The new reality? Snowless Rexburg in mid-December

Welcome to Rexburg, Idaho, 12-12-2012.  See anything strange?  Well, if you know anything about this part of the country there are all kinds of strange things in this photo.  The strangest is what is missing.  SNOW!

This is mid-December in SE Idaho, 80 miles south of Yellowstone National Park, 50 miles west of the Teton Mountain range, and at an elevation of a mile high.  Even the foothills in the background are bare. 

Last Saturday my family and I drove north to Island Park into the Targhee National Forest on our annual trek to cut a Christmas tree (you can get a USFS permit to do this for $10).  Normally the snow up there is knee deep this time of year, but this year (and last year) there was no more than an inch or two on the ground when we went up to cut our tree.

Strange, strange, strange!

A week and a half ago we even had a thunderstorm!?  This is not typical Rexburg weather.

As for the foreground...there's not a patch of snow to be seen.  A few flakes came down earlier this afternoon, but it all melted as soon as it hit the ground.

When I looked out of my office window earlier today (the photo above is what I see - not bad, huh?) I saw people on bicycles, scooters, and even the occasional motorcycle.  I also saw people wearing sweatshirts and jackets, and not even that many heavy coats, except for students from So Cal or AZ :-)

On an aside, I got an email from my folks the other day.  They live in Wichita, Kansas.  My Mom mentioned that they are seeing plants starting to push up through the ground they don't usually see until Spring.  Man, are they confused...the plants, not my folks.

If this keeps up, plants and animals are going to get more and more ecologically confused as time goes by.

Oh, I'm confident that we will get snow eventually, but so far, it's a brown, brown holiday season.

Is this the new reality?  Only time will tell.

What will the rest of the winter bring?  Stay tuned.

Summer of the Smokey Haze

When you look outside and see air quality like this you might think, yeah, that's pretty typical...for Mexico City, or Los Angeles, or sometimes even Salt Lake City, but this summer terrible air quality and low visibility have been common in the Upper Snake River Valley, Idaho.  It's been what I call "The Summer of the Smokey Haze."

These shots were taken during the early evening on 17 September 2012, from the SE corner of the BYU-Idaho campus, Rexburg, Idaho looking toward the north, northwest, and west. As you can see, the entire valley is filled with smoke. 

Normally the Upper Snake River Valley has excellent air quality anywhere from 20-50 miles of visibility.  We can usually see the mountains to the north and west of town with great clarity.  This summer though, it's been a rare day when we've been able to see them.

Fortunately we haven't had much in the way of wildfires in our area - aside from one west of Salmon, ID, but because of the topography of Idaho, wind sweeps toward our part of the state from the southwest as wind blows along the lower Snake River Plain, hits hills and mountains to the east of Pocatello and Idaho Falls, and channels the wind our way.  This year there have been large and persistent wild fires throughout much of the mountain west.  This smoke reportedly is making its way to us all the way from fires in Nevada!

Only occasionally can you actually smell the smoke in the air, but the visibility and air quality has been especially poor, all summer long.

We have had some windy days, and even a little rain, and we keep hoping that it will either blow the smoke out of here or drop it to the ground (in the case of rain).  But so far all wind does is bring more smoke.  I guess the only relief we are likely to see anytime soon is going to be connected to seasonal changes.  Maybe once temperatures start to drop and the fires south of us get under control things will get better.

Here's hoping!

March and Winter 2012 Weather Summary - Thanks Lee!

The data below are excerpts from the March 2012 monthly weather summary by Lee Warnick for Rexburg, Idaho.  He is a member of the Faculty at BYU-Idaho, a National Weather Service (NWS) weather spotter, and avid amateur weather observer.  He compiles and emails these data to people who signed up to receive it (you can find links to the group at the end of this posting).  

The data come from the NWS and his own weather station.  

