Weather This or Whether That

Will It Ever Make Up Its Mind?

The Boys are naked again. The temperature was up into the 50'sF today and will be again tomorrow. Some time early this morning, another weather front came through to chase out the frigid Arctic air to replace it with warmer breezes.

Times like this, it's good the Boys are in the back yard. I can go out and change their outfits almost at will.

If you are like many of the horsemen I know, you too keep a sharp eye on the weather forecasts. I have to admit, during the past ten years or less, they have been better and better at making accurate predictions.

Gone are the days of the TV weatherman with his little barometer and flow chart guessing what the next day would bring. Now he's backed up by hundreds of sophisticated instruments, satellites, and computer models all destined to predict exactly what the next day's temperatures will be within one degree.

Well, sort of.

Mother Nature has a way of fooling even the wisest computer, it seems. A storm was coming up along the East Coast, ready to knock out Thanksgiving travel all along the NY metropolitan area. We were all braced and ready, our eyes riveted to one weather map after another.

The dire predictions for my area never came true. By the day of "The Storm" we had fizzled down to a wet, soggy dusting of snow determined to make mud of every square inch of bare ground.  As glad as I was of missing "the Big One,"  the sopping ground and muddy pits certainly made another kind of mess of things.

I am putting ex fence rails out for wheelbarrow ramps so I can wheel the stall cleanings out to the manure pile without getting stuck. It's great fun trying to keep the wheel on an eight inch wide ramp while slipping and sliding off it myself.

But the guardian of the weather did not leave us there. Oh, no. Thanksgiving night, she dropped the temperatures well below freezing just for the fun of it. I had to give my new car's defroster a thorough workout just to clear enough frost/ice off my windshield so I could drive the hours home from my friend's wonderful Thanksgiving Dinner party.

Bitter chill wind and cold air tormented me for the next two days until today...when the new pattern arrived.

I am giving the Boys hot mash feed every night. Just adding hot water to their pelleted feed. Toby, in particular seems to really enjoy it. At least it gets a little extra water into them and makes me feel as if I've warmed them up a bit.

Meantime, I just keep an eye on the weather, wondering what tomorrow will bring.