While Valentine’s Day has come and gone for folks in the Northeast, its safe to say romance, and in this case, gland secretions, still linger in the March air for many of the region’s wildlife populations.
Being in the wildlife control industry, mid-February tends to signal a spike in my phone usage and “windshield time” with calls of pungent odors in the crisp night air and depredation issues on livestock with Tasmanian-devil-like pandemonium. It spells an important milestone time of year for two prominent members of the mammalian super-family Musteloidea - specifically the striped skunk (Mephitis mephitis) and the American mink (Neovison vison). Why the sudden spike in activity during this time of year? Breeding season of course!
f you take a freshwater fish and drop it into the ocean it will die pretty darned quick. At least the vast majority of them will – as will many of the insects, plants, plankton and most other things adapted to life in unsalted water.
So it only seems logical that putting salt into a freshwater lake or stream could be debilitating to the flora and fauna living in it. No one would do that, would they? No one other than highway departments across most of the world in towns and cities that experiences winter weather.
So I’m always a bit bemused when I read articles pondering why our grandparents cooked such dreadful food. True, reading about your grandmother’s idea of what constituted a nice Asian meal is a bit lip-puckering. But why are people forced into flights of fancy to explain why our near ancestors ate like this? All too often, cooking is explained in terms of social norms about femininity, or immigrants, or, in one New York Times column, the Cold War. This is all very well for sophomore sociology classes, but why does no one ever offer simple theories such as “they liked it”; “they thought it looked pretty like that”; or “that was what they could afford”? Having read quite a lot of the era's cookbooks and food writing, I find these the most likely reasons for the endless parade of things molded, jellied, bemayonnaised and enbechameled.
Good morning! Happy Tuesday. Second gear or the week. Pay day which is good because my bank account is very empty.💸 A thousand bucks more out of it and I could be arrested for vegrancy. I am a soldier in the war on poverty. Next Tuesday is Don’t Cry over Spilled Milk Day 🥛. Milk is a renewable resource. Cloudy and 32 degrees in Bethlehem, NY. ☁ Calm wind. Ain’t no sunshine anymore. The skies will clear tomorrow around noontime.
No electric bus today. 🚍 It looks like it did the earlier 18 run this morning. I’m sure they’re moving it around to see performance with different times and drivers. Honestly they’re not much different than the other buses, maybe they ride a bit heavier over the bumps and accelerate and brake smoother. I wonder how they are on the highway? They hybrids are always much smoother on the Delaware Bypass with the regen. ⚡
Today will be cloudy ☁, with a high of 46 degrees at 2pm. 14 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around March 19th. Light and variable wind becoming west 5 to 7 mph in the morning. A year ago, we had mostly sunny skies. The high last year was 56 degrees. The record high of 61 was set in 1991. 15.5 inches of snow fell back in 1926.❄
Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:10 pm with sun having an altitude of 31° from the due south horizon (-39.8° vs. 6/21). Almost summer. 😂 The golden hour 🏅 starts at 4:31 pm with the sun in the west-southwest (241°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-southwest (249°) starting at 5:09 pm and lasts for 3 minutes and 8 seconds with dusk around 5:41 pm, which is one minute and 20 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At dusk you’ll see the Waxing Gibbous 🌔 Moon in the east-southeast (111°) at an altitude of 53° from the horizon, 240,463 miles away. 🚀 The best time to look at the stars is after 6:16 pm. At sunset, look for mostly cloudy skies ☁ and temperatures around 42 degrees. There will be a west-northwest breeze at 7 mph. Today will have 10 hours and 5 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 27 seconds over yesterday.
Tonight will be mostly cloudy 🌥, with a low of 27 degrees at 6am. 12 degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around March 19th. Northwest wind 7 to 9 mph. In 2019, we had mostly clear skies in the evening, which became mostly clear by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 32 degrees. The record low of -15 occurred back in 1918.
Coolbut sunny on Saturday then less nice in Sunday. ☀ Saturday, mostly sunny, with a high near 30. Sunday, a chance of rain and snow. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 36. Chance of precipitation is 40%. Typical average high for the weekend is 33 degrees. I am still considering heading out of town this weekend but it depends on the final forecast and how much snow falls on Thursday.
🌹🌻🌼Only 44 days remain until the first day of calendar spring!🌹🌻🌼
As previously noted, next Tuesday is Don’t Cry over Spilled Milk Day 🥛 when the sun will be setting at 5:21 pm with dusk at 5:50 pm. On that day in 2019, we had partly cloudy, snow showers and temperatures between 33 and 18 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 34 degrees. We hit a record high of 59 back in 1981.
