Climate change

February 11.

February 11, 2019

It now rains, - a drizzling rain mixed with mist, which ever and anon fills the air to the height of fifteen or twenty feet.

Perhaps the best evidence of an amelioration of the climate - at least that the snows are less deep than formerly - is the snow-shoes which still lie about in so many garrets, now useless. No man ever uses them now, yet the old men used them in their youth.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 11, 1852

It now rains. See February 7, 1856 ("During the rain the air is thick, the distant woods bluish, and the single trees on the hill, under the dull mist-covered sky, remarkably distinct and black."); February 8, 1852 ("Night before last, our first rain for a long time; this afternoon, the first crust to walk on"); February 8, 1853 ("The warm rains have melted off the surface snow or white ice on Walden, down to the dark ice, the color of the water, only three or four inches thick"); February 8, 1854 ("Rain, rain, rain, carrying off the snow and leaving a foundation of ice."); February 8, 1856 ("But yesterday’s snow turning to rain, which froze as it fell, there is now a glaze on the trees, giving them a hoary look, icicles like rakes’ teeth on the rails, and a thin crust over all the snow."); February 12, 1856 ("Thawed all day yesterday and rained some what last night"); February 8, 1857 ("The last two days have been misty or rainy without sun.")

The snows are less deep than formerly. Compare February 11, 1856 ("Israel Rice says that he does not know that he can remember a winter when we had as much snow as we have had this winter.”)

February 11. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 11

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2023

tinyurl.com/hdt520211