****************************************************************

••• March 2012 almanac •••

Average highs: 50.0     Normal: 44.9     Departure: +5.1

  Notes: 8th mildest March highs in 41 years and mildest since 2007;

breaks run of 4 cooler-than-normal Marches; 4th straight month overall

with above-normal highs

Average lows: 29.0     Normal: 23.7     Departure: +5.3

   Notes: 2nd mildest March lows in 41 years, next only to 1986

(29.1); 3rd consecutive month overall with above normal low temps

Highest temperature: 72 on the 31st

Lowest temperature: 1 on the 2nd

Precipitation: 1.17     Normal: 1.00     % of normal: 117

     Notes: 3rd of past 4 Marches with above normal precip

Snowfall: 7.5     Normal: 5.9     % of normal: 127

     Notes: 11th most March snowfall in 41 years and most since 2008;

breaks run of 3 Marches and 4 months overall with below normal snow

Days with measurable precipitation: 13     Normal: 8.2     % of

normal: 158

High precipitation day: 0.32 inch on the 16th

Days with measurable snowfall: 4

High snowfall day: 2.5 inches on the 1st

Lowest wind chill: 1 degree on the 2nd

Highest wind gust: 48 mph on the 31st

Number of windy days: 14

Days at zero or below: 0     Normal: 0.4

Number of days: cloudy, 6; mostly cloudy, 14; partly cloudy, 4; fair,

7

Heating degree days: 791     Normal: 950

     Notes: 16.8 percent lower heating demands than normal in March

••• March monthly records •••

Highest high temperature, March: 72 on the 31st

     Ties record from March 28, 1986; and March 30, 1986

Highest low temperature, March: 45 on the 31st

     Breaks record of 43 from March 11, 1995; March 24, 1998; and

March 31, 1978

••• March 2012 daily records •••

High temperature: 24th     68     Breaks record of 66 from 2004

High temperature: 25th     69     Breaks record of 68 from 1999

High temperature: 31st     72     Breaks record of 71 from 2004

Highest low temperature, 14th     40     Breaks record of 37 from 2003

Highest low temperature, 15th     41     Breaks record of 33 from 2009

Highest low temperature, 16th     41     Breaks record of 38 from 2009

Highest low temperature, 17th     37     Ties record from 2009

Highest low temperature, 30th     40     Breaks record of 37 from 1978

Highest low temperature: 31st     45     Breaks record of 43 from 1978

No precipitation or snowfall daily records were set or tied in March

••• Annual scoreboard •••

2011-12 water year precipitation – through 6 months: 5.46

Normal: 5.95     % of normal: 92

2009 annual precipitation – through 3 months: 2.89

Normal: 2.80     % of normal: 103

2009 precipitation days: 29     Normal: 26.1     % of normal: 111

2009 heating degree days: 3146     Normal: 3539

   Notes: 11.1 percent higher lower demands than normal to date this

year

••• March 2012 highlights •••

     • Last month I noted that the “high pressure” days had dropped

from 81 percent in December to 71 percent in January, to 52 percent in

February. The percentage plummeted to 23 percent in March, with high

pressure in place no more than three days in a row. We had plenty of

storms pass through the region.

     • Those storms increased in frequency as the month progressed.

Our first two storms were classic Pacific systems that brought

primarily snow. About mid-month the storms started rolling in from a

more southerly orientation and brought mostly rain. And that precip

came in swarms – six straight days of measurable precip from the

14th-19th, and then after a six-day break we closed the month with

measurable precip on five of six days.

     • With the southerly flow came milder temperatures, particularly

at night. We broke daily records for mildest minimum temps on four

straight days (14th-17th), later basked in four consecutive days of

mid-to-upper 60s that included two record-breakers (24th-25th) and

finished March with two more record-breaking days. The 31st was the

mildest March day on record in Rexburg, with a high of 72 (tying a

record set in 1986) and low of 45 (breaking a March record by 2

degrees).

     • Not surprisingly with all these rceords, we were a scant 0.1

degree from breaking the March record for highest average minimum

temperatures. Our maximum temps were above average by more than 5

degrees from the monthly record.

     • Yes, it also was windy, but at 14 windy days still two short of

the March record. So far in 2012 we have recorded 25 windy days. At

this pace we’ll end up with 100; the record, set both in 2010 and

2010, is 95 days.

••• Winter of 2011-12 summary •••

Average temperature: 28.55     Normal: 25.88

Rank: No. 7 mildest in 41 years and mildest since 2002-03

Past four winters: 24.93 (2010-11), 24.57 (2009-10), 26.40 (2008-09),

23.88 (2007-08)

Seasonal snowfall: 30.0     Normal (through March): 55.3

Rank: No. 6 lightest in 41 years and least since 2002-03

Past four winters, through March: 75.9 (2010-11), 52.0 (2009-10), 65.4

(2008-09), 83.6 (2007-08)

Days at zero or below: 5     Normal: 17.6

Rank: No. 2 lowest total in 41 years, next only to 2002-03 (3)

Past four winters: 15 (2010-11), 22 (2009-10), 12 (2008-09), 17

(2007-08)

General snow cover: Dec. 31-Jan. 10 (11 days)

     Notes: This is tough to determine, for we didn’t have consistent

snow cover most of the winter. This was the longest period with

general snow cover.

