year. Are you familiar with those miserable little traveling carnivals that pop up in theater parking lots, churches, and empty lots during the warmer weather? There's one of local legend, and it's at the Revere Showcase parking lot right now.

This is the annual source of the region's poor weather. For whatever reason, this carnival pops up in Revere every year in late March /early April. And every year, the weather closes in, it stays cold, rainy, foggy...for weeks at a time. Then when the carnival pulls out, the weather breaks and we get spring.

It's off by a week this year. If you looked at the link, you saw the dates...they're not leaving Revere for another week. Our ten-day forecast is looking pretty good.

It's curious - this pattern has repeated itself with some reliability for better than 30 years that I've been aware of the connection. I posted on facebook a while back that I thought the carnival was around, and two of my friends back home confirmed it. ("I don't have to drive to town, all I did was look at the weather")

But nevertheless, it's going to be warm and sunny...I'm thinking about firing up the grill this weekend, and I'm out for a walk with Mr. Bean in about an hour. We'll see how long this lasts now.