Tonight, at 11:49 EDT, will be the vernal equinox. It will be the earliest spring since 1896. The reason has to do with Pope Gregory XIII, Daylight Saving Time and leap year. Not this leap year, but the one back in 2000. It’s complicated.
And it’s the one I’ll probably enjoy the least of all my years on earth.
And yeah, I know seasons mean nothing to Chicago
At first I though this would be a Global Warming thread. But it’s only clocks and calendars. Whew. I vaguely recall an XKCD episode about a fixed-interval calendar, with exactly 12 hours each between sunrise and sunset every day; 28 days exactly between full moons; and three months exactly between each solstice and equinox. Sure, we need an app to track dates & times, but most of us do already. (I trigger my phone. Bedtime!)
Are leap-seconds and axial-tilt shift factored in? And my screen reads 11:59 PDT so I missed it already. Should have set an alarm…
Fixed for you. Paradise on Earth awaits you there.
I didn’t really have a winter this year.
Around 15-16 years ago I spent a lot of time looking for “exotic” looking plants that would grow outside in my plant hardiness zone 8a. Looked at all the info I could find on cycads and found two that would possibly fit the bill–the “sago palm” Cycas revoluta that you will find in fancier waiting rooms everywhere, and one called Cycas taitungensis. I bought one C. revoluta with around a double-fist-sized trunk and a number of much smaller ones from Ebay and one double-fister of the much less common and significantly more expensive C. taitungensis elsewhere.
Cycads put out one or two “throws” of leaves every year–those that you see growing with layer after layer of fronds are displaying multiple year’s growth. The ones I bought–it turned out–could sorta survive the winter, but each year’s leaves died, leaving them to look pretty sparce having only one set of leaves at a time (after I cut off the deads.)
When I say “sorta” survive, I mean that the* C. revolutas* made it several years but one by one eventually were killed by the winter. But the* C. taitungensis* was a real survivor, coming back every spring after the winter leaf death.
Except for this winter–for the first time, the leaves didn’t die. For the first time since I planted it, the winter never got cold enough long enough to kill them.
Southern Merrylande didn’t really have winter either. We had a dusting of snow one day, and a few days below freezing, but that was it. I’m beginning to dread summer - will it be exceptionally warm also?
We have a [winter storm warning.](WWA Summary by Location with COZ034/COC117/COZ212 Miles SE Breckenridge CO&product1=Winter+Storm+Warning&lat=39.4834&lon=-106.026#.XnNzxjFYaM8) 9-18 inches of snow by Friday 6am.
Springtime in the Rockies. 
Actually, it’s the beginning of mud season.
Oh well, it has been pretty nice for the last two weeks.
Forecast high of 75 today, low of 26 tomorrow.
We paid a snow plow guy $320 to clear our driveway for the season. He had to come exactly once. That was one expensive plowing!
Thats what…she said?
He posted after midnight, his time. VE is tonight (Mar 19) at 20:49 PDT