Final snowmelt from my yard: Feb. 21

     Notes: Again, tough to tell, but this is when all but human-

created piles of snow had departed.

Maximum snow depth: 4 inches on February 1

   Summary: This was far from the La Niña-influenced winter we

anticipated. Like much of the rest of the country, we enjoyed mild

temperatures and light snow – barely half the normal amount through

March. November’s and December’s close-to-normal temperatures morphed

into well-above-normal (in January and March) and moderately above

normal (February) temps the rest of winter. After flirting with

records for least amount of seasonal snow through January, we’ve had

near-normal snow since then, though it didn’t usually stick around

long.

••• A strange year, indeed •••

     Exhibit 1: A few weeks ago I was listening to an internet stream

of WBUR from Boston. I thought I heard the announcer state a current

temperature of 82 degrees – in late March! Not possible! I looked it

up on the NWS’ web site, and sure enough, Boston was above 80 a few

days removed from winter. The official high that day was 84 degrees!

     Exhibit 2: I read a story the other day announcing that the

United States was an average of 8.6 degrees above normal for March.

(We in Rexburg didn’t quite pull our weight, coming in at just 5.2

degrees above normal.) This was the warmest March on record

nationally, and not by a small margin.

     Exhibit 3: The wildfire season is starting not in Arizona and

Texas but the Northeast. That’s right – the nation’s biggest blazes

right now are burning in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut and New

York, places that might not see major wildfires once in a generation.

••• Looking ahead •••

     Mid-range forecasts have us high (in temps) and dry for the next

few weeks. The latest 30- and 90-day predictions don’t see strong

tendencies in temps but move us toward a dry late spring and early

summer. The long-lead forecasts trend toward a warmer than normal

summer, with lesser tendencies leaning toward drier than normal.

     And one parting note: Our brief appearance on the national

Drought Monitor map is over with for the time being. However, most of

northern Utah still is listed as D1 (Moderate Drought).

--

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I heard a motorcycle engine whine this afternoon

OK, so what's the big deal about that!?  I mean, people on motorcycles is not that unusual...is it?  Well, you need to know a few of facts:

1. I live in Idaho
2. This is February - the heart of Winter
3. My town is 1 mile above sea level
4. The motorcycle-riding season around here usually runs between April and October (if you are lucky)

Anyway, I was walking across campus this afternoon on my way back from the gym, and I heard a motorcycle engine whine.  What the devil!?  This is FEBRUARY for crying out loud!!

Normally by this time of year we have streets that are usually snow-covered and/or ice-glazed.  Walking can normally be a dangerous activity due to snow covered sidewalks and icy roads.  I have ridden motorcycles for a few years of my life, and unless you have some sort of death wish you would NEVER take a bike out on icy roads like that.  This year, however, our roads, except in a few isolated areas in the neighborhoods, are bare and dry!  This is an incredibly strange winter!

This is a look at our extended forecast, courtesy of Weather.com.  If you notice, every day in the extended forecast has high temperatures above freezing.  The average high temperature for us for the month of February is 33oF.  Remember, that's an average for the entire month, and we are still at only Feb 2nd and we are already seeing daily high temperatures up to 3, 4, 5, 6oF warmer than our monthly average.

The fact that at least someone was out on their motorcycle today attests to the strangeness of our weather this winter.  If it were me and I still had a bike, it would still be winterized and stored until warmer weather shows up, but there are people out there zipping around - albeit freezing their seat covers off, but out on their motorcycles none-the-less.

How much stranger is this winter likely to get!?  Life is an adventure - bring it on!

(Originally posted 2-2-2012)

This winter has been warmer than usual! And I'm not just saying that!

I got up this morning, January 21st, 2012, looked outside, and saw RAIN!

This is what our windows looked like this morning...rain-streaked:

That's not all that strange for a lot of places...except that I live in Rexburg, Idaho, a place not known for rainy winter days.  Here, it snows!

But you wouldn't know it looking outside lately.  And if you look closely you can see patches here and there where the grass is actually greening up a bit!

