Still ALIVE after 74+ years in North Central Iowa - We plan on 6 months of winter around here: Nov - Dec - Jan we expect temperatures anywhere from +50 to -25 F. (I've played golf here in December). Feb - Mar - Apr : pretty much the same, except in reverse order... When it snows, it is (usually) not (very) cold , and when it is not snowing it is (usually) (very) cold. Sometimes all of that, sometimes neither. Ice storms, snowstorms, torrential rain, whatever - never a dull moment. Two days ago the temp was in the 40's & melted the last of the snow. Yesterday we got ThunderSnow with lightning (yes, really - the lightning took out my printer. ) That was followed up by enough pea sized hail to make the ground white, followed by heavy rain and NW wind that jacked up to about 35 mph and blew all night. The temperature dropped to single digits above zero by this morning. The forecast is that by Tuesday or Wednesday we'll be back in the 40's. Punxatwany Phil (whatever) is a fat lazy piker, probably related to a pussy-cat. He wouldn't last two days out here. Groundhogs here don't even bother to roll over and stretch until April. We've had winters (1940's) when we missed two straight weeks of school because the snowplows couldn't bust through the drifts. Dad had to drive through the neighbor's cornfield to get to town with the cream. You can imagine what the roads were like when all of that thawed. Ruts axle deep on the tractor - many neighbors parked their vehicles out on the main road & taxied from there via tractor & wagon. Occasionally, the rivers kind of go berserk and we get what we got this spring. Our town (Greene) straddles a small (usually peaceful) tributary called the Shell Rock River that starts out in southern Minnesota. That watershed eventually finds its way into the Cedar River down south aways - that's the one that got Cedar Rapids & Iowa City and points south. You better believe our little river did its part - for over two weeks there was water in Greene where nobody could remember ever seeing it before, and we're still cleaning up 8 months later. )The "500-year" flood plain went under the first day. If you want to see some of it, go on line. After that, spring & summer and autumn are beautiful like always. I don't plan to miss out on that. Don Woodley RAOGK for Bremer, Butler, Floyd and Franklin Counties in Iowa. Researching Woodley, Butler, Ayers, Trindle, Cornford, Relf, Lingenfelter and others as time permits.