Leap Day Thoughts

One year ago, on February 28, 2023, the last day of meteorological winter, my area of New Jersey got significant snow for the first time all season, so much snow that Spruce Bringsgreen got a thick white coat.

First daffodils, Feb. 29, 2024
(Margo D. Beller)

Yesterday, February 28, 2024, the temperature in my area came close to 60 degrees Fahrenheit for the second time this month. February is usually the coldest month of the winter. After the first very warm day a few weeks before, the early flowers - snowdrops and crocus - in my yard came up and the flowers were close to opening. So were the daffodils. The next day we had cold and snow. The daffodils stopped growing but the crocus and snowdrop flowers continued to form, because this is their usual growing time.

Spruce (at right), Feb. 13, 2024 
(Margo D. Beller)

Now that snow is gone and those flowers are open. That is not unusual. What was unusual was the daffodils that had been rising from the cold ground, then forming flowers when the temperature warmed and then, yesterday, those flowers starting to open at least two weeks early.

More unusual: Today is February 29, known as Leap Day. This occurs once every four years. If today had been March 1 the old saying of March coming in like a lion and leaving like a lamb would've been true. Early this Feb. 29 morning the wind was howling, bringing down many dead tree limbs all over my yard. The temperature is not expected above 40 degrees F, a drop of nearly 20 degrees from yesterday.

Snowdrops, February 2024
(Margo D. Beller)

For weeks I have heard territorial birdsong in the early morning. I have heard cardinal, Carolina wren and white-breasted nuthatch. Canada geese in the nearby community garden have been fighting each other for breeding space. Geese and flocks of robins have been feeding on any large area of green, be it house yard, office park or farm field. The days are now noticeably longer and that longer light is triggering the beginning of mating season.

This morning a flock of grackles flew to the trees over my yard soon after I put out feeders. I went out and stood by the feeders. After communication of some sort (I heard nothing, of course) they all flew off. Yesterday they had soft, wet ground to pick at for food. Today the ground is frozen, and sunflower seeds would be better than nothing. But not in my yard today.

Grackles, from February 2020. The flock today was
not nearly this big. (Margo D. Beller)

Back to Leap Day. By coincidence I am reading a book by Rebecca Boyle, "Our Moon." It explains, in highly readable style, how the Moon (and Earth) was created, its influence on tides and crops, and how it was used to create calendars, among many other things. But due to a difference between the calendar we now use thanks to Julius Caesar and Pope Gregory based on the sun, and the lunar calendar, a day is added every four years to February, the shortest month of the year. (Boyle's book has a very clear explanation of why the leap day and the short month happened.)

(Margo D. Beller)

The Moon has been known to do funny things when it comes to weather and the human mind (and not just for "lunatics"). So I guess I should not be surprised that one year after a snowstorm it should be 60 degrees, and one day after it feels like Spring it should feel like Winter again.

At least the sun is shining, and tomorrow the temperature will rebound for the start of meteorological Spring.

Our Day on the Beach

Barnegat Light (Margo D. Beller)

One of the advantages of being semi-retired is being able to travel someplace on a nice weekday when most others are at work. So last Wednesday MH and I traveled to Barnegat Lighthouse, at the northern end of New Jersey's Long Beach Island.

Rock jetty toward harbor light with the cormorant. (Margo D. Beller)

It is a very long drive for us, which is why we come down here only once a year in the winter offseason to find sea ducks and, with luck, some of the land birds that like the dunes such as horned larks, Ipswich sparrows and snow buntings. While we've seen all three in the past we did not see them this time.

Nor did we see the lovely harlequin ducks, to my mind one of the prettiest ducks in this part of the country, although others told us they were in the channel in good numbers. But to see them we'd have had to climb atop the rock jetty, which is uneven and dangerous, as I found out years ago. MH and I have gotten unsteady as we've gotten older.

Instead, we saw what we could from the paved seawall and then walked down to the beach and out as far as we could in the wind. Back home it was nearly 80 degrees this February day but here it felt much cooler and I was glad to be wearing gloves.

Purple Sandpipers (Margo D. Beller)

While I did not see the harlequins, there was compensation. This picture above is of purple sandpipers that decided, for some reason, to fly from where they were on the rock jetty into the air where I could see them from the beach and quickly take their picture. There was the great cormorant, a winter visitor, showing its distinctive white side patch as it perched on a harbor light.