If you are like me you have wondered about this winter.  It's felt downright weird!  At least it's felt warmer than usual to me.

Normally by this time of year we have mounds of snow all over the place - by our driveways, along the roads, and in huge piles in parking lots.  In fact, most years the city has to truck the stuff out and dump it someplace, but not this year.  To me it feels like March instead of the middle of January!

As I was pondering on this I found myself wondering if it really is warmer than usual this winter, or if it just feels that way because there's no snow on the ground?

Hm...how can I get to the bottom of this thorny question?  Ah!  Data and statistics...of course!  (Being a scientist, I love data and statistics.)

A question like this is, as I teach my science foundations students, an objective one (i.e., one that can be answered conclusively once we get the right kind of data).  Luckily someone has already collected all of the data I need.  Thanks National Weather Service (NWS)!

Without dragging you through all of the statistical hullabaloo, here's how I answered my question.

I went to Weather.com (which, I understand gets its data from the NWS) and pulled up Rexburg, Idaho.  I went to the monthly data and looked at monthly historical averages.  The historical average daily high temperature for Rexburg in both December and January is 29oF, and the historical average low temperature for both months is 13oF (that's statistically handy!).

I then jotted down the observed daily high and observed daily low temps from 12/21/11 through 1/20/12 and used Excel (Microsoft Office) to calculate the observed average daily high temp and the observed average daily  low temp, and the standard deviations for each (FYI, the standard deviation shows how much variability there is in a set of data).

Here's how the data stacked up:

The historical average high temp was 29oF and the observed average daily high temp was 33.2oF.  The historical average low temp was 13oF, and the observed average daily low temp was 15.4oF.

(The raw data are included at the end of this posting for your viewing pleasure :-D)

OK, the average high and the average low were both higher than their corresponding historical averages, but were they different enough to say that there is a significant difference?  This is where statistics helps out.

Luckily there is a statistical test that lets us compare the average of a set of observations (i.e., our sample mean) to a known average (our historical mean).  It's called a Z-test.

To make a long statistical story short and non-statistical, the bottom line is that the results of the Z-test showed that we can be 99% confident in saying that the observed daily high temps in Rexburg, Idaho, are significantly higher than the historical average.

On the other hand, the Z-test for low temps showed that there is not a significant difference between the observed and historical average daily low temps.

What does this mean?

1. It means that our high temperatures so far this winter have been significantly warmer than our historical average high temperatures.  So if it's felt warmer out there to you than normal there's a good reason for that.
2. As far as low temps go, though, if you are out and about in the early morning and it's felt "bugger cold" to you, that's because our low temps are not significantly different than our historical winter low temps.

The moral of the story is this: Enjoy the warmer than average days while they last...because you never know when the weather is going to change!  After all, all it would probably take to cover us in a mass of frigid Arctic air is for the jet stream to dip just a LITTLE farther south than where it's been hanging out.

So for now, ENJOY!

(Data used in this analysis, courtesy of Weather.com)

Temps at Rexburg, Idaho, 12/21/11 - 1/20/12
	Daily Hi	Daily Low
21-Dec	28	14
22-Dec	20	-1
23-Dec	22	-4
24-Dec	24	-1
25-Dec	31	4
26-Dec	30	6
27-Dec	34	18
28-Dec	41	28
29-Dec	49	38
30-Dec	51	34
31-Dec	33	15
1-Jan	33	17
2-Jan	39	16
3-Jan	38	20
4-Jan	43	17
5-Jan	37	18
6-Jan	30	22
7-Jan	32	19
8-Jan	27	18
9-Jan	35	12
10-Jan	31	17
11-Jan	25	3
12-Jan	24	-1
13-Jan	30	5
14-Jan	38	11
15-Jan	44	24
16-Jan	24	12
17-Jan	24	8
18-Jan	34	21
19-Jan	36	33
20-Jan	41	34
Mean	33.161	15.387
Std Dev	7.789	11.023
Z-score	2.974	1.205

(Originally posted 1-12-2012)

The growing season is getting longer in Rexburg Idaho

Spring last frost dates are happening earlier in the year and Fall first hard frost dates are happening later in the year on average than they did about 40 years ago.  This indicates that we are experiencing a climate shift toward a more moderate climate in Rexburg.

