BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: Arnie
Date: 05 Mar 08 - 10:59 AM

Reports this weekend of loads of Dutch caravanners heading up the East Coast to Scotland - must be Spring then!

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemispher
From: curmudgeon
Date: 05 Mar 08 - 10:37 AM

Now, with only 13.5 inches to go to erase all previous records for snowfall in NH, it's raining freezing stuff. And the only thing springlike about t are the tips of firewood chunks sprouting from the snow that's left - Tom

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: gnu
Date: 05 Mar 08 - 06:04 AM

Still waiting? We had spring again yesterday and the day before yesterday (aftera day with about 400mm of snow with wind). It was soooo nice outside. Snowing again as I type. 20mm if sleet to come before spring rain again this afternoon. Suppose to be +5C and sunny the next two days.

Maybe this is "sprinter"?

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: Becca72
Date: 04 Mar 08 - 06:18 PM

Spring? I'm still waiting. Here in Southern Maine it was about 54° at 10am when I came to work. Saturday last we got about 8" in a snow storm and tomorrow they are predicting an ICE storm for the area. But today it was 54°!! I quit winter.

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: Bobert
Date: 04 Mar 08 - 06:15 PM

Linten roses are in full bloom here in Page Co., Va... And they are beautiful...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: Bee
Date: 04 Mar 08 - 05:58 PM

Sounds a nasty little job, SRS.

I finally saw a sign of Spring this morning. No fleurs or froggies, but as i walked on the frozen wasteland that is our dirt road this morning, the first flock of Canada Geese, calling continuously as they come North.

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 04 Mar 08 - 05:08 PM

Snow on my plentiful daffodils last night, but no accumulation. Bright and warmer today. Those darned cannas are coming up in the bed beside the front porch. I have to dig it out because it is full of granular roof debris from the decomposing roof I had to replace last fall. So I'll dig out the tar and the canna roots. I don't want them there.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: Bee
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 09:03 PM

They are wonderful little weeds - and quite a few of them aren't even natives, but tagged along with us when we migrated from Europe. A favourite thing of mine to do, when I lived near a set of train tracks, was to hike along the line in midsummer and see what Western or Central Canada plants (usually annuals) had managed to hitch a ride on a dusty train car, to flourish for just one summer in an environment that wouldn't allow them the time to propagate.

Once, not near a railroad but in a pine stand in a dry area, I found a very beautiful flower that I've never identified. It was lavender in colour, large as a small tulip, but with a nodding (bell) head. The edge of the bell was spreading and ruffled, and a darker purple than the body of the flower. Leaves were strap-like, plant eight to ten inches high, stem thin. It looked like it might have been a wild lily of some sort, but it had no separate petals, just the entire bell (like a harebell). Also, not likely a lilium, more likely an annual of some kind. I guessed its seed flew in with a migrating bird from some Southern location, and just managed to find the spot where it could grow..

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemispher
From: Janie
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 08:05 PM

Bee - Oops! I know better and did it anyway!    Heal-all (prunella vulgaris) is NOT called henbit here,( except when people like me get confused.) Thanks for setting me straight.

Heal-all is common here, but not as common as henbit or purple deadnettle, both of which are done blooming and often dormant before heal-all begins to bloom around these parts.

Such a wondrous thing about these 'weeds', is they are so adaptable as to be common in my garden here in the southern USA, and your garden 1500 miles or more to the north of me.

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: RangerSteve
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 06:45 PM

Daffodils are sprouting in my front yard.

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: gnu
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 10:48 AM

I'll second that, Rap... ditto for Art, just in case.

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemispher
From: Rapparee
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 09:21 AM

Dear Amos,

Bite me.

Sincerely,
Rapaire

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: Amos
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 09:14 AM

This weekend has been particularly tough on us here in San Diego. A temperature change interrupted the pleasant rain we were experiencing, and dumped a good eleven inches of bright sunlight on all of us. Families were forced to break out their stored summer clothing, and many folks over the weekend just abandoned their cars in the La Jolla Shores parking lots and set off on foot, trudging along the glistening sands in the whirling, glittering sunlight. No fatalities were reported, however.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemispher
From: Sorcha
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 09:08 AM

AND it's 'Spring Ahead' Sunday, March 9 in the US! Aaarrrggghhhh.

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 08:43 AM

An article in today's (03.03.08) 'Independent' newspaper states that the UK's leading expert on phenology (the study of the timing of natural events), Dr Tim Spark's is probably going to be made redundant.

