Snowmen from across the nation gather at the Washington Monument to protest global warming.

WASHINGTON, DC—Braving balmy temperatures and sunny skies, millions of scarfless snowmen and snowwomen gathered in cities across the world Monday to raise public awareness about the heavy toll global warming is taking on their health and well-being.

According to organizers of marches in Washington, Atlanta, Montreal, Berlin, London, Reykjavik, and Moscow, global warming is the primary cause of the steep reduction in the snowman population throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Demonstrators worldwide called on their governments to take more aggressive steps to reduce the effects of climate change.

Organizers estimated the crowd at more than 375,000, but D.C. Police Commissioner Charles Stacey estimated turnout at 30,000 whole snowmen, with scattered rounded abdomens accounting for an additional 5,000. Atlanta organizers and police agree that all demonstrators had melted by 11 a.m.

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It doesn’t happen often, but it was snowing this morning as low as Cameron Park (about half way between Sacramento and Placerville), just a few miles from our home!. I don’t remember that happening since ‘04 or ‘05! Chains are required just past Placerville!

Anyway, this Sacramento Bee photo shows drivers during heavy snowfall along Durrock Road in Cameron Park about 7 a.m. this morning. It’s just not something we’re used to seeing this far down the hill! Everyone’s wondering if the next storm will affect the AMGEN Tour of California scheduled to pass through downtown Sacramento about 1 PM tomorrow…(More)

It’s hard to maintain a “glass half full” outlook with these temps. Adding salt to the wound, the ozone layer and wind patterns are pushing the smoke from our many wildfires into the valley as though it were a big bowl. We’re in the red zone (unhealthy). But as our optimistic weather forecasters remind us, “Look for cooler temps by the weekend.”

Right. Here’s the forecast. Like gas prices, anything lower than “painful” is welcome.

Well, another successful Earth Hour. For those of you that participated, I’m sure the glow from knowing you did your part to save the planet lasted all weekend. Today, you’ll have to restart your computers, reset clocks and get back to your real life. I’ll bet you can hardly wait to do it again next year!

For those of you in the dark about why the lights went out for an hour on the Golden Gate Bridge and many buildings Saturday night, it was the second annual grand gesture to raise awareness of global warming climate change. Our office building was one of those that went dark for an hour to demonstrate support, and we turned off everything in our office except the AS/400 which I suspect would have burned more power to restart than letting it idle for the hour. I’m sure you saw it on the news and wished you’d participated. You’ll have to wait until next year to get that “green all over” feeling.

Or will you? What if you turn everything off for an hour tonight? Oh, you won’t get any recognition from your peers for “caring” but you’ll know, deep in your heart of hearts, that you, too, helped save the world from global warming climate change.

What’s that? It only counts if your fellow greenies know you were on the front lines? Oh, yeah. Well, next year, right? See ya’ there.

You don’t have to look far to see signs of spring. From the budding of trees and the warming of temperatures to the animals coming out of their winter hideaways, the promise of new birth and fresh color fills the springtime air. In our area, signs of the change in season have been popping up for weeks. La Niña provided a mild winter with above normal rainfall, and we’ve enjoyed some wonderful early spring-like weather.

The first day of spring is usually March 20 but sometimes, like last year, it falls on the 21st to correspond with the vernal equinox when the sun rests directly above the equator on its apparent trip northward. As the earth revolves around the sun, the Northern Hemisphere tilts more toward the sun as winter turns to spring. Conversely, the Southern Hemisphere tilts more away from the sun ushering in the beginning of autumn for people in that hemisphere.

The word “equinox” is derived from Latin and means “equal nights.” Around March 20 (or 21st as the case may be), sunrise and sunset are about twelve hours apart everywhere on Earth. Because of that, some folks mistakenly believe that day and night on that date are of equal length. In reality, though, the day is a little longer and here’s why. Sunrise occurs when the top of the sun rather than its center is on the horizon. But the sun actually appears to be above the horizon when it is in fact still below it. That’s because the earth’s atmosphere refracts, or “bends,” light coming from the sun, so we “see” the sun a couple of minutes before it actually rises over the horizon. And if you add the daylight that persists after sunset, you’ll find the day on the equinox is several minutes longer than the night.

Spring is a time of transition, not only for plants and animals, but for the weather, too. It can mean weather extremes from very cold and snowy days to humid and stormy days. Some of the country’s biggest snowfalls have occurred in March and the period from March to May brings severe thunderstorms, hail and tornadoes to much of the south. In the Sacramento region, spring is my favorite season. It means hiking and other outdoor activities, longer days and warmer nights, and myriad opportunities for landscape and wildlife photography.

And let’s lay to rest the myth about your being able to balance a raw egg on end on the first day of spring when, supposedly, the pull of gravity is more equal because the sun is more directly overhead. There’s simply no scientific support for this.

The balancing egg legend apparently got its start in 1945 when a reporter for Life Magazine wrote a story about a Chinese ritual in which people stood eggs on end on the first day of spring. But the Chinese recognized the first day of spring in early February, or about six weeks before the spring equinox! Hmmmm…

Later, in 1983, a hundred New Yorkers got together on March 20 to balance eggs and an article about the event appeared in the New Yorker magazine. A year later, five thousand New Yorkers repeated the tradition on the first day of spring, and the egg legend grew. The truth is that if you can get a raw egg to balance upright on the spring equinox, you can get it to balance any other day of the year. The pull of gravity or the position of the sun in the sky has nothing to do with it.

But balancing egg or no balancing egg, by all means embrace spring! Get outside, listen to the birds and smell the flowers. Take long walks. Explore. Immerse yourself in the newness of the season!

Our temps of late remind me of what I dislike about Sacramento summers; they’re too damn hot! Seems like we’ve suffered more than our share of 100+ degree days this month with more to come. We’re having “Flex Alerts,” and our office HVAC system was even down this morning. (Thank goodness they got it up in relatively short order.) Anyway, here’s the Sacramento forecast for the next few days…

Yup, sunny and hot.

We’re enjoying beautiful spring weather although temps have reached the 90s, a little above normal for this time of year. A cooling trend to the 80s is forecast for the rest of the week.

Call me a weenie, but I’m most comfortable with 72-80 and a summer peak around 85. Still, I’m thoroughly enjoying spring. Birds are chirping, mama ducks are ushering their recently hatched ducklings to the lake for their first swimming lessons, flowers are blooming in all their glory…everything is fresh, clean and new.

Signs of Spring are everywhere… Even in your own backyard.

We’re well into spring, but it’s been an unusual transition. We enjoyed a mild winter with below normal rainfall, few extremely cold days and very little fog. Early March brought warm, sunny, spring-like days. Evenings were still chilly, but flowers were blooming and birds were chirping. Spring, my favorite season, had arrived early bringing light breezes and delightful daytime temperatures in the 70s! Some have called this an El Niño year. In any event, it certainly wasn’t a “normal” winter.

By mid-March, I’d put away my umbrella and broken out the shorts and Hawaiian shirts. So I was completely unprepared for the sudden shift back to chilly, grey, rainy weather in late April. The string of cold, rainy days seemed out of place this far into spring. Last week was cold - in the 50s - and this past weekend in the 80s. Yesterday hit 95 and the forecast for today is more of the same!

I suppose Mother Nature is just evening the score so I’m not putting away my rain gear just yet. And while most folks are delighting in the summer temps, I’m longing for the the return of the “real” spring.