More winter weather, but hints of spring

 The forecast says that we will have real winter for the rest of this week and then next week we will finally get above freezing. This has been a cold and snowy February.

On Sunday I saw a couple of robins. They chose a poor time to come back north, but they are a sign that spring will be here soon. I also scared up a group of ducks on Saturday when I crossed the Iroquois River on the Talbert Bridge. 

The days are getting longer. In the next week we will gain about 18 minutes of daylight. 

In the previous post I mentioned that the Rensselaer City Council had passed a solar ordinance. It sets the rates and charges for any citizens who want to install solar panels and includes this:

Solar installations in residential areas will be limited to rooftop installations and the total capacity of a residential customer’s solar array on a rooftop is limited to the maximum capacity of the resident’s household requirements.

So the citizen who was thinking of installing some ground-based panels will not be allowed to do so.

Last week City workers  were removing snow from the downtown and other places. They took it to the lot west of the dog park on Bunkum Road. The pictures do not give a good indication of just how much snow is there.

Reith Riley, a paving company based in Goshen, has bought out Town and Country Paving, headquartered in DeMotte. 

I stumbled on an article in the San Francisco Chronicle that features a person who   grew up in Rensselaer.  (Alternative link.)

Last week the local invasive species group met via Zoom. They approved a logo and a mission statement and then discussed plans for a weed wrangle. They decided to hold the first one on May 15 at the Prairie Border Nature Preserve, which is near the Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area. The property is owned by the Nature Conservancy, which I had not realized owned property in Jasper County. The event will be to pull garlic mustard, a plant that grows in woods and crowds out native species. For more information, check out the invasive species page on the Soil and Water Conservation District's web site or the Facebook page for the Jasper County Invasives Initiative.

The Jasper County Airport Authority had a very short meeting on last Thursday. There was an update of airport operations and a short discussion of insurance, but nothing that struck me as particularly interesting.

One more winter picture: