Oregon… Totally warm and overcast today. I walked to the store in a t-shirt and was fine. We got about two days of snow. Just enough to be annoying. Pretty normal winter here. Tons of rain but I like that.

Winter here in Boston has been doing an incredible impersonation of Spring this year.

Very mild except for blizzard two weeks ago which dropped around 20 inches. And it’s snowing today and I have to get to the airport later!

In the Philadelphia area, like most of the Northeast, it has been pretty mild. I am growing nostalgic for the way winter used to be. I can’t remember the last time the temperature went into the single digits. Global warming is causing the weather to get warmer and wetter. I would gladly take a few really frigid days in exchange for the increasing number of summer days of 90+ temperatures and superhigh humidity.

I spoke too soon. We have snow here this morning, a few inches, coming down heavy. Daughter’s school is closed. I’m watching the weather and will go in a few hours late.

I am surprised that my winter was much warmer than my spring. This winter I was still in my short and short-sleeve shirt. Now it’s spring, and I am in my thickest coat. It’svery strange because spring here is always a bit warmer than winter. Is it winter now?

I’m in the Chicago area. Last winter at this time, when I took my dog down to the Lake Michigan shore you couldn’t even see the lake; the view was blocked by a ten foot tall ridge of ice. This past weekend, I took him to the same spot and he went swimming.

Winter? What winter?? Here in Chicago we have had rain showers every month this winter. Shoveled 2” of snow once all winter.

Same as the vast majority of winters over here in lil ol englandtown, very little snow, quite mild considering & some days that would freeze the balls off a brass monkey.

Last winter in Massachusetts we got virtually no snow until late January, at which point the entire winter’s worth of snow fell out of the sky onto us and paralyzed cities for several weeks.

This winter has started out the same….barely any snow. It’s also been quite warm. Today we got the first decent-sized snow of the year but we still haven’t been severely dumped on. I’m waiting for the shoe to drop.

It’s weird stuff. Winter weather used to start much, much earlier. November or December.

Milder temperatures but more snow now. It was late getting here.

CA. has finally gotten some really good storms after a 4 year drought, but, we aren’t out of the woods yet. Had a big storm last weekend but now it is sunny, mild and going for a high of 67 by Sunday. The grass is green, the sky is blue, it’s beautiful and so are you, dear El Nino. :-)

St. Lucia, 14 degrees north of the Equator and 60 degrees west of Greenwich (which puts me at about one thousand miles both east and south of New York City): The seasons here are nearly imperceptible, but I usually know when winter has arrived in the northern latitudes by the type, quantity and timing of the migrant birds who come through here on their way from their spring and summer grounds in North America to their Winter quarters in South America.

Easiest to notice are the shorebirds. There is a small kite whose Northern grounds reach from the coast of Maine to northern-most New Foundland Island. I watch for him first. If the eastcoast North Americans are going to have an early winter, he will show up in August or Early September. If it will be severe, they seem to show up in greater numbers and leave all at once instead of the two-weeks it usually takes. This probably means that there aren’t really more kites than last year, they just found it expedient for some reason to migrate all at once. This mass migration also has to do with the variance in food availability, which is dependent on the weather from the year before and therefore may not be a reliable indication of the severity of the coming winter. This little kite didn’t arrive until late October this year, with stragglers still arriving in mid-November, which told me that the North American winter would come late.

During Christmas week, I saw my first “foreign” Osprey. He comes from the southeast Atlantic coastline of Georgia and Florida. He was a couple of weeks late. In the Osprey, the male’s main body, face and head is almost all black or salt & pepper with white underwings, whereas the female has a white belly and face. (Our local Osprey has these differences in lesser distinction than the more highly defined Northern male and female). About a week later, Florida had a cold snap with temps in the high 40’s (F), which causes fish, the Osprey’s main source of nutrition, to head for the bottom and become scarce. Of all the migratory birds I’ve watched down here, the Osprey is the only one in which the male and female travel together. I assume it is due to their hunting partnership. As to all the other birds I’ve witnessed, the male usually arrives first with the female a few days to a week behind.

Red tail hawks arrive a bit earlier than the shorebirds and this means that the interior of the east coast, areas whose temps are not moderated by the presence of a large body of water, are about to get into the 40’s.

