Wind blows in Wyoming… 103 mph gust in Clark, Wyoming a day or so ago… 70+mph gusts in Casper, where I was raised… Today was NICE, with barely a breeze, but the few days before this were 50/50 days. Fifty degrees, fifty mph winds and just like that… the snow is GONE.
Now, in Ten Sleep it’s been gone a while, but out here we still had white fields. My hike the other day was modified because I couldn’t trek through the crusty six inches of snow without difficulty. I walked the edges of the fields. Then, boom! 48 hours and it is gone and DRY. I can walk to the chicken coop without teetering on ice or sliding in greasy mud. It’s very enjoyable to stretch out into a waaaaalllllllkkkkk.
This is weird.
This is more like the end of March.
This entry from last year is typical of our Februarys (Minute Movie included!) Now, the frost has gone out of the ground, the soil gurgling it down in happiness, the heifer lot is dry and ready for baby calves like never before. I mean the weather is quite enjoyable… but it gives you an uncertain feeling about the summer, and the grass, and fire season. Oh, I know, there’s plenty of wintertime left, and we usually get our big moisture in spring storms… but that little thought will be niggling in the back of the minds of every rancher and farmer around here. It’s that brook trout, playing with the bait, teasing with his lips on the worm, never biting, but you know it’s there. There’s no control. No forcing the catch. There’s just casting your hopes into the stream and wishing, for one more year, that you can catch your limit, or at least one big one!
Nice photo …. Kinda the same here in Ne. icky mud – slick ice and had to hike on the grassy edges too… but now snow/ice are gone… chickens still have muddy feet… they are funny when it snows… I can see them saying “You go no, you go”…. Good luck fishing….