Backyard Almanac

Larry Weber is hanging out in southern Minnesota, where spring is in full swing. Actually, it was 85 yesterday; maybe summer has already started down there.

The birds returned to the feeders this week, the green to the aspens and willows, and the spring ephemerals to the forest floor. Oh yeah, and it snowed, too.

April is in the rear view mirror and Larry Weber says was "as normal as possible"; that is, except for a couple of strange sightings at his feeder this week. More about Ruby-crowned Kinglets here and Redpolls here. And for some phenology about phenology, here's what we were talking about last year at this time.

Now that the snow is "officially" gone (according to the Weather Service), spring is heading into high gear. Naturalist and author Larry Weber observes that early flowers are waking, catkins are appearing in trees, and many interesting birds and frogs are active in our midst.

There's that time at the end of November where everything freezes up rock-hard and you know the deep freeze of winter has begun. Then there is that time in the spring where all the ice lets go and everthing opens up. This is then. Read more about Larry Weber's book, Web Watching: A Guide to Webs and the Spiders That Make Them, and the award it won for Sparky Stensaas' Stone Ridge Press here. And check out what we were dealing with last year at this time in this Backyard Almanac phenology-on

The return of win-sprin (or "sprinter," if you like), snow, wind, thundersnow with hail ... it's April in the Northland. Interested in phenology about phenology? Here's what Larry was talking about last year at this time:

Larry Weber and the National Weather Service agree: it's a "nice healthy melt" in the Northland for the most part. But April, he reminds us, is not just a month of floods; since nothing is really greened-up yet, it can also be a month of fire danger. (Speaking of phenology, here's what we were talking about on Backyard Almanac last year at this time !)

Our first-half-of-the-month-bears-no-resemblance-to-the-second-half-of-the-month pattern continues, with March setting a record of -19 at the onset and ending up with an average temperature in the 30s. Will April be any less erratic? Probably not. In 2013, we had 51" (that's fifty-one INCHES) of snow in April; in 2010, we had NO snow in April, and in 1952, the National Weather Service says we hit a record high of 88 degrees April 27th. What were we talking about last year at this time?

Piles of dispirited, dirty snow. Sand and grit on roads and sidewalks. Flotsam beached by the receeding snowpack. But Larry Weber, like his beloved redpolls, has returned to the Northland like a harbinger of Spring, and he has a lot more cheerful signs of the season for us to look for.

Phenologist Sparky Stensaas has been keeping journals and recording events in the natural world since he moved here in 1981. Flipping back through the pages, he saw entries for the first laker leaving Duluth under the lift bridge: 1997, March 20 ... 1999, March 17 ... 2001, March 17 ... 2002, March 21..." But even though the Duluth Seaway Port Authority said in a news release this week* that they'll start ice-breaking next Wednesday, the first laker probably won't be leaving any time soon. *"The