Two years ago a Bald Eagle pair built a huge nest in an ancient magnolia tree near here with a view encompassing miles and miles of forest and shoreline. This is a very rare occurance. Baldies have no reason to come this far south, but these did. In about mid-June, their three fat eaglets had passed their flying lessons sufficiently and they all took off one morning headed North.

In the first week of January, I saw what I thought was an enormous Silver Eagle. She was a voracious hunter, very efficient. I watched her continuously dive an parry for an hour from the top of a hill.These birds aren’t supposed to be here. The are from the New Mexico/Arizona area and rarely migrate beyond Central America before their return. I thought she must have been blown off course. Fascinating and beautiful. I watched her for a few days with binoculars. With a camera’s zoom, I was able to get a shot of her, including her talons. Her talons, four of them, were two-opposite-two and not three-opposite-one like a regular Hawk or Eagle. She had the talons of a Fishhawk. The two-opposite-two talon configuration allows the fishhawk to grasp slippery fish more efficiently than the three-opposite-one—this is the reason the fishhawk will almost always get the fish during an areal battle with a Red Tail or Baldie. She was an Osprey, a mutant, a big one, too. She was absolutely beautiful and perfect in every Osprey way. I wonder, knowing how finicky birds are about the company they keep, if she will breed and pass on those beautiful genes. I saw she had no partner in the sky above her. Usually they hunt in male-female pairs with one spotting from high above calling to the other who flies low and is ready to dive at all times. With no partner, she must be aggressive. I hope she makes it. About a week later she was gone on her way to South America.

Most of my birds here are from the Atlantic Flyway. But every once in a while I’ll see a Midwesterner who has taken to the eastern rivelet of the amazing Central Flyway. Most of these birds homes are in the Mississippi River Valley, but also as far east as the Appalatians and as far west as Nevada. I have a lot of respect for these guys. The Central Flyway is the longest of all flyways, reaching from Alaska to Patagonia and there are Yukon and Alaskan shorebirds such as a distinctive type of Sanderling and Sandpiper that sometimes come through here on their way to Tierra del Fuego. It is always a good day when I see one of these fellow travelers.

Bottom line: The North American birds arrived later this year.

Bay Area – more rain than last year which is good considering that we’ve had four years of drought. Still not really enough rain, at least right where I am. Other parts of the state have gotten more. The coldest high temperatures have been in the 50s, which is standard for California winter. No snow where I live of course, but there has been more snow in the mountains than last year (which had the lowest amount of snow in recorded California history). Luckily, it’s going to warm up a bit soon and it will be in the 70s for the Super Bowl.

We were in Akron, OH until a few days ago. Incredibly mild. Two small snowfalls, maybe an inch each. Only three very cold days below 25 during the day, otherwise it’s been above 25 or even near 50! Maybe there will be a warming trend in the NE and eastern Midwest for the next few years. The last few years have been bitter cold up there.

^^Edit: …one thousand miles both east and south of New York City. Correction: 1,000 miles east and 3,000 miles south of NYC.

It’s been warmer than usual here in my part of Canada. I only had to plug in my vehicle once so far this year which is crazy for Canada as far as I can remember.

Lol….Corvus took this question very seriously.

I moved back to Oregon from the east coast so I’m relatively warm and just glad I’m not on the east coast anymore.

Been pretty mild,only had afew days of crap so far and haven’t had to chain up yet and that’s a good thing.

I’m in Abilene, TX. This year there has only been a couple cold snaps, but other than that, it’s been incredibly mild, much to my annoyance (some days have even inched into the 80’s!). Last winter it was the same way. I absolutely hate it. If it’s winter, I want it to feel like winter! I hope to move to a climate that actually has distinguishable seasons someday.

@Tea_Gryphon Welcome to the pod here, your town reminds me an old song I like that mentions Abilene.

Here’s how my walk home from the train station looked on Friday.

In sunny California – left a NJ morning of heavy snow. Hiked and went swimming outside yesterday and about to swim again!

Amazing day here in my Sierra Nevada hills. Hovering around 67ish, sunny, spring like and I am basking in the sun in a cotton hippie skirt and tee, barefoot but not pregnant. lol

I’m in South Florida and this Winter has been warmer than the last few Winters. But, last Winter was unusually cold. So, it’s all good. I always look forward to the cooler weather.