A Northwoods Almanac for 3/1/24

 A Northwoods Almanac for March 1 – 14, 2024  by John Bates

 

Record Low Great Lakes Ice Cover

            As one would expect given this exceptionally warm winter, researchers at NOAA’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory report that ice coverage across the Great Lakes has reached a historic low. As of February 11, Great Lakes ice coverage was measured at 2.7%. Maximum ice cover for the year usually peaks in late February or early March and, on average, the Great Lakes experience a basin-wide maximum in annual ice coverage of about 53%.

            “We’ve crossed a threshold in which we are at a historic low for ice cover for the Great Lakes as a whole,” says GLERL’s Bryan Mroczka, a physical scientist. “We have never seen ice levels this low in mid-February on the lakes since our records began in 1973.”

            Coverage on each of the lakes was measured as follows:

            Lake Superior 1.7 %

            Lake Michigan 2.6 %

            Lake Huron 5.9 %

            Lake Erie 0.05 %

            Lake Ontario 1.7 %

 

Too Little Snow

            Folks talk about the need for “white gold” up here – the positive economics associated with snow cover. And that’s very true for many businesses that rely on snow, and lots of it, for long periods. While we had exceptional snow cover last winter, this winter has been just the opposite, and it’s not just a phenomena specific to this winter. 

            According to a Dartmouth College study published in the journal Nature in January, during the past 40 years the seasonal snowpack has decreased by 10 to 20 percent per decade in the northeastern and southwestern US and in other regions worldwide. 

            Another study, this one from Salem State University in Massachusetts, found that from 2000 to 2022, North America’s annual snow coverage decreased by an area nearly the size of Texas.

            This doesn’t bode well for many species of plants and wildlife, particularly here in the North Country where winter defines so much of our character. Here’s a sampling of some of the species impacted:

            Snowshoe hares and weasels molt into white coats to better hide in a snowy landscape. But without snow, the hare’s intended camouflage transforms them instead into an obvious target for predators. In northern Wisconsin, the snowshoe hare’s range is drifting north, with cottontail rabbits, who don’t turn white in winter, filling the void.

            Our three species of  weasels are predators, and their story is a bit different – without snowcover, they can no longer easily approach a prey species without being seen.

            Canada jays are really in trouble when winters occur like this one, because they’re “scatter-hoarders.” In the autumn, they mix food with their super sticky saliva and tuck it into the bark of trees at randomly selected spots in their territory, creating thousands of food caches. They do this because they nest during late February and early March in cold, snowy, and usually foodless conditions, incubating their eggs at temperatures as low as -30°F. Nestlings are being fed when lakes are still frozen and the ground still snow-covered, and fledging occurs before 80% of migratory birds have even returned.

            The problem is that their caches have to remain frozen or they’ll spoil, and then the jays won’t be able to feed their nestlings. So, Canada jays are being forced further north where constant freezing temperatures still occur.

            Wood frogs, chorus frogs, and spring peepers all hibernate a few inches into the forest duff, and essentially freeze the entire winter. They need to stay primarily frozen until they are ready to emerge late in April when the weather is warm enough for them to lay eggs. But frequent thaws force them in and out of dormancy, which requires significant energy and potential death.

            Most of our rodent population, from mice to voles to shrews, live under the insulating snowpack throughout the winter in what is called the subnivean zone.  They store food under the snow, create tunnels through which they can travel, stay relatively hidden from predators, and most importantly, don’t freeze to death. One winter snow study found that, with two feet of new snow on the ground and an air temperature of 9°F, the temperature at the top of the snow surface is 11°F. Eight inches into the snow, the temperature jumps to 25°F. At the soil surface, the temperature rises higher yet to 34°F. Four inches into the soil, the temperature climbs to 36°F. This variance spells the difference between life and death for thinly furred rodents.

subnivean zone, diagram courtesy of Trees for Tomorrow

            In the plant world, deep snow protects plants from dry winter winds and protects roots from frost. Researchers from the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire found that with no snowpack, sugar maple roots are exposed to extreme cold, resulting in increased damage and die-off – a 40 to 55 percent reduction in growth that lingered for three years. This is not good news for maple syrup producers, nor for those of us addicted to said syrup.

