'Round the World Weather Report

[silentscreen]

It's snowing in Utah- started the night before my birthday. It looks like a winter wonderland here, but not too cold. It's a dry cold-much nicer than Texas. Nice, soft, delicate snowflakes. I'm loving it!

[klondike]

It's 49 degrees with a soft rain this morning in BF, signalling a definitive end to sugaring for '09, but a dependable start to a nice early Spring for a change; 80% of the snow has gone, the River is inching down from snowmelt-flood stage (with a minimum of orchestration down at the dam's giant sluice-gates), and the ground is actually beginning to soften with the slowly lengthening daylight. This usually happens a week or two after Easter around here, so it's definitely left us all a tad giddy, our ears all piqued for the angelic, daily chorale of Canadians honking their way northward (geese, that is, not tourists).
I stood with Flint this morning listening to a cardinal calling merrily from the crest of the towering old sycamore between the park & the funeral home.
Cardinals had always been my mother's favorite bird, and a delight for her in the Springtime; she passed in my 24th year, with my dad following her about five years later, less than three months after the birth of my youngest, my Cait.
Last Summer, I crossed under that old sycamore, going into that funeral home, to speak the service for my Cait. She past-over just three days after what would have been my dad's 95th birthday.
No line favors the straight path in the pattern of our world; a naturalist will tell you that's true as quickly as will an engineer, or an astronomer, or a painter of landscapes. The lines of our Days & Months swirl & swoop in long, powerful curves, oftimes rolling & crashing like great ocean waves.
In Parenthood, Ron Howard suggested that most of us have lives that reflect the motion of either merry-go-rounds, or rollercoasters; I would add that Life's hardest lesson might just be that not everyone is still there with you when the current ride stops.
I can tell you, I was glad for that cool, gentle rain this morning; my tears were sudden, and painful this time, and though few & random, they burned as they rolled down into my beard.

[Birdy]

Klondike - what a lovely story of weather matching mood. I'm tempted to tell you to get a cat to cuddle but I'm afraid it would end up in your stomach instead of in it. Seriously, I appreciated your story as I am facing a birthday. Not that I'd turn down cake, mind you, but I always get a case of the regrets when one rolls around. The only thing to do is to appreciate each day as it comes.

I spent the weekend appreciating the nieces. Last weekend we had a tea party on the porch, today it snowed all day! That's Illinois for you. The daffodils can probably take it, but the tulip trees were so beautiful. They were only opened for a couple of days and now they will turn brown. I have a bad feeling about the buds on my lilac bushes as well.

Chio - my husband had shrimp for lunch at some podunk diner. (They swore it was 'fresh'!) So far he's still alive - 12 more hours to go!

[knitwit45]

We got slammed with the tail end of an early spring storm on Saturday. Heavy, wet snow most of the afternoon and evening, after icy rain all morning. Sunday we had clear, beautiful skies with 45F. Now we're facing the same flooding as other parts of the country. It's never boring around here, is it? Even with all the turmoil, I feel that every day is a gift from God, and try (heavy on the "try") to find the beauty in it.

[jdb1]

Almost surreal, thick fog all day yesterday, with a fierce thunderstorm at night. Windy but not too chilly today, with more rain predicted.

Every tree in my neighborhood is showing little leaves now, and the magnolia buds are starting to show pink -- they will probably open this week. Daffodils are up, and tulips will be up soon. Heard cardinals and robins over the weekend. At last!

[klondike]

Reached 82 degrees here yesterday . . . and we're still 5 days short of May!
80's in northern NE in April ??
This keeps up, we'll have whales returning to the St. Lawrence River!
{Don't laugh - back just prior to the last Ice Age, when a bigger, deeper St. Lawrence actually connected to Lake Champlain, full-size humpbacks used to travel that entire circuit, using the upper Champlain for a spawning basin; and there are numerous fossils to prove it!}

[bryce]

It was 85 on Friday when we drove back into town. Yesterday it was nice and warm in the 70s until the thunderstorm came rolling in, then it dropped 25+ degrees in an hour into the 40s/50s. Why didn't anyone tell me this happened?! I was caught waiting on public transit in the cold, windy and rainy weather in nothing but a t-shirt.

