My pear trees are blooming for the second time.
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To paraphrase the Cowardly Lion WTF is up with the weather? Everyone is commenting on how warm it is.
AO's Weather Underground folk are forecasting 70 degrees today and then 74 for Tue. & Wed. for my location.

Is it global warming? Is the end of the word near? is the sky falling?

Well......a little research shows an average temperature of 68 with the record being set in 1959 of 82, which is much nicer than the record low of 20 degrees just four years earlier in 1954.
So it looks like the weather is not really out of the normal range at all.

Ok! Ok! I do know that weather and climate change ( global warming ) are two different things.
I can even buy into the claim that the climate is changing.
We know that there have been cycles of warmer and colder global temperatures in the past. I see no reason that this should not be ongoing.
Perhaps mankind is even a contributing factor on a small scale. Do we have the power to control it? No way!
We could maybe bring about a nuclear winter ( or summer ), but that's not control.

While I am all for being good stewards of the earth. After all, it is only common sense to take care of one's home.
Perhaps instead of looking to place blame, it might be wiser to just look at this as a natural occurrence and use our technology to do our best to predict and respond to the oncoming changes in the weather patterns.
Some places that are marginally habitable now will not be so in the future, others that were not may become so. The types of crops that some areas can grow may change. I imagine a lot of things will change. But don't they always?
I think that if we can just manage not to blow ourselves up, that we will weather the oncoming changes. (pun intended )

Just from a personal perspective, The local weather around my area seems to be moderating in that we don't get as many stretches of either very hot or very cold days in a row. It has been a number of years since the local ponds and lakes have frozen over.
I am all for this because as I get older I can feel the cold in my bones more and more.
If I get to chose between that low of 20 degrees and my pear tree blooming out of season.
Well....hell! The damn squirrels and deer eat most of them anyway.

Any thoughts? What's it like in your neighborhood?