            I vividly recall my favorite ecology professor telling us that white pines didn’t survive as well in southern Wisconsin during the winter as they do in the North Country because it’s colder for the pines down there. We all looked at him quizzically until he explained the obvious – the white pine roots weren’t insulated by heavy snow cover in southern counties, and the freeze-thaw vacillations often injured the trees. 

 

The Flip Side

            Conversely, sometimes less is more.

            Predator species probably cheer for a thin snow layer. They lose far less energy when they're not forced to wallow through deep snow. Foxes, coyotes, wolves, and martens ordinarily have to stay on trails or travel across the compacted snow that covers lakes, because the energy lost by floundering through deep snow seldom justifies the potential gain. Red foxes can bound through six inches of snow, but deeper snows usually restrict them to trails.

            Larger herbivores like deer appreciate minimal snow cover, too. Deer can easily access woody browse in shallow snow without an excessive loss of energy. In such conditions, they can avoid the need to yard up and the possibility of starvation that accompanies overbrowsing in a limited area. 

            Most birds are also among the creatures that are delighted with minimal snow. Heavy snow generally covers cones, buds, insect eggs, seeds of low shrubs, and other food sources.

            Even the fish appreciate light snow cover, because it allows sunlight to penetrate the ice layer more extensively, which in turn triggers photosynthesis and the creation of life-giving oxygen.

            As with most environmental change, the cost-benefit ratio of snow depth doesn't exactly tip; instead it merely swings, offering advantages to some, disadvantages to others.

 

Factors Limiting Deer Abundance in the U.P.

            Yet another study confirms that wolves are not, I repeat NOT, the reason for lower deer harvests (google the 26 page summary “Factors Limiting Deer Abundance in the Upper Peninsula,” Michigan DNR, 2021). I’ve cherry-picked a few summary statements, but I encourage you to access the report for yourself and draw your own conclusions based on actual data: 

·      Buck harvest across the northern portion of the state [MI] has been declining in the last

35 years. This decline is due in part to a decrease in the number of deer hunters (nearly 40% over the last 20 years) as well as more restrictive changes to regulations.

·      Quantity of fat reserves and seasonal variation in energy demands play an important role in survival of deer during winter. Critical shelter components (hemlock and cedar) are especially important in aiding deer winter survival, particularly in Deer Wintering Complexes. Hemlock has declined drastically and is essentially absent from state forests, while cedar loss has also occurred, but to a lesser extent.

·      In the last 11 years there have been six severe winters that have impacted buck harvest. During this time the wolf population has remained stable, emphasizing that winter weather has a much greater impact on the deer numbers than wolves.

·      The abundance of each predator is important in determining how many fawns are killed across the landscape. In the Upper Peninsula, each coyote kills about 1.5 fawns per year, on average. However, coyotes are so numerous that the overall impact from coyotes is the greatest for all predators. Black bears are also effective predators on fawns, killing 1.4 fawns per bear each year. Bears are also abundant and therefore, have a large impact on fawn mortality. Bobcat and wolf populations are much lower, so even though they kill more fawns per year (6.6 per year for each bobcat and 5.6 per year for each wolf), their overall impact on fawn mortality is reduced.

·      Wolf abundance has remained relatively stable in the Upper Peninsula for the last 12 years with an estimated 557–695 animals while buck harvest has varied substantially. Predation, winter conditions, and habitat quality all interact to play a role in deer abundance in the Upper Peninsula. Wolves are the least abundant predator with the lowest impact on fawn mortality. Wolves prey upon deer, yet annual adult deer survival is high. Wolves are simply one part of the complex predator-prey relationship and are not a primary limiting factor on deer in the Upper Peninsula. 