I do have to say that it is greatly amusing listening to Chicagoans talk about stormy weather. To many of them, "pouring rain" is a mild drizzle coming down in spurts. "Raining all day" is when there's been water falling from the sky in any form for more than an hour. "Thunderstorm" is when you hear thunder slightly more often than you hear the El trains go by.

Let's make a deal, Chicago: I don't refer to a few minutes of sleet as a "snowstorm" or couple hours of consistent snowfall as a "blizzard" and I don't think that two days of 80+ degree temperatures is a heatwave, so you guys can stop referring to beautiful April showers as "Noah's last stand." This doesn't go to you people who consistently refer to any month between April and October as "the greatest slice of Heaven on Earth," you people rule and make me excited to be here! This goes out to all you people who complain about the hot, the cold, the windy, the rainy, the snowy, and everything inbetween. It's nobody's fault but yours that you stupidly got caught out in the cold and wet because you didn't look at the forecast and see that a storm was coming that could very well knock the warm air down a couple dozen degrees, so what are you complaining about?

Geez, the nerve of some people!

[knitwit45]

I think Bryce might be our very own Don Quixote, tilting at windmills.
This past weekend was a pip. Warm and sunny on Friday, then wet, rainy, and tornadic most of Saturday and Sunday. Around 4 pm the clouds parted, sun came out for 5 minutes, then back to watching TV to see if our little part of Kansas would be hit by a twister. I just love spring.........

[ChiO]

OK, Bryce: Orson Welles is the greatest director who ever lived in this and all parallel universes; The Night Marchers is a great band, a compendium of the best guitar-based rock'n'roll from 1962 (or so) to now; and, just because something is old doesn't make it better, or even good (Mrs. ChiO being an exception...duck, incoming!!!).

But, I'm sorry, Sunday was a miserable pain-in-the-ass day of worrying whether the basement was going to flood. It was "pouring rain", thank you. And if you use another smiley-face emoticon unicorn-chasing symbol, no backyard summer grilling for you...one year!

Now...come over and fix my computer.

[Hollis]

Well here we are at the end of April, and it's already touching the mid 80's here in the "Heart of Dixie". And that cold Philly weather I moved South to avoid? I don't know where it is, because back home it's expected to reach 92 today! I'll never be able to understand why baseball players have to wear double knit polyester uniforms when cotton would be so much more comfortable and ( yes, I know that it was a Seinfeld episode, but one of the few to make any real sense). I'm afraid that getting summerlike weather this early in the year might mean a very amenable climate for hurricanes to feast on. Keep your fingers crossed that I'm wrong! Seeya in the funny pages!

As always,

Hollis

[Birdy]

Knitty -
I lucked out being west of you, we had a fabulous weekend. In the mid-80's, sunny, hot and beautiful. (Okay, so it was a leeetle windy for a hairdo but we don't care, do we?

Now, cold, rainy and Aprily.
Oh well, spring's definitely sprung.

B

[knitwit45]

Ms. B, don't you mean I'm west of you??? If you are east of me, just wait, your turn is coming up

[Birdy]

Knitty - I don't know where I am!!!
(Not new news.)

Re: The worried over lilacs - absolutely beautiful and the fullest my bush has ever been. I guess a little snow doesn't hurt, sometimes. Hopefully we've seen the end of it, though.
B

[klondike]

Our lilacs are coming into bud here, too; another week, they'll be bursting into beautiful color & heavenly fragrance, a good three weeks ahead of their typical schedule.
A warm, lazy evening here in the Venice of Vermont, high fifties & nary a breath of wind, though I noticed the leaves of the elderberry tree at the corner of Valentine House kept nodding & rustling & stirring as Deb & I gathered the grandkids on the second-storey porch to send-off Cait's geen & purple birthday ballons, along with prayers & wishes for her special day.
Despite that lack of wind, they shot right up & were swiftly out of sight; reckon she must have been eager for her letters from home.

[Birdy]

Klondike,
I was slow replying to this thread.
What a beautiful image and I can imagine your letters reaching heaven. My prayers continue to be with you and yours.

Knitty -
I saw on the other thread that you were ok after yesterdays blasts through the midwest.
Glad to hear it.

We are heading to Oklahoma next week, wish me luck while I watch for falling houses!

B