Springtime and Mud Season

Springtime brings amazing swings in the weather here. A week ago we had nighttime predictions of minus thirty degrees Fahrenheit and wind chills well below that. Well, we only got minus ten at our house, but it was pretty cold. Today we have 62 degrees F on our deck and rain, with flood warnings for southern Vermont because of the rapid snow melt. On top of that they are predicting snow this coming Saturday. So it keeps you guessing.

Along with the warm daytime weather and cool nights, two things start happening. First, the maple sap starts running, so “sugaring” season starts. That is the collection of the sap and the boiling of it down by a factor of 30 to get that great stuff you pour on you pancakes. The scenic result is that all over Vermont there are little “sugar shacks” puffing out steam day and night. The second effect is mud season starts. That is when the snow and the top of the ground thaws but there is still two to four feet of frozen ground below it. The result is that the water has nowhere to go, and all the roads turn into slippery mud slides. In addition, as the frozen grounds thaws unevenly, we get “frost heaves” where the road will bulge up by as much as a foot or so. This means that going up and down Braintree Hill Road from our house is like Mr. Toad’s wild ride; fun, exciting and scary as hell, especially when you pass an oncoming car and neither of you can be sure that the car is going to continue to go in the direction and at the angle that it is currently pointed. You can’t slow down too much if you’re going up, because you might get stuck, so it is sort of take a deep breath and hope for the best time.

Attached are a couple of pictures I took last year to illustrate mud season. They don’t really show how bad it is, but they are illustrative.