Dr Spark's, "...has led the way in demonstrating that the plants and animals were already responding to global warming, before people were even aware of the problem." He currently works for the Monks Wood Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, near Huntingdon, which the Government is planning to close down.

Well, we can't have these pesky scientists demonstrating that the endless pursuit of greater and greater profits has consequences, can we?

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: gnu
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 04:35 AM

Oh yeah? Well... okay... I posted this on the "16 inches" thread (aprropriately named because that's about what we got) yesterday afternoon....

It's THE SUN!!! was out for about ten minutes.

I just delivered supper to me mum. I didn't take my reading glasses off the bridge of my nose. It wasn't wasn't bad when I began my journey of about twenty steps (she lives next door). At about step ten, the wind gusted and the last three or four steps shoulda been videoed. It was like someone turned out the lights. I was clutching the cloth covered plate of grub against my chest with one hand and had my other hand at full extenson, feeling for the house. Of course, I had my keys in that hand and dropped them when I contacted the house... yup, in the f***in snow!

Hey the sun is... well, it was.

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemispher
From: Metchosin
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 02:12 AM

There is a drift of snowdrops on my garden embankment and the flowering cherry is starting to blossom. Eat your heart out, gnu.

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: Bee
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 12:41 AM

Ack! We've had another snow/sleet storm, and all these signs of Spring you guys are describing drove me to buy a bunch of daffs at the grocery store t'other day!

Hmm... Janie, we call a different little blue-purple flowering plant Henbit, has roundish leaves with a 'bite' out of the end of each, hence, 'hembit'. ;-) I'm very fond of all the little flowering weeds we have, the Creeping Charlies (or Ground Ivy), the various Chickweeds, Corn Spurge(?), Coltsfoot (always the very first flower), Poor man's Pepper, wild Forget-me-nots, and Eyebright (a favourite). Sure, they invade the gardens, but they aren't hard to yank out, unlike that Great Curse of My Garden, the Spotted Knapweed, which has roots that certainly would reach Hell, if that place was indeed in the centre of the earth!

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: Art Thieme
Date: 03 Mar 08 - 12:33 AM

Today, March 2nd, it was 65 degrees F here in Peru, Illinois. With global warming, it seems to me that March is now the new April.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemispher
From: Janie
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 11:02 PM

A few violets are starting to bloom. The henbit (what they call heal-all down here, Bee) is thick in all our yards. Yards and banks are also generously blanketed with now with pale blue clouds of common speedwell. It forms a undercover for the daffodils that are blooming everywhere now. I have one bleeding heart that never went dormant last year that has just set flower-buds (it is at least a month early.) Both the crested and the reticulated iris are in full bloom. Daylilies and garden phlox are sprouting and creeping phlox is just getting going with bloom on south facing slopes.

The wild onions are up. wintercress and chickweed beginning to come on pretty strong.

The effects of this prolonged, exceptional drought are very apparent in the sie of even the wild flowers and weeds.   

saw my first brown thrasher this morning. A pair of house finches are building their nest in a beaded hanging candle sconce that hangs from the eave on my front porch. This will be the 4rd year house finches have done this - I wonder if it is the same pair, descendants of the original pair, or what. Last year and this, there was no 'beating around the bush." It is like they check-in curbside and get busy with the nest building in that same sconce.

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemispher
From: pdq
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 09:56 PM

Here in the northern Nevada desert we've been flirting with 60 degrees F for at least a week but haven't quite made it . Tomorrow should be 58 or so they predict. Nice weather to change a radiator (did that yesterday) and trim the fruit trees.

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: Bill D
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 08:55 PM

Supposed to be 60 tommorrow...64 Tues. - a few daffodils peeking out to see if it's safe.(It isn't..at least one more dip expected)

Wash DC area

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: Adrianel
Date: 02 Mar 08 - 06:58 PM

Here in Massachusetts, there are several traditional signs of Spring:
the peepers (small but very noisy frogs) are heard,
motorbikes reappear on the streets,
elderly men who don't have the legs for it are seen in town wearing shorts,
the ground turns to mud, as the top thaws before the lower levels,
a lot of skunks fail to make it across the road,
birds are heard again.
Compared to England, it's late and very short. Not quite the blink and miss it that the Russians have, but is seems that much too soon we're in high (= humid) Summer. On the plus side, the Winter is great. It's cold all right, but dry. None of that damp English (and Belgian - I lived there too) cold that lasts from October to April, sinks into your bones, and makes me at least thorougly miserable.

