“I checked and we are now forty one days and 14 odd hours until the start of spring. And two weeks out until Presidents Day. More clouds may have crowded into the sky but so was to be expected. Crawl gear quickly shifts into second, a bit an icy Tuesday.”

Twenty seven degrees on our way up to the freezing point on this salty Monday morning in February. Increasing clouds as we head towards mostly cloudy day later. The clutch is slipping slightly as we engage first gear but if we match the revolutions carefully we shouldn’t need the clutch for the rest of the week, although tomorrow may be fairly icy, so expect a slip sliding on Tuesday. That said, AR least in the city, things should quickly turn to rain. We could get quite a bit of rain Tuesday into Wednesday. If it was about five degrees colder it would be a foot or foot and a half of snow. Ten degrees cold, two foot plus of snow. But regardless, it’s good, we need the rain.

The sun will set at 5:16 pm with dusk around 5:46 pm, which is 1 minutes and 19 seconds later than yesterday. Today will have 10 hours and 14 minutes of daylight, an increase of 2 minutes and 31 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have a slight chance of light snow before 1am, then a slight chance of snow between 1am and 2am. Cloudy, with a low of 27 degrees at 4am. 11 degrees above normal. Calm wind becoming southeast around 5 mph after midnight. Chance of precipitation is 20%. In 2016, it got down to 24 degrees under partly cloudy skies. The record low of -18 occurred back in 1995.

It wasn’t a bad weekend but it seemed to come and go much too quickly. I enjoyed skiing and going down to Huntersland, but otherwise it was just another cold winters weekend. I guess to get to heaven you have to go through hell first. I hate winter. But things will thaw out eventually. I’m hoping to get out camping and traveling the back country come March.

As previously noted, there are 2 weeks until Presidents Day when the sun will be setting at 5:34 pm with dusk at 6:03 pm. On that day in 2016, we had rain, snow and temperatures between 62 and 35 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 36 degrees. Finally the mercury will start climbing, a bit slightly as we as approach spring. We hit a record high of 66 back in 1930. Almost two thirds of 100 degrees if we have record breaking heat.