blooming Mountain Laurel This winter has been as mild as any that I can remember in Central Texas.  I don't think we have had a freeze in 2012.  We may have had around 5 in November and December, but this warmth has been ridiculous - or has it?

Ever heard of Arctic Oscillation?  Neither had I until this winter.  After having lived in Alaska as a kid I like to look at a temperature map of that great state every once in a while.  Well Alaska has had one of the coldest winters it has seen in a long time. My Facebook friends in Fairbanks and North Pole (yes, it is a real city) have been posting about temperatures as low as 60 degrees below zero.  Fairbanks is having a winter like the first one I experienced.  I'm talking about multiple weeks in a row of minus 40 or below..

Back to Arctic Oscillation, quite simplified it is a condition that locks the cold air in Alaska and Canada.  This explains why one of my Facebook friends in Portsmouth, NH, where I graduated high school, was staring at green grass instead of snow a week ago.  It explains why it was in the 40s in Indy for the Super Bowl.

I started noticing trees showing leaf buds a couple of weeks ago.  That made me wonder if the flowers would come out early.  Well, the Mountain Laurel to the left is showing just that.

Central Texas usually experiences its coldest weather at the end of February.  If we ever get ice or snow, February is usually the month. I hope that doesn't happen.  The last time it did the peach trees in and around Fredericksburg got hit hard.  They were already in bloom and the freeze cost the peach growers almost all their crop.

Flowers in February?  That's what I am seeing.

Update in April - the mild winter and good spring rains have brought central Texas the best crop of wildflowers I have seen in a number of years.