Celestial Events

            For planet watching in March, look after sunset for Jupiter low in the southwest. For early birds up before dawn, look for Venus brilliant but extremely low in the southeast, and Mars also very low in the southeast.

            The first three days of March ordinarily mark the period when our average high temperature reaches 32° for the first time since late November. But, of course, this average high has already been met in this exceptionally warm winter of 2024.

            As of 3/7, we now are the recipients of 11 hours and 30 minutes of sunlight, as we continue racing toward spring equinox on 3/19.

            Before dawn on 3/8, look for Mars north of the waning sliver of a moon. The next morning, 3/9, look for Venus in nearly the same place above the moon.

            The new moon occurs on 3/10, as does daylight savings time. The moon also happens to be at its perigee this day, the closest it will be to the Earth this year. This means big tides for those who live along ocean coastlines.

 

Thought for the Week

            “To see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.” - Georgia O'Keeffe

 

Please share your outdoor sightings and thoughts: e-mail me at manitowish@centurytel.net, call 715-476-2828, snail-mail at 4245N State Highway 47, Mercer, WI, or see my blog at www.manitowishriver.blogspot.com

 

A Northwoods Almanac for Feb. 16 – 29, 2024

 Ezra Cornell and The Pines Lands of Northern Wisconsin

            I’ve recently been reading an array of books and articles on northern Wisconsin history, and a few days back, I picked up a book on Ezra Cornell, the founder of Cornell University in New York, entitled The Wisconsin Pine Lands of Cornell University. You may rightfully ask, what does an Ivy League college have to do with northern Wisconsin? Well, Ezra Cornell founded Cornell University via his purchase and sale of nearly a half-million acres of pine lands in northern Wisconsin in the later 1800s. 

            It’s a complicated but fascinating story. Upon the forced signing of treaties with the many Native American tribes in Wisconsin in 1825, 1835, 1836, 1837, 1839, 1842, 1848, 1854, and 1856, the Federal Government now had at its disposal tens of millions of acres in Wisconsin to grant or to sell. The General Land Office, established in 1812, was given the authority to oversee surveying and disposing of all these Indian lands throughout the country. It’s a sordid history of corruption and theft, far too long to tell here, but many laws were passed to facilitate settlement over those years including the Homestead Act of 1862.

            Also in 1862 in the midst of the Civil War, the Morrill Act was passed by Congress, creating land-grant colleges in each U.S. state that would teach agriculture and the mechanical arts (engineering). This would seem positive, but to fund the colleges, each eligible state was given 30,000 acres of federal land for each member of Congress the state had as of 1860. Proceeds from the sale of this land were then to be used to establish and fund the colleges. 

            Here’s the kicker. If there was not enough federal land within a state to meet that state's land-grant allocation, the state was issued scrip – essentially paper vouchers – that authorized the state to select and sell available lands in other states to fund its own land-grant college in its home state.

            At that time, New York had no federal lands left and was also the most populous state in the country with 33 members in Congress. Multiply the 30,000 acres per each member of Congress times New York’s 33 members, and New York became the single largest beneficiary of the Morrill Act, ultimately expropriating over 990,000 acres (more than 1,500 square miles) in 15 different states (these lands came from over 230 different Indigenous tribes), with most acreage coming from Wisconsin and California.

            States, however, were prohibited from owning land within another state. So, most often, the state offered the scrip for sale, a process usually resulting in wealthy speculators buying the scrip for a very low cost per acre, then raising the price per acre, and selling the land for a generous profit. 

            Enter Ezra Cornell who had offered his farmland in Ithaca, New York, as a site for the land-grant college, as well as $500,000 of his personal fortune as an initial endowment for the college. He also made the state an additional very generous offer. He would buy all the scrip from the state, purchase lands wherever he could find the best deals, and manage them until they could be sold at the best profits, all of which he agreed to donate to the establishment of Cornell University.

