I've enjoyed the several threads we've had on weather over the past year and a half. But it's probably because I am a bit of a weather nut, er, enthusiast. I was raised, and still reside, in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. My old man started taking me hunting and fishing when I was nine and he taught me what he had learned about weather forecasting from gramps. Gramps and Gramma were raised in the bog country of Kent County where being able to forecast weather, both short and long term, was a part of survival.... if you planted too early or too late, your seed was wasted. If you went trout fishing on a southwest wind, you wasted a day better spent weeding. If you got drunk with the lads down the river, stormy weather could sock in for days.... he learned that from Gramma.

Anyway, overnights are around zeroC and days are between 5 and 15C. I was up Kent County last week and there was a Blue Arse Fly hatch on a warm rain with a warm south wind. Visibility was two hundred metres and the little buggers are only the size of a match head. This was followed within hours by a Ladybug hatch, which voraciously feed on the flies and then migrate south. I had at least three hundred Ladybug's on the front of my hunter's orange vest at one time.

We'll have two more warm south rains for the remaining hatches of moths and butterflies and other such creatures. These hatches will feed the larger birds (that don't migrate, like grouse) during the period where the leaves of ground cover and poplar trees and the like are not fit to eat but the seeds and nuts are not yet ready for consumption. As well, carnivorous migratory birds and bats are feeding on these hatches in order to fatten up for the long flight south, which will begin by soaring high on the thermals created when the last warm south wind rises and pulls in cold air from the north. When these guys leave, it's time to barn the sheep at least an hour before dark every day and keep a shotgun by the door. I'd better stop before I get toooo out of control with my jawin.

Human contact ? Unfortunately, yes. When I'm up in Kent County these days, I have to put up with the fact that a new neighbour moved in two years ago and he's far too close at 1.5k. Used to be, my nearest neighbour was about 5k away.... gettin too crowded for me. People talk too much.