Spring Already?

Last weekend was the beginning of a string of strangely warm days - I mean, highs in the upper 60s to lower 80s.  This may not seem so odd to my southern readers, but it's quite atypical for Snow City.  Today's projected high of 77 is 26 degrees warmer than the average high for the day. 

UPDATE:  Robert says it's actually 39 degrees warmer than the average high for the day.

I almost can't believe I'm saying this, but I was promised a long winter; while I appreciate that there were only a few days I walked to school in temperatures below 0, if this is really the start of spring already, I'm feeling disappointed.

I was not feeling disappointed last weekend, when I assumed it was just a fluke couple of warm days.  On Sunday, Robert and I went hiking (with the idea that we would do some opportunistic birding, too) at a park near where he works, and like most parks in this area, it has a lake on it.  We got there mid-morning (an inappropriate time of day for Texas birding but we've found that birds seem to wake up late here and we didn't have high hopes for seeing birds anyway) and started down the trail from the parking lot.  A couple minutes later, I asked Robert if he brought any snacks and he said Yes, they're in the car.  I said, I'm not worried about starving between getting to the car and driving 5 minutes to somewhere I can get a snack; I'm more concerned that I'm going to pass out 45 minutes away from the car on this trail and you'll have to carry me back.  So we turned around to go back to the car and next to the parking lot, Robert stopped me to look at a tree, where there was a bird.  This kind.

Northern Shrike

That was life bird #476 for me.

We also saw several birds that were new for the state, including a surprisingly early Northern cardinal (they are expected here closer to April 1 than mid-March), a hairy woodpecker, cedar waxwings, eastern bluebirds, a killdeer, and (when we were driving about a block away from the park) a wild turkey.  We saw a total of 18 species but there was good variety and good numbers, especially compared to what we've seen on previous outings in this area. 

I'm increasingly convinced that people here do not trust in warm weather.  This week on my way to school, I almost never saw anyone not wearing a jacket, even though the temperatures were already warm and were expected to get warmer.  (I was wearing lightweight 3/4 length or short sleeves.)  It's like 70 something degrees out and people are wearing sweatshirts, puffy jackets, all kinds of things.  On the way home one day I saw a woman walking on the trail next to the river wearing gloves despite it being over 60 degrees.  Some girls are still wearing their Ugg boots, too.  (I have seen many girls on campus wearing shorts with Ugg boots, though with tights also.  This is sort of the Snow City equivalent of how girls in Austin would wear flip-flops in winter with coats, hats, and gloves.)  It makes sense that people here would be risk averse in that direction, but I've been trained to be worried that it will get even warmer than expected and I'll overheat, so my instincts tell me to err in the direction of being underdressed.  I've made an effort to try to correct for that bias and so this past week, I wore long pants and at least considered wearing a jacket. 

I think I've mentioned before that basically everyone here (men and women) owns and frequently wears black North Face jackets/coats.  For women, the Official Footwear (of the months September - March at least) is the Ugg boot.  In terms of our SAT/GRE analogies:

Ugg boot:Snow City::Flip flop:Austin::Crocs:Boulder

Although the Ugg boot is both ugg-ly and is actually an impractical choice for outdoor winter wear here (it is basically like a big slipper, so it is warm, I imagine, but the surface is not treated to be water resistant so they get really soggy and gross looking when people walk through slushy snow), it does have the admirable quality that it covers people's toes and is not made of neon-colored plastic, so it is preferable to the Austin and Boulder shoe choice.

This weekend, it's time to bring out the shorts (and I think I need to buy a few new pairs as well).  I hope that my getting prepared for all the warm weather spring has in store will cause the weather to turn cool again.  I'm not asking too much here.  Really, I'd be satisfied with several weeks of high temperatures below 65, I think.