            The state agreed, and he purchased New York’s scrip at its fair market value, in this case 50 cents per acre for the first 100,000 acres in 1865, and then 60 cents per acre in 1866. 

            To then secure the best lands to sell, Cornell sent Henry Putnam to Wisconsin, a shrewd land dealer who knew the pine lands of northern Wisconsin very well, and who also had complete control of the Eau Claire land office where all scrip entries in the Chippewa Valley had to be made, and where no rival could secure land that Putnam wanted.

            Wisconsin’s population was 305,000 in 1850, but by 1860, another 470,000 settlers had arrived, so land was being gobbled up by in-state and out-of-state speculators and sold at as high of a price as they could get from the swarm of settlers.

            By 1865, Wisconsin’s public domain had been reduced to ten or eleven million acres, but many of the best stands of pine in northern Wisconsin were still in public hands.

            To make what is a very long story very short, Cornell acquired a half-million acres (497,126 to be exact) of pine land and farmland in Wisconsin by 1867, and refrained from selling the land for decades to allow it to appreciate in value.       

            When the books were closed on most of the sales by the early 1900s, the land and trees added more than $5 million to the university's endowment fund. Five million dollars in 1900 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $180 million today. 

            While most other states had sold their federal land allocation immediately for as little as 42 cents an acre, the peak price paid for Cornell’s pines reached $82 an acre. Some have described this as the most successful land speculation deal in U.S. history. 

            Across the country, 52 colleges benefited from the Morrill Act, schools like Penn State, Texas A&M, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Wisconsin.

            So, I was curious: Did Cornell own and then sell any of the land near where I live in Manitowish?

Cornell's purchase of a quarter section a few miles from our house in Manitowish

     I live in the Township of Sherman, T.42N.-R.4E. Consulting historic records from the General Land Office, I found the legal patents to 11 quarter sections (160 acres each) in this Township, totaling 1,760 acres, that Cornell purchased on May 2, 1870. This land is just a couple miles east and south on Hwy. 51 near where a state wayside is today along the Manitowish River (see the attached copy of one of the legal patents as well as a summary of Cornell’s purchases).

Cornell's purchases

            Today, Cornell University still owns the mineral rights to much of the land Cornell purchased in Wisconsin. If you’d like to see the total extent of Cornell’s lands, see the Wisconsin Historical Society’s digitized map at https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Image/IM77162. 

                        

How Do The First Fish Find Their Way Into A Lake?

            It’s already been a long, albeit warm winter, and in such a time, my mind sometimes wanders onto strange topics. Thus, the question of how fish ever got into all of our lakes has resurfaced. It’s a question I’ve been asked on occasion, and to which I’ve basically shrugged my shoulders and said, “Possibly a heron or eagle or osprey dropped a fish on the way to its nest, or maybe fish eggs got stuck on their feathers.” But basically, I’ve never known. 

            Now I have a better answer. In a 2020 article published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences  (Lovas-Kiss, et al. “Experimental evidence of dispersal of invasive cyprinid eggs inside migratory waterfowl”), Hungarian researchers fed 500 live eggs of two species of carp to eight captive mallards, and watched to see whether any of those eggs came out the other end and survived in the water. Six of the ducks pooped out 18 intact eggs, and three of the recovered eggs hatched into baby carps, suggesting that mallards, and likely other waterfowl, ferry fish eggs between waterbodies near and far.

            Three eggs may seem a pittance, but mallards are ubiquitous across North America, Asia, and Europe, sharing their ponds, marshes, and lake edges with spawning carp. A single common carp lays up to 1.5 million small, sticky eggs every time it spawns, and it can spawn multiple times per season. Lead author Ádám Lovas-Kiss writes, “If mallards find these spawning areas, they will go there and eat the eggs until they can’t move. It’s a great resource for protein for them.”

