It was a Warm, Green Christmas in 2014!

There was no white christmas this year in the Tri-State region. In fact it was one of the warmest Christmas eves and Christmas days in decades! It was also one of the wettest as well! The graphic below was released by the New York City National Weather Service office. It shows the records, as well as official temps and rainfall for the area's weather station. Bridgeport, CT is the closest station to my hometown. However, check out how warm it got at LaGuardia airport in New York! It got up to 63 degrees on Christmas day, that beat the record by 6 degrees from 24 years ago in 1990! 

It was also one wet, Christmas Eve with it being the wettest on record at Islip, NY and Kennedy, NY. 

Blending the Seasons! Plants Don't Know If it's Fall, Winter or Spring!

As the nor'easter finally begins to wrap up and slowly but surely move away from the northeast, it seems some of the plants have the seasons mixed up. As some snow flurries fell yesterday afternoon, I took a quick stroll around the backyard with the dog and decided to take a few photos with my phone. As I walked across the melting snow (just a dusting from the night before) I noticed some snow on the arborvitaes, which looked very festive with Christmas coming up. Then out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a color that was neither brown, nor white or green. A color that should not be found in nature this time of year. This color was a yellow flower. Specifically, a forsythia flower, a trademark of spring. It must bloomed last week when temperatures briefly peaked around 60 degrees. It wasn't even just one flower, there were multiple blooms! There was even some forsythia leaves on the branches.  

In all the photos I took, you can see the dusting of snow in the background. Nature is defiantly confused on what season it is! There's spring blossoms, winter snow, and of course it really is still autumn! 

Snow hangs on to the evergreen branches, creating a festive holiday scene! 

Halloween pumpkin partly eaten by squirrels and covered in a dusting of snow! 

Forsythia flowers blooming with a dusting of snow in the background.  

Even new forsythia leaves have sprouted! 

Surprised snow 2/24/12

I woke up this morning to a surprise snow event!  About 2 inches of very heavy and very wet snow fell over night in southern CT.  This might seem strange that I'm surprise by a light snowfall in February but yesterday afternoon was close to 60 degrees! and this winter has not really been a new England winter.  The fact that the snow stuck to ground that's been pretty warm is impressive and means that we must have gotten a period of intense precipitation.  Although thinking back to last night the local weathermen were all predicting rain along the shore, i should have known better when i went to bed and noticed the dew point was down near 25 and the temp was already down to 35 before the precip even arrived.  Once the rain moved in, the air was so dry that temps had to slowly drop to the freezing mark as dew points rose to get enough humidity in the air for snow! (according to weatherbug it got down to 30 degrees last night).  On top of it all the chance of thunderstorms this afternoon isn't out of the question, it would be interesting to see 60 degrees, 2 inches of snow and then thunderstorms all in about 36 hours!