Harbor seal (Margo D. Beller)

There was the harbor seal that bobbed up for a moment before diving. There were those birds I expected: long-tailed ducks, red-breasted mergansers, black scoters, myrtle warblers in the trees next to the parking lot.

Finally, as we were leaving for our car, there were boat-tailed grackles serenading us as the sun dipped to the western horizon. It was a good day and since then we've had nothing but cold rain, making us glad we could go when we did.

Male boat-tails are dark, females are brown (Margo D. Beller)

The Strangest Month

 February is the strangest month.

In the year I was born, my birth was on the coldest day of that winter season in New York City, according to my mother. MH looked it up and it is true.

Backyard, 8 am, Feb. 18, 2018 (Margo D. Beller)

Today, a week after my most recent birthday and after several days when it was warm enough to take a walk in a light jacket rather than a parka, I awoke to five inches or so of light, powdery snow. A cold front had swept through and clashed with the rain from the day before. Now, with the temperature above 40 degrees, snow has already been coming down from the trees and my plowed driveway is dry thanks to the abundant sunshine.

According to weather.com, this coming week in New York City the temperature will gradually rise from 47 degrees Fahrenheit today (Sunday) to 70 degrees on Wednesday before cooling to 47 degrees Friday and then rising slightly (with rain) over the weekend.

Oh boy, Mud Season!

This is not so unusual for February, even at a time of increasing global warming. Last year, at around this time, MH and I traveled down the Jersey shore to Island Beach State Park on a 70 degree day. Two years ago, the ground was frozen and I was seeking signs of life in the garden. Many years ago, when our nieces and nephew were much younger, we took them to New York's Museum of Natural History on what turned out to be a February day of record warmth, 72 degrees. Even longer ago, on my birthday in 1979, the man who became MH and I met in NYC for supper and it was so windy and so painfully cold we could not go more than a couple of storefronts down the street before ducking inside to get warm. We had supper in the first open restaurant we could find.

Apple tree, Feb. 18, 2018 (Margo D. Beller)

What is it about February?

About a year ago, writers for NorthJersey.com asked the same question. In what seems oddly prophetic they wrote:

Blame the jet stream for the wild gyrations in the weather.

“Most of this winter so far we’ve fallen into this progressive pattern where nothing has stayed more than a few days,” said David Robinson, the state climatologist and a Rutgers University professor. For much of the time, a steady west-to-east flow of upper winds has trapped colder air to the north. January was the 12th-warmest on record for New Jersey, dating to 1895.

But occasionally, because of an array of variables that affects atmospheric patterns, the jet stream bulges to the south, letting colder air down from Canada.

The Old Farmer's Almanac for 2018 has this prediction for the mid-Atlantic region that includes New York and New Jersey:

Winter temperatures will be above normal, on average, with the coldest periods in early to mid-December, late December, early January and early February. Precipitation will be above normal with below-normal snowfall.

The snowiest periods, it says, will be mid-December and mid-January. Most of the prediction has been correct but not the part about the snowfall. The snow on the ground today in mid-February is the most we've had this winter season.

Feeders and baffle with snow helmets. (Margo D. Beller)

February is the tail end of winter. By the meteorological calendar, spring starts on March 1. (The vernal equinox is March 21.) The days are already noticeably longer, with darkness at around 5:30 p.m. EST, about an hour later than in the dead of winter. As I was shoveling out a path to the bird feeders I was hearing cardinals singing out territorial songs. House finches and a tufted titmouse was singing, a flicker called and a downy woodpecker drummed against a tree. Overhead there were a couple dozen grackles flying by, angrily chucking. Just a few days ago an equally large flock of robins were all over my thawed front lawn, scrounging for worms and other food. Maybe they knew what was coming.

My indoor plants have also noticed the increase in light and have started sending out new shoots. It is far from warm enough to put them on my back porch but you can see they are ready to go, especially on the damper, milder days when I can turn off the heat and open some windows. Several plants are flowering, showing some welcome color.  

Before the snow fell I was already seeing some of the earliest weeds growing in one of my garden beds, a reminder of all the work I will have to do once spring - meteorological, vernal, whatever - becomes a reality. I can wait.