            The researchers are now looking to repeat the experiment with eggs of several other fish species to see if they survive the mallard’s gut and successfully hatch and develop. If they do, the question of where fish come from that live in our lakes may well be solved.

 

Reading Scat

            A friend recently emailed me with a question regarding some scat she found on her property that was fresh, full of hair, and rather large. She wondered if I could tell if it was either a coyote or a wolf. 

            Well, it’s tricky. One of the best books on tracking, and also on identifying scat, is by James Halfpenny: A Field Guide to Animal Tracking in North America. Halfpenny, a well-known leader in the art/science of tracking and identifying animals, stresses the need for other supporting clues in addition to scat, like tracks. “Experience has shown that visual identification of scat without additional clues may be correct only 50 to 66% of the time,” he says.

            He adds, “To illustrate size variation, I have assembled information from three studies on the diameters of canine feces. The size distributions were derived from 1,440 positively identified scats as follows: 95 gray fox, 129 red fox, 926 coyote, and 290 wolf. All four species produce scats in the range of 13 to 20 mm. No single diameter will positively separate these species. Any single diameter used as a criterion to separate two species will misidentify a certain percentage of the scat.” 

            I don’t know many folks who carry a millimeter ruler/tape around with them to measure the diameter of scat, but if you are so inclined, Halfpenny notes that scat less than 18mm is fox 90% of the time; scat between 18 and 25 mm is coyote about 63% of the time, and scat 25 mm or larger is wolf also about 63% of the time. 

            There you have it, more than you ever wanted to know, and the real scoop on poop.

 

Ice-Out on the Manitowish and Bees Flying

            The Manitowish River reopened up below our house on Jan. 30, and remains open as of this writing on 2/9. It iced over on Jan. 15, making this a two-week ice season, at least so far, on the river. 

            Temperatures nearly reached 50°F on 2/8, and the honey bees in our two hives were flying! Honey bees usually won’t forage until 55°F, but with sunlight on the hives, they are known to fly at 45-50°F. Temperature within the hives is kept at 95° by the bees constantly shivering and flapping their wings within a large cluster. The worker bees in the center of the cluster actively generate heat while those on the outside of the cluster rest and form an insulating layer. The resting bees can also visit a cell of their own capped honey and fill their crop.

            The bees in the center of the cluster will eventually need to rest. too.  They will make their way out to the periphery, and the outside bees eventually move inward, where they warm up and begin to take another shift as active heaters. All winter long, workers move in and out of the cluster, taking turns.

 

January Temps

            In Wisconsin, the state-wide average temperature of 23.0 degrees was 7.7 degrees higher than the long-term average (1895 to present). This anomaly put the month as the 5th warmest January on record. The daily minimum temperatures were even more extreme: 2nd warmest in the 129 years of data. All parts of the state were exceptionally warm, ranging from 8 to 11 degrees above normal, but far north-central and northeast Wisconsin had the largest anomalies of all.

            Besides the extreme warmth, the most remarkable aspect of January was the seemingly relentless cloudiness. Based on daily sky conditions (sunrise to sunset) reported by the National Weather Service, all six major weather stations around Wisconsin reported at least 70% sky cover in January, exceeding average conditions by 15 to 25 percentage points. Milwaukee suffered through clouds 88% of the time while Madison was nearly as high (86.5%)

            Worldwide, last month was the hottest January ever recorded, both on land and at sea. Whether it was the dreariest, I don’t know.

 

Thought for the Week

            “It is one of the commonest of mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive.” – C. W. Leadbeater

            

Please share your outdoor sightings and thoughts: e-mail me at manitowish@centurytel.net, call 715-476-2828, snail-mail at 4245N State Highway 47, Mercer, WI, or see my blog at www.manitowishriver.blogspot.com  

 

 

A Northwoods Almanac for 2/2 – 15, 2024

 A Northwoods Almanac for 2/2 – 15, 2024  

Dogs and Humans

            Mary, Callie, and I have been hiking every day this winter, always accompanied by, or led by as the case may be, our Australian shepherd, Pippa. She’s two years old, with an amazing, and sometimes baffling, array of physical, intellectual, and behavioral traits. She can be the most loving of dogs, and the most loyal, but if she sniffs out a grouse or a deer anywhere in the woods, she’s off to the races no matter how well fed or well behaved she was just minutes before. Something in her DNA clicks in instantly, and there’s little we can do to deter her. 

