Thought I’d take a break from business topics this a.m. and write about something a little different – the anticipated arrival of Spring!
Here in Connecticut, we almost achieved a milestone in the annals of weather forecasting.
February 2015 has been the second coldest February since the beginning of weather recordkeeping!
We’ve had an average daily temperature of 16Ëš! Can you believe it -- some days we were colder than Anchorage, Alaska!
The year 1934 has held onto the title of coldest February on record for 81 years and that still holds true – as 2015 has missed the mark by 3/10’s of a degree! So you can understand how much we are anticipating the arrival of Spring and the promise of warmer weather.
The month of February, even though its two to three days shorter than the other months, seemed to go by at a snail’s pace. Oh, did I mention that we also had 31.5 inches of snow during this time period?
I mentioned good naturedly to some friends that I was beginning to feel like I was living at the Overlook Hotel that Jack Nicholson, in the movie “The Shining,” became the off-season caretaker of. Not too sure why but I've been thinking about painting one of the walls in my office bright red but instead of "R E D R U M," I'm seeing one of those big circles with a slash through it with the
word "S N O W!"
(Note: here’s a little trivia for you – in the Movie “The Shining,” outdoor shots of the Overlook Hotel were actually shots of the Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood in Oregon. Supposedly, the Stanley Hotel in Colorado was the place King based the Overlook on. There are some rumors circulating that the hotel was actually the Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, NY as Stephen King frequented it.)
Anyhow, I am extremely happy that Spring is only 19 days away! Our snow cover, however, may not fully melt until sometime in June!
Here’s an interesting activity to try when the vernal equinox graces our presence at 6:45 p.m. (EDT), 5:45 p.m. (CDT), 4:45 p.m. (MDT) and 3:45 p.m. (PDT):
According to folklore (tired of the snow New Englanders maybe, who had nothing better to do!), at the exact moment that Spring arrives, you can balance a raw egg on its pointy end.
I tried this a couple of years ago and it didn’t work but maybe my egg was bad or the counter wasn’t level or any number of other issues that prevented this.
More ramblings -- on the first day of any month a woman that lived at the retirement community that I worked at many moons ago, would greet anyone she came in contact with that day with the phrase “Rabbit, Rabbit.”
When I asked her about this, she told me that by doing so, you were assuring you’d have good luck throughout the month. (If a spry, 96 year old who swears her longevity is due to her weekly happy hour indulgence of bourbon and branch water (just ordinary water from a brook or stream), there must be some merit to it!)
So to all of you reading this today (March 1), I say Rabbit, Rabbit!
