The non-winter here on Roundtop Mountain continues, with only momentary blips of winter to report. Mostly, January was like a very long November. The snow lasted but a few days and has now retreated to a few tiny patches that are hidden from the sun.

The daytime temperatures are well above freezing, and most nights the temperature does get below freezing, if not always by very much or for very long. By morning, ice in puddles is hardly more than skim ice that is long gone by noon time.

The patterns created by the slowly freezing water caught my eye this weekend. They remind me a bit of tree rings, though I suppose freezing rings would be more accurate. You can see how the freezing starts out with just a little ring and then as the night gets colder, the rings get wider and the water is apparently freezing faster. In a normally cold winter, I don’t see freezing rings. The puddles freeze too fast and are pretty much ringless, with a solid sheet of ice. Not this year.

The warm winter has gotten me to thinking about what the spring might be like. Will winter bother to make an appearance in February? If the winter continues as it has so far, will birds return north much earlier than usual? Will the snow goose and tundra swan migration come long before the end of February? This will be an interesting spring to observe, I think. I’m just not quite ready to start looking for it just yet.