Pippa when we first got her in December, 2021

            We’ve had a dog or dogs for all of the 40 years we’ve lived here, and most of them wanted to chase animals. Over that time, we have also encountered all manner, sizes, and shapes of dogs (and their people) on our hikes, all of which has led me to wonder not only how dogs came to be in the shapes we see them today, but how, when, and why they came to be domesticated at all.

            Well, the literature on this is vast, conflicting, and still evolving. And, as a caveat, my knowledge of the literature is comparatively small, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt. 

            Let’s start here: Dogs are one of the biggest enigmas of domestication – they’re the only animal known to have entered into a domestic relationship with people during the Pleistocene (which ended around 11,700 years ago). And despite decades of study, scientists still haven't figured out when or where they arose, much less how or why it happened. 

            Two big names in dog and human genetics, Greger Larson, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford, and Pontus Skoglund, a paleogenomicist, teamed up with colleagues in 2016 to sift through more than 2000 sets of ancient dog remains dating back nearly 11,000 years from Europe, Siberia, and the Near East. In the process, they added 27 ancient dog genomes to the five already on record. 

            The dog DNA revealed that as early as 11,000 years ago, there were already five distinct dog lineages in the Near East, northern Europe, Siberia, New Guinea, and the Americas. Because dogs had already diversified so much by that time, “domestication had to occur long before then,” Skoglund says, which fits with archaeological evidence. 

            The earliest generally accepted remains of a domestic dog, based on a convergence of evidence, comes from the site of Bonn-Oberkassel in Germany, dated to around 15,000 years ago. The morphology and genetics of this young dog clearly distinguish it from local wolves. Archaeologists excavating the site found the dog's skeleton interred in a grave with the remains of a man about 50 years old and a woman about 20 to 25. When researchers see a dog regarded so highly that it’s buried with a family, it’s as if it was considered a member of the family, and thus they know they are looking at a fully domesticated animal. 

            In Israel, at a hunter-gatherer site dating to 12,000 years ago in the upper Jordan Valley, archaeologists discovered perhaps the most famous dog-human burial. The skeleton of an elderly person lies curled on its right side, its left arm stretched out under the head, with the hand resting gently on a puppy. The dog was about four to five months old and was placed there, it’s thought, to be a companion to the deceased.  

            One line of thought suggests that dogs were domesticated in Siberia about 23,000 years ago, possibly while both people and wolves were isolated during the harsh climate of the Last Glacial Maximum when the area was ice-covered. Dogs then accompanied the first people into the Americas and traveled with them as humans rapidly dispersed into the continent beginning about15,000 years ago. But that’s controversial, too, with some strong evidence that humans were in the Americas well before that.

Animal Domestication

            What I want to know is when did dogs become dogs? Wolf-dog analysis by many researchers suggests dogs evolved only once, from a now-extinct wolf species, and not from our current gray wolf population or any other species of wolf. Genetic evidence suggests that dogs split from their wolf ancestors between 27,000 and 40,000 years ago (other research indicates between 18,800 and 32,000 years ago). But it isn’t clear whether domestication happened in Europe or Asia – or in multiple locations – or why it happened.

            Some researchers suggest that hunter-gatherers may have taken in orphaned wolf pups – perhaps viewing them a bit like pets – and fed them on spare lean meat. They probably didn’t have any long-term goal in mind, but the tamed wolves would have later proved to be useful hunting partners – reinforcing the domestication. Nomadic hunter-gatherer societies would have valued the highly specific behaviors of wolves, such as tracking and consuming prey, which may have driven the initial domestic evolution of dogs. Good hunting dogs can find fresh tracks, guide hunters to the prey, and hold the prey at bay.

