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Meanwhile, 'outside'...
Author: TriSec    Date: 04/18/2020 11:57:07

Good Morning.

While we've been sequestering ourselves and ignoring most of the outside world of late, some strange normal things have been happening in New England.


Looking outside this morning, we should be preparing for the Boston Marathon, and the annual Patriot's Day morning Red Sox game. Tonight marks the 245th anniversary of a certain Mr. Revere riding a certain Brown Beauty to Lexington Green, but we won't be talking about that today.

I'm looking out my window at gentle snow falling - there appears to be about an inch and a half of accumulating snow. Other parts of this Commonwealth are getting six inches.

On April 18.

But this is fairly typical of the climate shift I have personally observed. I can measure things by when I plant my garden. Some more southern branches of the blog probably don't give this much thought. When the weather gets warm, it's time to dig things up and plant!

On the weekend of April 7, we had our month high of 62. Since then, temperatures have actually been trending downward. This is not normal.

My sad little garden remains a frozen tundra. I'm not entirely certain when I started digging up my little corner of yard, but It's probably been around 15 years. Not very long indeed, but I clearly remember the start of my gardening efforts always coincided with Mother's Day weekend.

Nowadays, I don't dare do anything much before Memorial Day. Winter has shifted in these parts; so far April has averaged 51 degrees. We've had a few days above 60, but most of the month has remained in the 40s.

It is somewhat alarming me to look at the high temperature for March, which was 72 degrees, and then run the numbers - average temperature for March was 49 degrees. Some spring we're having, isn't it?

It's actually easy to visualize the impact pollution and motor-vehicles have on the environment. During the coronavirus outbreak, you've no doubt seen the many stories about how clean and clear some cities have rapidly become. It won't last. As soon as "normal" returns, we'll be doing our best to accelerate the environment to an unsatisfactory finish.

But back to my garden - it's been just 15 years, and I've seen my growing season shift. We used to measure the warm season with two bookends - this weekend, Patriot's Day, up to about Columbus Day weekend in the fall. Now it's more Memorial Day to Halloween. It would be one thing if the shift was imperceptible over decades or centuries, but the rapid pace is what should be truly alarming.

But then again - "Global Warming" is a liberal hoax, just like Coronavirus, right?




 
 

1 comments (Latest Comment: 04/18/2020 17:37:40 by BobR)
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