Look around, leaves are brown

[austin_dern]

Well, now, a bit of fun. Remember the Cohanzick Zoo, in Bridgeton, New Jersey? And the coatis they bring out the day before Groundhog Day so as to make their own forecast for the end of winter? They did it a little differently this year: instead of the trio of coati females --- Carmella, Margarita, and Floriemel --- brought out to look around, they just brought out one --- Terreto, a ten-year-old male, and instead of trying to figure out whether he saw his shadow or not, they just had him go to one of a pair of food piles, marked Spring and Winter.

What he did, after he was coaxed out, was run under a bench and hide, possibly to remind everyone that coatis live in the rain forest and the desert, not in snow for crying out loud. Nevertheless, they carried on, and eventually Terreto went over to the pile marked Winter, which is just the way this winter has been going. Yeah, six more weeks of winter in New Jersey doesn't say much about my condition, in mid-Michigan, although the local weather animal --- Woody the Woodchuck --- burst into tears and predicted six more months of snow, which is probably an underestimate.

Trivia: In 1979 NASA managed about 55 percent of the United States space budget, and the Department of Defense about 42.5 percent. The rest was spread among the Departments of Energy, Commerce, Transportation, and Agriculture, and the National Science Foundation. Source: A History Of The Kennedy Space Center, Kenneth Lipartito, Orville R Butler.

Currently Reading: Piltdown: A Scientific Forgery, Frank Spencer.

Comments

[moxie_man]

This forecast squirrel filled in for the local woodchuck, who had refused to come out due to the bitter cold. I saw no shadow locally on the 2nd of Feb, so "early spring". Of course in Maine, that means early May/Late April rather than Late May. }:3

Oh, and you have to get through Mud Season before you get to Spring here too.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

We're bound to have a pretty solid mud season here too. There were a couple days above freezing, when I got back from out east, and that produced just these spectacular rivers of slush, and that was two feet of accumulation ago.

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

Well, when the choices are either:

- An early spring, period.
- 6 more weeks of winter, from Feb. 2 -> Mar. 16 (in other words, an early spring)

...you've pretty much got to believe in an early spring, no matter what. Not a good bet this year, or so I am told. Then again, the payoff of winning the long-shot side of that bet would probably be the highest ever this year.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it always bugs me that "six more weeks of winter" IS an early spring here.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

But there is a difference … well, at least last year, there was a difference in what the winter of mid-March was to what the winter of, say, mid-January was. This year, I'm starting to think we're never going to see even a little bit of warm again.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I remember one winter that started out with a rotten December and then gave gentle, warm January and February days, which was lousy for getting snow days, but which would be so magnificent now. If we had a warm February and March, now, I'd at least get a little bit over the past month.