We’re currently “enjoying” our coolest spring since 1996. I wouldn’t mind it so much if it wasn’t cloudy and/or rainy just about every day. After a long winter this gardener is just itching to get outside.
I could suffer whiplash comparing last year to this year. Last spring everything was WAY ahead of schedule. In fact, one year ago today I was at the local aboretum taking photographs of all the flowering crabapples:
This year the trees haven’t even unfurled their leaves yet, much less sent out flower blossoms. And I can’t believe that I still have a flock of juncos feeding in my backyard. It looks more like mid-March outside, not the end of April.
La Niña has created a revved-up polar jet stream which is clashing with warmer-than-normal, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico. The result has been the incredible severe weather outbreaks all over the country. Wisconsin has been mostly trapped in the cold air sector with the exception of a few days in early April. It was wonderful to finally be able to open the windows and breathe some fresh air, but within a day we were threatened with our own severe weather. Many parts of the state (including some in the Madison area) were pummeled with giant hailstones, and Wisconsin tied the one-day record for tornadoes in April with ten.
After seeing the damage and destruction occurring all over the United States in the last few weeks, I guess I should just be patient with and thankful for our much-less-dramatic rainy and cool start to spring.