            Others think that wolves may have started following people for the same reason that flies enter our kitchens – “to take advantage of a nutritional resource, our trash.” Over time, some of these camp-following wolves may increasingly have lost their fear of people – and vice versa – and a mutually beneficial relationship developed.

            Interestingly, the domestication of the dog predates agriculture by many thousands of years. It wasn’t until 11,000 years ago that people living in the Near East entered into relationships with wild populations of aurochs (an extinct cattle-like species), boar, sheep, and goats.

            With the advent of agricultural societies, dogs adapted to the introduction of starch within their diets, a crucial step in their evolution from the wolf. And more recently over the past few hundred years, domesticated dogs have been genetically selected into nearly 400 breeds to fulfill specialized functions in human society.

            All of which doesn’t necessarily bring me closer to understanding Pippa’s desire to chase wild animals. Many dog breeds are still bred to hunt wild animals – the predator trait is enshrined in them. But for dogs not bred for hunting, how many generations will it take before the hunting trait is erased, if ever? I don’t know, but we’ll continue working with Pippa to try and break her of this genetic carryover.

            

2023 – The Warmest Year Since Global Records Began

            By a large margin, the year 2023 was the warmest year since global records began in 1850. At 2.12°F above the 20th-century average of 57.0°F, this value is 0.27°F more than the previous record set in 2016. 

            The 10 warmest years in the 174-year record have all occurred during the last decade (2014–2023). 

            It's been 47 years – nearly half a century – since Earth's temperature was colder than average. 

 

Ice-up, Finally

            The Manitowish River finally iced-over below our house on Jan. 15, the latest date in our 40 years here.

 

Our Warm Winter Continues

            I’m curious to see if we end up breaking local records for the warmest January since temperatures were first officially recorded here. By my figures, we’ve only experienced seven days below 0°F this winter, with the lowest temperature only reaching -12°F, a quite warm minimum for an area where -30° to -40° used to be the norm for the coldest days.

            Our abysmal snow totals have followed suit, with a varying total depending on your location of perhaps 6 inches for the entire winter. No snowmobile trails have been opened in the Lakeland area this winter, and only a few cross country ski sites (Winter Park!) have opened trails.

            Folks are asking why this is happening, and as with all weather events nowadays, it’s weather influenced by climate change. It’s impossible to say if any given event was solely caused by climate change, because weather and climate are two different things. Daily weather can swing wildly over the short term in local areas, whereas climate change is assessed via long term averages from thousands of sites worldwide. 

            What’s essential to understand is that climate data is derived from accumulated daily weather data. Thus, the generalization to remember is simple: The warmer the overall climate, the warmer overall daily weather will tend to be, but with varying fluctuations.

            This winter is a good picture of where we’re heading in the next few decades unless we politically and individually commit to doing everything we can to stymie climate change. Climate change is based on straight-up scientific data, and we’ve got to come together around it. 

 

Celestial Events

            Does Groundhog Day count as a celestial event? Well, it’s more of a terrestrial event with supposed atmospheric consequences, but however we rank it, it’s happening today – Feb. 2. 

            February 4 marks the mid-season point between winter solstice and spring equinox.

            February 5 marks the midway between ice-up and ice-out, at least according to the 48 years of ice records that Woody Hagge has kept on Foster Lake in Hazelhurst.

            We’re up to 10 hours of daylight as of 2/7. The sun is now setting an hour later than our earliest sunsets in December. By 2/15, we’ll be receiving 3+ minutes more of daylight every day.

            The new moon occurs on 2/9.

            Look on 2/15 after dusk for Jupiter about three degrees below the waxing crescent moon.

 

Quote for the Week

            “The world, we are told, was made especially for man – a presumption not supported by all the facts.” –  John Muir