Greetings and welcome!
We are in the midst of a cold snap that is bringing near record low temperatures. Last night we got down to 26 and at 1:30pm it is still only 37 degrees. There are freeze warnings out for plants and plumbing. The bad news is that it isn’t going to get much better for almost a week. I looked at the GFS forecast model and could see cold air pouring out of arctic right into the upper Midwest. Our normal high should be getting close to 60, and our normal low should be over freezing.
One other note, when Fido needed to go out in the middle of the night last night, she came back in with snowflakes on her. Now I know why they call it May.. It may be 65 or 70 or it May feel like February.
Right now I am taking refuge from the cold and using the time to catch up on computer work inside, and later I will head to the parts store. I really want to be cutting brush, working on cars and power equipment and the boats, but I won’t be doing any of that at 36 degrees unless it is an emergency.
One thought this morning is that a week of cold weather like this will slow down the warming of the lakes, and probably set back the spawning times of the fish. I guess that makes it OK that I am not working on the boats yet.
In addition to the cold weather we again have some very high fire danger. We have very low humidity (36% right now, but it could drop to 20% or lower) and some wind. Combined with the dead vegetation from last year, fire danger is very high today. There isn’t much in the way of precip expected in the short term, so that very high fire danger will last through the weekend.
We do have some signs of spring going on. The trees are budding and getting close to opening up with the first leaves. I saw my first marsh marigolds yesterday. I also had my first wood tick of the year a few days ago. People have been reporting wood and deer ticks for several weeks. FaceBook friends have reported seeing their first hummingbirds and orioles in the past week.
I saw in the news that our governor thinks that there will be no delays in opening the state up after Memorial Day weekend. It wold be great if they opened a week or two before that so businesses can recover from the lockdown. There is a case in the state supreme court challenging the order lasting past the 60 days. There was no word this morning on how that is going. I know that people around here are ready to get back to normal.
One last thought about the cold weather.. After living here 20+ years I learned the hard way… I never plant outside plants until after June 10th. Every time that I did I got frozen out. The new path was to start everything in movable containers that I could move inside on cold nights, then transplant them in mid-June.
That is news for today. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!
RJB