It’s a bit raggedy, but spring is already with us in Paint Rock.
Heart and mind open to a new year when the trout lilies bloom, and we’re delighted to see them whenever they emerge. But forgive me if I wish they would wait.
I’ve been coming to this forest for almost two decades, and this is the earliest I’ve ever seen blooms of twinleaf, Cumberland trillium and bluebell. It’s not uniform – only about 10 percent of each are in full flower, and the rest have emerged rightly suspicious of this February warmth. But we usually advertise early April as bluebell season at Paint Rock, and this is so early, it’s haunting.
I’m happy to write this off as an unusual spring. It can happen under any circumstance. But there’s always the nagging worry that in a few decades this won’t seem unusual at all.
It’s hard to avoid questions of climate change at Paint Rock. It’s one of the reasons we’re here: We felt like this would be an ideal place to understand not only how a changing climate might affect forests, but also how this forest, in particular, might help us find a path through the changes to come.
I don’t know who or what should get the blame for the 80 degree temperatures this week, but when you step back, it’s clear that something’s going on. Only a few can remember how long and cold winters once seemed in the Tennessee Valley. Until recently, temperatures well below zero were common. Between 1895 and 1990 – during the first century of Huntsville record keeping – there were more than 30 days at zero degrees Fahrenheit or below. Temperatures of NEGATIVE 10° F or below occurred once every 15 years or so – at least they did before 1990.
Maybe no one wants to remember January 1940 in Huntsville, when there were 6 days at 0°F or below, including two days at negative 5°F and three others at negative 6°, negative 7° and negative 10°.
If this doesn’t sound like the Alabama you thought you knew, it’s because Alabama has changed. For the past 33 years, there hasn’t been a single day at zero and below in Huntsville, even though it was once a normal occurrence several times each decade. You could show similar dramatic changes in every Alabama city.
So the “extreme” cold event of this winter – when temperatures got down to readings of 4°F in Huntsville – wasn’t evidence that winters are getting colder. Instead, it was a sign that we’ve gotten so used to warmer winters, even what were once ho-hum cold spells now seem extreme.
This may sound like the same story you’re hearing across the country, but it isn’t quite. Something else even harder to explain is going on in Alabama and parts of Georgia. Even as temperatures are getting generally warmer at night, winter and summer, there has been another surprising change in our climate that will leave you utterly perplexed: Our growing season is getting shorter.
That’s right, we’ve got FEWER frost-free days between the onset of spring and the close of autumn. In nearly every other state in the continental U.S., the growing season is getting longer, much longer. But not here. The opposite seems to be occurring. Late frosts in spring and early frosts in fall are changing our seasons in ways many aren’t prepared for.
As spring backs up into winter and winter rolls over spring, that’s obviously going to result in major collisions in our forests and farms and gardens. I can’t find anyone who kept up with this precisely in Alabama, but we’ve had a number of flower- and fruit-killing “late” frosts that seem to have repeatedly reduced fruitful years for hollies, wild plums, hickories, hard maples, shortleaf pine and other species we’ve monitored.
You want me to tell you what that means? Sorry. I don’t know. Neither do any of us. Because we’ve studied the climate of Alabama about as well as we’ve studied our forests …not well at all.
What I do think I know is this: There is something contrary about the climate of Alabama, something that runs counter to what we know about the climate in much of the eastern U.S. There’s good hard evidence that contrariness is ancient and persistent, and that’s one of the primary reasons Alabama has the richest biodiversity of any state east of the Mississippi. It’s why many believe Alabama’s flora and fauna has had an outsized influence on the forests from the Carolinas to New England, from Tennessee to Wisconsin. And it’s why studying and preserving Alabama’s forests is so important not just to those of us living in Alabama, but to every forest in North America.
We’ll look a bit more closely at our contrary climate and its consequences in columns over the next few weeks.
Bill Finch paintrock.org