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[Road's End Farm <organic87@frontiernet.net>]

If we ever again get here what I used to think of as a "normal" winter, people are going to be screaming all over the place; they've mostly gotten used to what we used to call an "open" winter, that is, one with little or no snow on the ground most of the time.

The precipitation that I have expected to arrive as snow has been arriving as rain; not just this year, but in a number of recent years. We've had primarily rain, with a smaller amount of snow, in November, December, January, and February of this year so far (and not much of anything, in January). November used to be a tossup; December through February used to, most years, be snow covered except for a "January thaw" which would last a few days only.

I am, admittedly, going by my memory rather than by looking up weather records. My memory involves being outside in vineyards a lot in the winter, though.

While I don't mind not having to shovel, the snowpack we used to get had two major advantages: one, as it melted slowly in the spring, it filled up the groundwater supplies better (much of this winter's rain has fallen on ground at least partially frozen, and runs off downhill to the lake); two, it provided protection to lowgrowing perennials etc. by covering them, and some protection to trees by keeping the roots at a more consistent temperature.

--Rivka
Finger Lakes NY; zone 5 mostly