Snowing again!

We have a big cold wind along with the snow. The wind honestly bothers me more than rain or snow would, it’s howling!

@MarieCoyle It is clearing up a little now, if it stops raining I will go out for a walk.

@LadyDuck I was out a bit earlier in the evening, and the cold wind was blowing so hard. No outside walks this morning.

It is generally not normal for warm weather to be so prevalent in an Illinois winter. But guessing the weather is harder now, we never know. Oh, next week they said we may have tornado activity! Very strange for February.

@MarieCoyle .......Not good. It's snowing here now. It's about 2p.

Not today. It never got above freezing.

@celticeagle Monday afternoon, we hit 73. Breaking our records daily it seems for the warmest February ever. But late tomorrow night, another coldwave, and snow! Then it warms up again.

One of the strangest winters I can remember, Julia.

@MarieCoyle I remember the 'winter' of 08 or 09 was strange also. Our butterfly bush came into bloom in February. It was never right after that mild winter.

@MarieCoyle A couple of years later we had to dig out that cute little shrub because it never bloomed again.

@MarieCoyle I'm usually very warm-natured, and so I like it freezing cold at night, but when I'm sleeping in the hammock out in the woods, my feet (even though they're inside the sleeping bag) tend to stick up over the edge of the hammock, and when my feet get cold, my whole body gets cold.

I bet it does. Gear for cooler weather is also often bulkier, and then you have to pack it along. I hope you had a great time with your son, Jeff.

@moffittjc I get very cold at night, no matter what. My electric blanket is one of my most prized possessions! Yes, pack the spare bulky blanket, you will sleep better.

@MarieCoyle So true. It will be 80 here on Tuesday. You must be around or near El Paso, Normal, Bloomington, Joliet.

@porwest I am in the home of the Fighting Illini!

Funny how the weather can be so different, we're in the same state, but you are like 3 hours south of me.

Ours have never been on such a wild swing for so long of a time, that I can remember.

@MarieCoyle I did watch the fires on the news here last summer. I hope this year you don’t have a repeat. We often get fires here too, but not on the same scale.

I have welcomed all the precipitation we can get here for now. I do not want a rerun of the horrible fires of last summer, the days and days of smoke from Canada, and so forth. It was not pleasant at all.

@Orson_Kart It was very difficult to get through. Not just here but in many places, the smoke was like a blanket, everywhere. Hard to breathe and hard to see. I hope the fires stay away too, thank you!!

We alternate weather so drastically now, it seems. All of the strange weather patterns are rather difficult to follow.

@MarieCoyle Yes, it is. We'll hit it tomorrow.

We might hit 60 tomorrow, it's just strange to think about in February.

They say that all the time here about Illinois, Linda. But we live in basically the same climate.

Even though it's warmed up, we could well get more cold weather or snow at some point, it's early for spring to start.

I don’t mind rain unless it’s one of those drizzly and gray ones that lasts for hours.

I really had to think about how to describe snow. Snow is water, of course--only it comes out of the sky in the form of kind of a slushy ice. The texture of the snow depends on what the temperature is, the wind chill, and a bunch of other factors. There can be hard snow, which comes down fast and icy and you can't hardly even chip it off your sidewalks. There are soft fluffy snows, which sort of float down and are great for making snowballs, they pack down well. There are hard, pellet like snows, kind of like little tiny ice shreds. I love it when the flakes are so big that they look like lace. Anyone reading this, feel free to help me describe snow, please!

@MarieCoyle i get it now

And yet is to be 60 tomorrow! Up and down, it’s so strange.

Judy, we didn't expect it, either, not after the temps we've had in the last few days!