May and June were very wet in western Pennsylvania, so much so that some crops won’t make it. @CBSPittsburgh interviewed Dan Yarnick about the floods at Yarnick’s Farm in Indiana County.
Graph comparing 2019 average high/low temperatures by month to 2080 prediction, Pittsburgh, with 100+ degrees maximum (graph by Kate St. John using current averages, adding UMCES prediction) Graph comparing 2019 average rainall by month to 2080 prediction for Pittsburgh (graph by Kate St. John using current averages, adding UMCES prediction)
The prediction said it would happen 55 years from now, in 2080, but it seems that climate change is ahead of schedule.
Rinse and repeat. Bad weather is becoming bad climate.
Woodland crocuses blooming in the lawn on Neville Street, 4 March 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
5 March 2025
The crocuses are blooming!
But of course they are. In yesterday’s sunny and unseasonably warm 67°F the woodland crocuses (Crocus tommasinianus) on Neville Street were in full bloom. I say “were” because today’s rain, clouds and wind will probably keep them closed.
The crocuses dotted the lawn, above, and opened their petals to the sun.
Woodland crocus blooming in the lawn on Neville Street, 4 March 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
Honeybees came to take a sip.
Bee visits blooming crocuses in the lawn on Neville Street, 4 March 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
Now that they’ve opened, how does this year’s crocus bloom date compare to those in the past? Is it later than usual because we had such a cold winter?
Surprisingly, this year is on the early end of the spectrum, based on my record of Crocus First-Bloom Dates in Pittsburgh’s East End since 2009.
I don’t have a crocus record but the date was probably March 7, 2016 based on temperature data, this post about coltsfoot, and feedback from Supriya in Squirrel Hill.
Plotted on the calendar it’s easy to see that the dates cluster and the outliers are early, not late. Repeated dates are circled twice. Interestingly, the dates in February become earlier each time they occur.
Traditional bucket collecting maple sap for sugaring at Beechwood Farms, 3 March 2025 (photo by Kate At. John)
4 March 2025
This winter we’ve hated the cold weather but the freezing temperatures have been good for maple sugaring in March. Cold as it was, this winter was closer to what we had before climate change and the maples in Pittsburgh are happy about it.
Maple sap runs best when daytime temperatures are above freezing and nights are below freezing. When the nights don’t freeze the sap stops running, and the season is over. Last year the season ended early because it was so hot.
Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania (ASWP) has used three methods to collect sap from sugar maples at several of their properties: traditional buckets, bags, and tubes. Yesterday at Beechwood Farms I could tell the sap was running because the bags were filling up.
Bag collecting maple sap at Beechwood Farms, 3 March 2025 (photo by Kate At. John)Tubes collecting maple sap at Beechwood Farms, 3 March 2025 (photo by Kate At. John)
All told, it takes 40 gallons of sap to make just about 1 gallon of syrup. The sap, which is 2% sugar and 98% water, tastes like lightly sweetened water, tasty and refreshing, but lacking in flavor. The boiling process reduces the liquid until the concentration is 65% sugar.
Maple for Scouts. at Beechwood Farms 3/8/2025, Succop 3/15, and Buffalo Creek Nature Park in Sarver 3/22
Hike Through Maple History: Maple Madness. at Beechwood Farms 3/15/2025 and 3/22
Sweetest Season
Maple Drink Tasting, Adults Only Happy Hours: Maple Madness. at Buffalo Creek Nature Park 3/6/2025 and 3/13
Sap collection will end when the maple buds open. (The festivities will continue with pre-collected sap.)
How can you tell that maple buds have opened? From the ground the twigs look thick with little lumps. This red maple was already flowering at Beechwood. Fortunately it’s not the species that produces good sap.
Red maple is flowering already at Beechwood Farms, 3 March 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
Honeysuckle leaves in a Too Early Spring, 20 Feb 2018 (photo by Kate St. John)
20 February 2025
Yesterday I looked back seven years and found photos of honeysuckle leafing out! Obviously we’re having a very different February than we did in 2018 when it was hotter than normal.
How does this year’s Spring status compare to years past? Here are a few photos for comparison.
Maple tree flowers: 2023 vs 2025
Only two years ago the maple trees had started blooming by now. This week the buds are still slammed shut.
Maple flowers blooming on 17 Feb 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)Maple buds slammed shut on 18 Feb 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
The Tulip Garden: 2024 vs 2025
Last year the tulip leaves were standing tall. This year they emerged and stopped.
Tulip leaves standing tall a year ago, 7 Feb 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)Tulip leaves emerged and paused, 18 Feb 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
The Crocus Lawn: 2023 vs 2025
Two years ago this lawn on Neville Street was carpeted in blooming crocuses. This week it’s covered in snow.
The crocus lawn on 21 Feb 2023 (photo by Kate St. John)
Yesterday that lawn looked like this.
The crocus lawn on 18 Feb 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
And here’s an interesting juxtaposition …
High water comes and goes: 2018 vs 2025
The Monongahela River at Duck Hollow flooded the parking lot seven years ago. This month the highest reach was well below the parking lot.
Monongahela River flood at Duck Hollow, 17 Feb 2018 (photo by John English)Monongahela River highest water in February 2025 (so far), 3 Feb 2025 (photo by Kate St. John)
This map shows why we’re confused by this news. While most of the world and everything north of us was extra hot, the Continental US was unusually cold in January 2025.
We’ve often heard and seen how species change their behavior because of humans. Birds now spend the winter near us because of our bird feeders. Mammals originally fled cities, then moved back into them (deer and raccoons). But an article in the Guardian caught my attention when it described physical changes in animals’ bodies wrought by human pressure. Here are two examples.
