Spring in December

We have switched to spring weather in the last couple of days.  Yesterday was very pleasant, much warmer than it had been, and last night the temperature stayed in the high 20's.  Today we've had mostly 34 degrees.  There has been precipitation, starting off this morning with wet snow, and around noon becoming rain.  Even though we haven't had to go out on the roads today, we think there may be some problems because our mail hasn't come yet, and that's unusual, except when the roads are dicey.  The Cabot sand truck has been through this afternoon, and traffic seems to be moving - at least what traffic there has been.  On days like this, we see mostly only necessary traffic by here.

I've had the scanner on as I've been working here in my office, and there have been a few mishaps - nothing too serious, as far as I can tell, but even sliding off the road into the ditch is not a good experience, as I can tell you first hand. 

While we prefer to stay inside on a day like today, Woody has been in and out more than usual.  I think when it warms up a bit, there are different smells in the air outside to entice him, and he's willing to risk cold pads in order to catch some unsuspecting mole or squirrel.

I went back in my picture files to find pictures of our last "brown Christmas," which was 2006.  We took this picture on Christmas morning that year.  The pond wasn't fully frozen over until after New Years, as I recall.  The ice went out on May 1st that winter (2007), so apparently it turned out to be a pretty "normal" winter, once it got going.

I mentioned recently that I think we deserve a January thaw, and I heard immediately from  Don and Diane Sherwood, asking me to keep that sort of thing to myself because they will be here wanting to ski right after Christmas.  Apparently, Mother Nature was listening, and decided we'd have a thaw a bit earlier this year.  It will be great as long as we get snow by the time the Sherwoods get here - they have a long history of bringing rain with them every year at that time, so I'm hoping the spell may have been broken and I won't need to worry about being blamed.  The forecast is for cold weather to return next week, so we will hope there isn't too much damage to the snow cover from this brief episode of rain.  We had 12 inches on the ground this morning - I'll be measuring again tomorrow morning and will report then.