I teach course on climate change, so I spent at least part of each day thinking about climate, climate change, and possible effects of that change.  I look at lots of data at the global scale, but I started wondering about what might be happening locally.  So, I started pondering on factors that might indicate whether a shift is occurring in our local climate.  I decided to look at is the dates of last frost in the Spring, and the first hard frost in the Fall.  What did I discover?  Between 1972 and 2011 the last Spring frost has shifted on average from 5 June to 17 May.  And, the date of the first hard frost (temps less than or equal to 28oF) has shifted on average from 20 September to 10 October.

How can I say this?  Let's take a look at the data.

First, though, it's important to understand the difference between climate and weather. Weather is defined as short-term atmospheric conditions or events - anything that lasts between 5-minutes (such as a rain shower) and a year or longer (such as a drought). Climate, on the other hand, is the long-term average of the weather in a particular location.  By long-term average, this typically means that (at least according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center), one needs at least  30 years worth of weather data before they can really say anything about the climate of an area.  Fortunately we have those kinds of data for Rexburg, Idaho, so it is possible to say something about climate trends here.

Lee Warnick, a faculty member at BYU-Idaho and weather spotter for the National Weather Service, kindly provided me with the raw data I analyzed for this posting.  As a disclaimer, the conclusions in this posting are my own and do not necessarily represent his.  

The data set starts in 1972 and extends through 2010-2011.  That's nearly 40 years of weather data.  FYI, the data came from the Ricks College/BYU-Idaho weather station for 1972-1996, Lee Warnick's personal weather station 1996-2009, and from the weather station at the Rexburg Municipal Airport 2009-present.   

The graph below shows the data for the annual Fall first hard frost 1972-2011 in Rexburg, Idaho.  First of all, you will notice that there is a LOT of variability in the data (this is normal for almost any natural system, including weather and climate, and this is why you need at least 30 years of data before you are likely to see meaningful trend).  The line through the data is the trend line of correlation between the date of the Fall first hard frost (temperatures less than or equal to 28oF) and the year.  If there was no change in the average date of the first frost we would expect to see a flat line in this kind of analysis.  The analysis, however, produced a sloped line with the average date of the Fall first hard frost happening later today than it did 40 years ago.  

In the early 1970s, the average date of the Fall first hard frost happened on around 20 September.  By contrast, by 2011 the average Fall first hard frost had shifted to about 10 October.  (For the statisticians out there, the correlation R-value is significant at an alpha level of 0.01.  This means that statistically, there is only 1% of uncertainty in this analysis.) 

When we look at the same data plotted in 10-year sets, we see that during 1972-1981 there were equal numbers of first frost dates in Sept and October, but when we look at 2002-2011 we see that only one first frost date appeared in Sept and the rest happened in October.  The conclusion?  First frost dates are happening later in the year in Rexburg than they used to.

When we look at the other end of the growing season, last frost in the Spring, we see the following:

The graph above reveals a trend showing that the last frost date is happening earlier in the year today than it did about 40 years ago.  In the early 1970s the average last frost date happened around 5 June.  By 2010 the average Spring last frost date had shifted to about 17 May.  (Again, for the statisticians out there, the correlation R-value between Spring last frost date and year is significant at alpha = 0.05.  In other words, there is less than 5% uncertainty in this analysis, so we can be 95% confident that this correlation represents an actual shift in average Spring last frost dates.)

When we look at the Spring last frost data grouped into 10-year periods the data show that the number of Spring last frost dates in June decline and the number in May tend to increase over time.

As did these analyses I started to wonder whether these observed shifts in first and last frost dates are tied to global climate change or if they were driven be something else, such as the sunspot cycle.

The sun goes through an 11-year sunspot cycle during which the intensity of solar radiation fluctuates.  When many sunspots are present the sun releases increased amounts of solar radiation, and when no sun spots are present the sun releases less radiation.

This graph, courtesy of NASA, shows the most recent few sunspot cycles (1945-2010).

I did statistical analyses to see if there are significant correlations between the first frost dates and the number of sunspots present, and between the last frost dates and the number of sunspots present.  There were no significant correlations for either comparison.  

If the sunspot cycle is driving the observed shift shown in the figures above, we would expect to see earlier last Spring frosts and later Fall first hard frosts when the sun has a lot of sunspots, and vice versa.   What the sunspot and frost data correlation analyses show, however, is that there is no significant relationship between these factors and that there is only a negligible relationship.  