African elephants without tusks
During the Mozambican civil war, heavy poaching by fighters meant that African savannah elephant numbers plunged by more than 90% in Gorongosa national park. With populations now in recovery and representing one of the most important examples of global restoration, many of the female elephants have no tusks – a consequence of tuskless elephants being less likely to be targeted by poachers, say researchers. The same change has also been recorded in Tanzania.
The map shows where this has happened: Tanzania (north) and Mozambique (southern half of red area).
Map of Mozambique and Tanzania in Africa (merg of two maps from Wikimedia Commons)
Shrinking mahogany trees
Mahogany trees, native to Central and South America, have disappeared from large parts of their historic range. Two of the three species are listed as Endangered yet some individuals survive by adapting. Because the largest trees are always cut down, only the shrubby ones survive and they’re the ones that reproduce. As a result, mahogany trees have shrunk in the wild.
Here’s how human pressure changed the range of Endangered big-leaf mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) in South America: Historic range at top, 2008 range at bottom.
Pair of peregrines on ice floes in the Allegheny River, 12 Jan 2018 (photo by Dave Brooke)
5 January 2025
Harsh winter returns to a large swath of the U.S. today through Tuesday, 5-7 January. From Kansas to Delaware, encompassing the Ohio River end to end, 14 states have Winter Storm Warnings including the southern tier of Pennsylvania.
After it snows low temperatures here will drop into the teens and single digits, 18°F to 9°F on Tuesday through Friday. This will be low enough to form ice on the Allegheny River as it did seven years ago when ice floes lured the Tarentum peregrines to land on the river. For a trip down memory lane see this vintage article.
It seems that Pittsburgh missed waterfowl migration this fall with only a handful of the expected migrants landing on our rivers and lakes. Except for long distance migrants, waterfowl haven’t come at all.
Some ducks, geese and gulls only move south when ice overtakes their location. If they’re hanging out at Lake Erie near Presque Isle, the map of yesterday’s water temperature indicates they have no reason to leave. The water there is more than 40°F and the only ice is in small bays (black color on the map).
There are a few rare geese, though, photographed and posted to eBird and embedded below.
There’s currently a Ross’s goose (Anser rossii) at North Park, noticeably small than the Canada geese it’s hanging out with.
Yesterday there was a brant (Branta bernicla) at Duck Hollow without any Canada geese to keep it company. So it hung out with ring-billed gulls.
And a flock of 16 greater white-fronted geese (Anser albifrons) who normally migrate west of the Mississippi and winter in Louisiana, southern Texas and Mexico have been hanging out with Canada geese in Butler County since 1 December.
These geese are called “white-fronted” because their foreheads are white.
Wondering why the ducks aren’t here? This 2021 vintage article explains why.
Though this willow ptarmigan (Lagopus lagopus) thinks he’s hiding his all-white plumage makes him painfully obvious in a snowless landscape.
There are three species of north country ptarmigans (Lagopus) — willow, white-tailed and rock ptarmigans — that change their plumage with the seasons in order to stay camouflaged against the ground. They’re white in winter to match the snow, brown in summer to match vegetation, and mottled as the seasons change. Their molt cycle worked well until climate change made winters shorter.
Fourteen years ago, in 2010, I blogged about the willow ptarmigan’s superior winter camouflage in Where’s Willow? and he was hard to find in the snowy landscape.
But climate change is making winter is shorter. Snow cover does not begin as early as it used to the fall and it melts earlier in the spring. The ptarmigans’ molt cycle is still on the old schedule so he’s no longer camouflaged when the seasons change. You can see this rock ptarmigan easily from far away.
The Great Lakes hold nearly 20% of the world’s fresh surface water. And, more astonishingly, the lakes hold more than 90% of North America’s fresh surface water.
But this water supply is not unlimited. The Great Lakes are a one-time gift from the glaciers that melted in our region thousands of years ago. Less than 1 percent of the lakes’ water is renewed annually through rainfall and snowmelt. That means the Great Lakes can be depleted if we don’t keep Great Lakes water in the Great Lakes Basin.
The Great Lakes watershed map shows how little of the surrounding land drains into lakes. This is especially true of northern Pennsylvania and Chautauqua County, NY.
As climate change puts enormous strains on fresh water resources, multinational companies look longingly at bottling our rivers and lakes. Fortunately the Great Lakes basin had an early wake up call.
In 1998, an obscure Canadian consulting company, the Nova Group, announced its intention to ship 158 million gallons of Lake Superior water to Asia. Though that specific plan seemed unlikely to materialize, it raised alarms about the vulnerability of the Great Lakes in an increasingly hot and thirsty world.
And so the Great Lakes Compact was born. Signed into law in 2008, it prohibits diversion of water outside the Great Lakes basin with very limited exceptions.
This one-time gift of the Ice Age glaciers won’t be frittered away.
p.s. Prior to 1945 humans diverted Great Lakes water in four locations but these have barely made a dent in the total watershed.
Ogoki pulls water from Hudson Bay watershed into Lake Superior. 1943.
Long Lac pulls water from Hudson Bay watershed into Lake Superior. 1939.
The Chicago River is diverted away from Lake Michigan and into the Mississippi watershed. Beginning in the 1800s.
Welland Canal is a navigation channel from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario that bypasses Niagara Falls. Beginning in 1824.
The combined effects of the Long Lac, Ogoki and Chicago diversions and the Welland Canal have been to permanently raise Lake Superior by an average of 2.1 centimeters (0.8 inches), lower Lakes Michigan-Huron by 0.6 cm (0.2 in), lower Lake Erie by 10 cm (4 in) and raise Lake Ontario by 2.4 cm (1 in), according to the IJC’s 1985 Great Lakes Diversions and Consumptive Uses report.
