Betwixt seasons?

Last night’s weather provided proof that we’re in the messy phase between the beginning of meteorological spring, but still astronomical winter, and the start of astronomical spring on the equinox, in slightly less than two weeks. We got rain, freezing rain, slush, and snow. At least the deadly tornado stayed down in Iowa.

Before the sun can warm the leaf buds and the ground, it will have to melt the snow and ice covering almost everything in sight. Yesterday afternoon the local mail carrier got stuck in the neighbor’s drive and had to be towed out to the road by the neighbor in his 4wd truck. For the second time in three days I scraped slush and snow off of our drive, getting down to about half an inch of ice that needs to melt before we can take off our Yak Traks. The temperatures for the next week plus are expected to run fifteen or more degrees below normal, so we expect little melting until after St. Patrick’s Day. Then, if we’re lucky, we get to enjoy mud season for two or three weeks.

March trees snowcovered pre-budburst

Photo by J. Harrington

A typical spring in Minnesota stays cold and wet until some time in May and then, over the course of a week, climbs into the 80’s or 90’s. It’s not at all like springtime in normal places. It used to be that compensation came in autumn, but the past few years even that season has been less than ideal. A recent study notes that

Our results indicate that the future climate for the state of Minnesota is likely to be significantly different from what has been observed near the end of the 20th century. Over northern and central Minnesota, winters and summers are expected to be up to 6 and 4°C warmer, respectively, near the end of the 21st century. Spring precipitation may increase by more than 1 mm d⁻¹ over northern Minnesota. Over the central part of the state, winter snow depth is suggested to decrease by more than 12 cm. The number of days per year with snow depth of more than 2.54 cm (one inch) is expected to decrease by up to 55. These results are expected to influence regional decision-making related to agriculture, infrastructure, water resources, and other sectors.

Based on recent experience, the transitions expected by the end of this century may be heavily weighted toward the century’s end. This winter seems damn near interminable!

I became interested in these matters because:

1. I’m really tired of the winter of 2021-2022, and
2. I’ve become curious about stream temperatures, urban runoff temperatures and brook trout viability.

Climate change is not in the far distant future. It’s now. It’s not in faraway places. It’s here. We need to get elected and appointed officials to do more NOW to minimize the mess we’ll be leaving our descendants.

Letter to Someone Living Fifty Years from Now

Matthew Olzmann

Most likely, you think we hated the elephant,
the golden toad, the thylacine and all variations
of whale harpooned or hacked into extinction.

It must seem like we sought to leave you nothing
but benzene, mercury, the stomachs
of seagulls rippled with jet fuel and plastic. 

You probably doubt that we were capable of joy,
but I assure you we were.

We still had the night sky back then,
and like our ancestors, we admired
its illuminated doodles
of scorpion outlines and upside-down ladles.

Absolutely, there were some forests left!
Absolutely, we still had some lakes!

I’m saying, it wasn’t all lead paint and sulfur dioxide.
There were bees back then, and they pollinated
a euphoria of flowers so we might
contemplate the great mysteries and finally ask,
“Hey guys, what’s transcendence?”   

And then all the bees were dead.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.