Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Are the persimmon seeds telling the truth?


I have put off reporting on my persimmon seed-reading, because I didn't believe it.
Take a look at the photo at right. The seeds you can actually see to read all are spoons and knives.

I don't trust the seeds any more.

They lied to me for the last couple of years. They were like this year's reading, but the last two winters here were mild. Especially last winter. It was so mild that the municipal utility company's kilowatt-hour sales were down.

Nobody says it is going to be a cold, snowy winter this year, except for my seeds. And everyone else's. Plus the few people I've talked to who have seen woolyworms, or woolybears, say the caterpillars are solid black, no banding, so around here, we read that as a rough winter ahead.

But The Old Farmer's Almanac says it will be a mild winter.

"Winter will be milder than normal, with above-normal precipitation and snowfall. The coldest periods will be from late November into early December, from late December into early January, and in early February. The snowiest periods will be in mid-November, early to mid- and late December, and early February," is what The Old Farmer's Almanac says on Page 229 of the 2018 edition, which I bought last month. I buy it every year, and have for as long as I remember, because that is the almanac Grandpa always bought.

Well, The Old Farmer's Almanac was off this year, for sure. It has been even milder than they predicted, Late November into early December was moderate or warm. Some days I didn't wear a coat or sweater to work, and I get up and arrive before dawn. We got no snow in mid-November, and none in early or mid-December. Here it is in late December, and we finally got the first one of the season.

That is why I opened the seeds, took their picture and then laid them aside. I didn't trust them enough to share them with you, my readers throughout the Heartland and across this great nation.

But now, given recent events, I'm a little concerned. If The Old Farmer's Almanac is this far askew this year, maybe we'll have one of those old-time winters that hit hard on Jan. 1 and blast us all the way through St. Pat's. I remember one of the heaviest snows of my life was on the Ides of March back before I graduated from high school. That was old-timey; maybe we're going to revert to that.  Lord, I hope not.

We got a little bit of snow this past weekend, and it was still cold yesterday, Christmas Day. The National Weather Service says it is going to be below freezing the rest of this week. Maybe on Jan.1, the seeds' prediction will start in. Again, Lord, I hope not.

Well, hunker down and stay warm, folks. Throw another log on the fire.

Monday, December 25, 2017

Merry Cold Christmas

Last night, my wife said, “Is this going to qualify as a White Christmas?”

“Well,” I said, thinking about it. “We didn’t get much snow, so it is not a pretty blanket of snow. With the sky overcast, it looks pretty desolate. Still, though, I guess it would indeed qualify as a White Christmas. It will be your first one.”

She is a Texan and she doesn’t mince words.

“Sure not what it’s cracked up to be,” she said.

She had never had snow on Christmas. In fact, growing up in Houston, she rarely saw snow at all.

I asked her, “Do the radio stations play songs like ‘Jingle Bells’ and ‘Walking in a Winter Wonderland’ down there? Does Bing sing ‘I’m dreaming of a White Christmas” on Houston radio?

“Well, of course,” she said. “It snows in some places in Texas.”

She told me how when she was a kid, her mom and dad would pack the family up and drive north of Houston some 50 miles to Cut and Shoot whenever there was a little bit of snow at Uncle Bubba’s and Aunt Sissy’s place.

“It’s a little farther north, so they would get snow, a little, when we didn’t,” she said.

I remember a few years ago when her niece emailed some pictures of her kids’ snowman in Austin. A closer look at the snowman showed that it was next to a child’s sand bucket. It was a cute little miniature snowman made from snow that the kids had scraped off cars and scooped off the ground with the bucket. They had managed to get enough snow to make a little snow feller, though.

My wife wants to move back down to that warm place.

I don’t blame her.

God bless America, God bless Dixie and Merry Christmas to all our readers here in the Heartland and across this great nation.

Weather data
Here is the Rolla weather data for the 24-hour period ending at 7:30 a.m. today, Dec. 25, 2017, Christmas Day:

High temperature: 28 degrees F.

Low temperature: 17 degrees F.

Current temperature: 19 degrees F.

Precipitation: 0.01 inch.

Precipitation for the year: 42.87 inches

Precipitation for the month: 1.01 inch

Snowfall/frozen precipitation: 0.2 inch.

Snowfall/frozen precipitation for the 2017-2018 season: 1.9 inches

Snowfall/frozen precipitation for the year: 4.5 inches.

Snowfall/frozen precipitation for the month: 1.9 inches.

Relative humidity: 86 percent.

These figures are courtesy of S.R. Fraley, National Weather Service cooperative observer up on the campus of the Missouri University of Science & Technology.