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: Bee
Date: 20 Feb 08 - 12:32 AM

The scary windy rainstorm last night melted all the snow, and the lake appears to be a giant floating icecube, as the shoe ice has all melted in the runoff.

And today was lovely, sunny, and plus seven.

'Course, it'll be cold the rest of the week.

Janie, Common Speedwell is one of the banes of my gardening - grows everywhere, endlessly, along with Knapweed and healall, but I'd love to see those little blue flowers right now.

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: Janie
Date: 20 Feb 08 - 12:14 AM

in the yards and sheltered places in the fields and along roadways, common speedwell has joined the henbit in blooming. In the garden, more daffodils and a few brave wood hyacynthes. The pulmunaria has leafed out and in the forests on the hillsides, the bare trees are starting to show the red shadow of bud swell.

We will have some ice storms, maybe some snow, and some cold wintry blasts, but the earth is definitely beginning to awake from winter sleep in the Piedmont of North Carolina.

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: Donuel
Date: 19 Feb 08 - 10:40 PM

Hey Charley, did someone sabotage the cheap Chavez oil? OR did the tanker leak.

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: Jim Martin
Date: 19 Feb 08 - 01:36 PM

That's W.Clare, Eire.

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: Jim Martin
Date: 19 Feb 08 - 01:35 PM

The frogs in my pond spawned 10 days earlier this year (Than last year).

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: theleveller
Date: 19 Feb 08 - 06:29 AM

Yup, looking out of the office window in Shipley, W Yorks and there's freezing fog - oh, and it's starting to snow. Mind you, it does that in July up here.

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: Bryn Pugh
Date: 19 Feb 08 - 04:43 AM

Minus 5 Centigrade coming out to work this morning (Northamptonshire, UK).

My beloved and I damn near went A over T just on the front path.

The de-icer froze as she sprayed it on the front windscreen.

There is a small lake nearby, and it is comical to watch the ducks skidding on the ice !

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: Charley Noble
Date: 18 Feb 08 - 09:20 PM

It was 45 F today in Maine but we spent the whole day trying to clean out the furnace and the oil line from the bad load of oil (with water) that had been delivered last week. You know, oil and water don't mix very well, the furnace burns at a lower temperature creating great clouds of soot, clogging up everything. I bet whoever added the water to the oil got the full price for a load of oil. Got to admire ye olde capitalist system!

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: Donuel
Date: 18 Feb 08 - 04:47 PM

Today it was 64 and the forest spring peeper toads in the Rock Creek swampy areas are singing their symphonic song so loud we have to talk over them in loud voices.


yikes I think they are 30 days early. So are the woodpeckers and Blue Jays.

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: gnu
Date: 18 Feb 08 - 04:18 PM

Hahahaha... that's a good one, Dick!

+8C and rainin like a banshee here in springLIKE southeastern New Brunswick, Canada. (I like to throw in my area every now and then as a matter of courtesey).

You could skate on the ice on the streets if it wasn't for the ruts and the patches of bare pave. Maybe that's why Canucks are pretty good hockey players... we learn to skate around the defense, the ruts, the puddles, the mud and the blood and the beer.

Beer? Go Wings Go.

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemispher
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 18 Feb 08 - 03:02 PM

Mantana conversation:
"If summer comes on a weekend this year, can we go on a picnic, Mommy?"

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: Fortunato
Date: 18 Feb 08 - 11:33 AM

We're in Silver Spring today and it's 70 degrees. Blue sky, big white clouds.

KEEP IT COMING, WEATHER GODS, WE LIKE IT.

chance

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemispher
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 18 Feb 08 - 12:19 AM

Bruce-
It's in Digitrad--"Forty Below". Collected by Rika Reubesaat. Fine song for not-so-fine weather.

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemispher
From: artbrooks
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 11:54 PM

One sign of Spring that I remember from when I lived in Wisconsin...the ice fishing huts sinking in the lake because the fishermen misjudge the thaw and don't get them off fast enough.

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: Bee
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 10:34 PM

Smelt fishermen float out the harbour in small bunches as the ice breaks up ( oh, yes, it happens - those boys are deicated).

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemispher
From: GUEST,pattyClink
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 09:10 PM

Blueberry leaves in little clumps.
Daffodils getting plump before blooming.
Pink flowers on the thorny quince.
Cardinals.
Bluebirds.
Singing mockingbird.
Traffic picking up at the seed'n'feed.

