Category: Weather

Weather

We have had several 80 degree days the past week. Right now it’s 33 degrees with light snow. We are under a winter weather advisory, with 4 inches of snow possible. The weather in Minnesota has always been a bit dramatic, but the early spring heat is new and almost certainly due to global warming. The snow in April is not out of the ordinary.

There used to be a columnist at the Minneapolis paper named Don Morrison. When he got the job in Minnesota, he asked someone who had lived here about the weather. “Well,” the guy replied. “There is a lot of it.”

Spring

The high today was 82 F.

I wore sweat pants, a tee shirt and a cotton shirt over the tee shirt. I felt way overdressed. People were passing me in shorts and sleeveless shirts. The air has a softish spring feeling. The trees are budding. And I am hearing new birds, which trill rather than going chip-chip like English sparrows. I think they are house finches. I saw one clearly. It was about the size and shape of a sparrow, but had a touch of red on its chest.

The high is going down to 54 on Saturday. Therre is a chance of snow showers on Sunday and Monday. Ah, spring!

Snow

We had a big storm coming in, that was supposed to start Tuesday and go through Thursday. 23 inches of snow predicted. As it turned out, the storm began very slowly, which was good, since I had a doctor’s visit scheduled. Anyway, most of the snow fell Wednesday night. Thursday morning I reported this on facebook:

The snow is still falling. A couple of suburbs to the south of us have reported 14 inches and 18 inches. The clinic we visited yesterday is closed today due to weather. The streets and sidewalks in our neighborhood have been plowed several times and are passable. The buses are running. Patrick looked out the window and saw a car sliding sideways down the street. So there are cars out… Not many…

A good storm, but not equal to the great Halloween Blizzard of 1991, which dumped two feet of snow on Halloween and another foot about a week later. The banks of snow lasted all winter and got icy. Climbing over them I thought, “I am too old for this.” But I am still in Minnesota.