Chilly March Born of Warming Arctic

For the large number of readers to last week’s post about our colder-than-“normal” March weather who are still eager to understand how we can experience both GLOBAL warming with LOCAL cooling, here’s more depth than I provided last week about the “blocking high” due to warming over the northern latitudes.

Scientists link frozen spring to dramatic Arctic sea ice loss
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/mar/25/frozen-spring-arctic-sea-ice-loss

The good thing is that unlike last March, we don’t have 80 degree temps this year, bringing fruit trees into bud only to have the resulting tiny fruits frozen solid overnight in an April overnight freeze. Our last frost has traditionally been thought of as May 10.

And the ticks we started seeing in the mild January this year have gone back into hibernation, have pulled the covers over their nasty little heads until it feels more like SPRING!

Meanwhile, we are overrun with hoards of fat robins in the snow-covered yard, moving things just beyond reach that are resulting in dog-nose-smears all over our windows.

Okay. Back to work. Stupid me neglected to ask, when I agreed to this project, about the total number of hours of copyediting that would be required and about looming deadlines.

The answer: a hundred hours at least. And US launch of the American product in May, with editing completed not later than April 20.

I gotta go. 

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fred
fred

Fred First holds masters degrees in Vertebrate Zoology and physical therapy, and has been a biology teacher and physical therapist by profession. He moved to southwest Virginia in 1975 and to Floyd County in 1997. He maintains a daily photo-blog, broadcasts essays on the Roanoke NPR station, and contributes regular columns for the Floyd Press and Roanoke's Star Sentinel. His two non-fiction books, Slow Road Home and his recent What We Hold in Our Hands, celebrate the riches that we possess in our families and communities, our natural bounty, social capital and Appalachian cultures old and new. He has served on the Jacksonville Center Board of Directors and is newly active in the Sustain Floyd organization. He lives in northeastern Floyd County on the headwaters of the Roanoke River.

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  1. Your yard full of robins might explain why I did not see a one this past winter. I usually have flocks of over a hundred at a time in my yard through the coldest parts of winter… I do not think I saw a single one this year. I had even commented on it to Sherry last week.

    Throw another log on the fire Fred and enjoy the lack of gardening chores for another week.

  2. It looks like 30 hour work weeks for you, kid. Just pretend you are 10 years younger and still working full time. The 10 years younger part won’t be bad.