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: Peace
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 08:54 PM

Dick, what is that from? It appeared in the Toronto "Globe and Mail" in 1979 (according to a site I saw).

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemispher
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 08:22 PM

Well, it's 40 below in the winter
And it's 20 below in the fall
And it gets up to zero in springtime
And we don't get no summer at all....

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 07:16 PM

Oh yes, the peepers! Earliest I've heard them here (Eastern NS) is April 10th.

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemispher
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 07:10 PM

Let's see, signs of Spring --

Sap buckets on the maple trees (early, may have more snow, etc.)
Bare knees on joggers
First yardsale
First snowy egret in the saltmarsh
Robins (of course, but I've seen 'em right after a multi-foot snow storm, too)
Peepers!

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: gnu
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 06:28 PM

Bert! Hehehehe.... that's the clincher!

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: Bert
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 04:18 PM

Spring arrived (officially for me) in Colorado Springs this weekend. I just saw the first yard sale.

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: Ebbie
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 04:03 PM

In late January to mid February we here in Juneau, Alaska, had a lot of snow, as well as cold weather. The official word is that we are right at average for the year.

At the moment it's drizzling rain into the packed snow berms, with an occasional snow shower. Just enough to make crackling snow for easy walking.

Of course, we don't have any flowers showing yet but I can imagine the earth stirring beneath the snow.

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: Peace
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 01:40 PM

I lived up north for a few years and many people in that settlement did not have indoor plumbing. They use what were called 'honey pots'. (Twenty gallon drum with a plastic garbage bag as a liner. When ya had to go, ya went. A cover (lid) was put on the pot and every now and then (usually daily) folks would tie up the bag and put it outside to freeze. It froze.) The clement weather--heralding Spring--arrived and the contents of the bags thawed. Some bags had been opened by dogs and others had been run over by snowmobiles. The odors vented to the air. Voila. Yep. Voila . . . .

That and being able to wear a t-shirt outdoors. When it finally warms to 0 degrees after a winter of dark and cold--well, it was just like a day at the beach.

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemisphere
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 01:33 PM

Winters I remember from childhood in Cape Breton:

1955: Snowdrifts to the tops of the first floor windows. Mature cherry trees buried over their tops in drifts.

1960: Christmas Eve blizzard. Waiting for Dad to come home and thinking he might not make it. He walked five miles from where he left the milk truck stuck in a drift, passing a dozen homes that would have gladly taken him in on the way (I loved my dad). In June ther was still corn snow in the woods.

1961: Jumping off the garage roof at the Manse into the snowdrifts. Falling through thin ice on the ditch, chest deep in slush - never been so cold in my life.

1963: Snow to our thighs in the open fields. Nearby old gravel pit drifted in fabulous shapes, house sized dunes and chizell edged ledges over the edges. Almost lost my ten year old brother; got stuck upside down in a tunnel he was digging over the pit edge.

1965: Jumping off the tops of spruce trees back of the hill to land in powdery explosions in the snow. Brother building a snow launch ramp for the toboggan so hig it had me scared. When he went off the end of it he didn't touch down until he hit the woods proper. Came staggering out looking more like a snowman than a twelve year old kid.

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemispher
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 12:43 PM

Remember, all you UKers, that us USians are talking degrees Fahrenheit, not Centigrade/Celsius.

So zero is 32 degrees below freezing.

Actually F is more accurate than C -- more clicks between freezing and boiling temperatures. (More nuances to being uncomfortably cold or uncomfortably hot -- right?)

All I know for sure is we've got a LOT of ice and it's been #%@& cold -- and it's warming up and tomorrow is spozed to be around 50-ish F. Which means the driveway will be MUD not ICE and that, believe it or not, is a heck of a lot worse.

Especially since the wood guy didn't come yesterday as promised.

Sigh. Just part of Life's rich pageant...

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: Early Signs of Spring - northern hemispher
From: CarolC
Date: 17 Feb 08 - 12:21 PM

I was having some difficulty figuring out what a 'sign of spring' was here in coastal (southeastern) North Carolina. We had crickets and some mosquitos at various times throughout the winter. We had robins at various times throughout as well. I found an anole climbing up our screen door back in January. We've had dandelions for a while now. Just today, though, I think I got the first sign of spring. The first ant of the season inside the house.