The conclusion?  The sunspot cycle does not appear to drive the observed shift in Spring and Fall frost dates.  

Well then what's the take-home message from all of this?  The average dates of Spring last frost dates are happening earlier, and the Fall first hard frost dates are happening later than they did about 40 years ago.

It is important to note that this analysis reflects long-term climate trends and should probably not be used to predict actual first or last frost dates for a particular year - remember that there is still a lot of year to year variability in actual dates of Spring and Fall frost dates.  

My conclusion?  Based on these data, warming of the global climate appears to be driving the observed trends, and we are consequently experiencing a moderation of our local climate.

(Originally posted 10-31-2011)

Snow on Oct 6th - Are you KIDDING me!?

When I walked in the door around 5:30pm my wife looked at me and said, you can say it, "It's annoying!"  I had to agree...snow this early, and during potato harvest break is extremely annoying!  Farmers can't get into their fields, and the kids who are out of school, ideally to help with the harvest, can't work.  This will probably mean that they will have to work after the scheduled break is over, and when school is back in session!  Stupid snow!

Snow is of course no stranger to Rexburg.  Historical records show that it has snowed here every month of the year (not every year of course, but I've seen it snow in June, etc.)  We usually get our first snowfall October - LATE October, think "Halloween" or early November, but snow, and this much snow, this early is highly unusual.

Our local weather guru sent out this email this morning:

"     As this potent early October storm descends into a snowfest, it

doesn't take your friendly local weather guy to tell you how wet

things have suddenly become. Just ask your friendly local spud farmer

-- at least those who haven't yet finished digging.

     This storm has by itself left a whole October's worth of

precipitation -- more than an inch -- and it's still not over yet.

Tonight's and tomorrow night's lows will hover right around freezing;

the first predicted sub-freezing low in Rexburg will be Saturday night-

Sunday morning. Not that this will much matter with a wet blanket of

snow on the garden!"  -- Lee Warnick

Just in case you don't believe me about the snow...here are a few screen shots from BYU-Idaho webcams taken on the afternoon of Thursday 10/6/2011.  The first shot is looking north over the Spori Quad - toward town.  Where's town!? It's hidden by falling snow and low-lying clouds!

This shot was taken from the top of the Kimball Building, looking west across the Ricks Gardens, and the next shot...

This last shot was taken looking down on the field at Viking Stadium.

It's interesting...you can sure tell which students don't see much snow.  They are from places like Phoenix, LA, Florida, Hawaii, etc.  They were the ones outside running around, throwing snowballs, laughing, and playing.  How can you, by contrast, tell who is local?  For one thing they look at the white stuff, think of skiing and snowboarding, or just decide to hunker down with a large mug of hot chocolate and prepare themselves for more winter weather.

Sigh, I guess it's time to shut down the sprinkler system (d'ya think!).

Of course, this snow will almost certainly melt off and we will have some more pretty good days before winter weather really settles in, but it's just so darned annoying that it's happening now, during the harvest!

One other down side to this particular storm is that Matt has a football game tonight, and it's "Senior Night" when all of the seniors are recognized individually before the game.  We will bundle up, head down there and freeze our, well, look forward to freezing tonight.  Now if only they can win!

Go Cats!

AND, WELCOME TO REXBURG!

(Originally posted on 10-6-2011)

Is "Mr. Blue Sky" here to stay?

May 13, 2011 -

Nice weather has finally reappeared in Rexburg.  It's been a long, cold, gray winter. We had snow on the ground starting in mid-November and it was here through the first part of April, but the weather has (cross your fingers and knock on wood) finally turned!

The weatherman reported last night that it's been 210 days since we last had temperates over 70oF around here.  That's right - it's been 7 months.

The past few days have been clear, sunny, and WARM.  It was warm enough today in fact that a fleece vest was all it took for me to be comfortable at 7:30am when I walked to work.

Everyone seems to be outside enjoying the weather!

Our pasty-pale winter skin is drinking in the rays, and our solar batteries are recharging.  No matter where you look there are students on the grass, runners can be seen all over town, people are biking, working in their yards, and people are smiling!

Here's a shot from the University's webcam looking toward the Spori Quad at 2:30pm today.  It's a happy time on campus.  The sun makes all the difference!

I hope it's warm where you are.  And I hope that this warm Spring weather is here to stay.  (After all, last summer it didn't really warm up until after the 4th of July!)

Here's to a long warm spring/summer!