This is it…the day after the first day of spring. Good news is we’re not having another winter snowstorm. Bad news is now we’re having a spring snowstorm. Nobody has really explained what the difference is besides the fact that it’s March 21 not 19.

On the plus side of things, we’ve had an amazing winter of snowmobiling with five full months on the sleds and no sign of it letting up yet.

Of course, when it snows for five months without a thaw, we also set a snowfall record here. It took until the end of March to make it official. Here’s the news release…http://www.leaderpost.com/technology/official+Regina+sets+snowfall+record/8115110/story.html

Here in Saskatchewan we look to a few things for our long range forecast predictions, not all of them scientific. One that’s had a lot of publicity in the last decade or two is “reading” a pig spleen. Interested? Read more at: http://goheredestinations.com/2013/01/07/saskatchewan-weather-forecast-for-2013-exspleened/

I think the spleen must have had a bad spot though, because we sure didn’t get the March thaw it predicted!

When I was a kid we used to rely on my uncle’s onion readings. I even did them for a few years with less than stellar results, although I could have kept trying.

To set up onions for reading you cut onions in half, fill them with salt, and set them out in a row of 12 (one for each of the months) on a window ledge on Christmas Day. Then, on New Year’s Day you read the onions by feeling down through the salt for each month’s weather. Top is the beginning of the month. Bottom is the end of the month. Damp salt is moisture and hard salt is cold or hot, depending on the month. In-between is all open to interpretation!

I think I may try it again next year–maybe I’ll get as much media coverage as the pig spleen weather guy.