So Long...For Now

Late yesterday afternoon one of our elder church members quietly slipped out of this life into the eternal glory that lies on the other side of the door that we call death. She had been standing at that door for about a week, and it was finally opened to her allowing here into the face to face presence of God. As I was driving to the hospital immediately after getting the call that she had passed on, about 5pm, I noticed that it was not yet getting dark. Which was quite nice. As we stand today, February 5th, the sun is setting exactly one hour later than it did back on the first day of winter. That was about a month and a half ago. It is rising about 45 minutes earlier, so we have reclaimed just under two hours of light back from the darkness each day. As we approach the beginning of spring, 6 weeks away, the rate of increase in the day length will be getting more substantial. The bottom line is that winter is on the downhill slide, and spring will be here before you know it!

We have spring like rains falling this morning, and it will be pretty wet until about noon. Yesterday the high temperature reached 47 degrees, but with the clouds and rain today we will probably be cooler, more like 41 or 42. I checked out the snowfall total for the season so far, and we still sit at 12.8 inches since the winter weather began back in November. Normal through the 5th of February is 34.9 inches, so we sit at just a bit over 22 inches below average. That's almost 2 feet. We are running almost 6 feet behind where we were last winter at this time. The prospects for a lot of snow this month into March are pretty slim, given the El Nino weather pattern, so it is highly doubtful that we will get back to anywhere near the normal for snowfall this winter. As I have said many times before...that is A-okay with me!