doomer

The Colorado high desert winter typically looks like:

• 3-5 snow storms per month, the first arriving between September and early November, each leaving at least 5cm~ or more on the ground for a few days. This peaks in April and traditionally ends in early May though, so there's still hope the overall snow season could even out.

• Temperatures top out at 0-4C with some sporadic sunny days where it's 12c at most.

• Plants start coming to life in early March, the first dandelions and leaves appear around mid-late April.

• Birds shift to their breeding season in line with plants, while hatching occurs from May-July

This winter:

• Two local snowstorms, the first being the latest-ever in late November. Neither deposited more than 3cm of snow for more than a day. We were in a rain shadow for all of the big storms that the Midwest was getting over the past few months.

• Temperatures consistently 10-18C with some sporadic cold days that have dipped to -2C at most, the warmest December in almost a century. I've biked almost every day in one or two layers.

• Dandelions are starting to bloom, trees have mature buds and are ready to unfurl their leaves by mid-February. I haven't been up into the mountains to see if the earliest pasqueflowers are similarly off-schedule.

• Birds have been doing their Spring breeding routines as early as mid-January. It seems like they're poised for a March-May hatching period where the chicks would normally catch a few more life-threatening snow storms

That whiplash is so scary when it's impacting the most energy-intensive parts of a species' lifecycle. It's so unpredictable that I don't know when to start my seedlings, with swiss chard already healthily growing outside that I would normally start inside in March. Trying to make those predictions as a different species without weather forecasts is an impossible set of conditions.