Dry Patches.

Things that are dry, or drying: the front porch steps, certain patches in the street. Not dry: the basement, which had a couple inches of standing water when I went down to encourage the sump pump, which works fine, unless no one is there to shake it, which was why I went down there, etc.

Better than two inches in that storm since Friday, and more to come tomorrow. Fancier weatherheads than I might have you believe this was more than one storm, or several bursts of energy from, oh, I don't know, a familial series of storms, but I say that if we haven't seen the sun since whenever, and if it's been essentially raining since whenever, then we'll call that all one storm. Exceptions: Northwesterners. But we are not Portland or Bellingham or any of those fancier, pale-aleier towns. We are Greensboro, in the sometime dry shadow of the lower Appalachians, and we have, as a result of this persistent storm and the one that rung the month in, exceeded our historical monthly average for rainfall, and we are not even halfway through with the thing. The month, that is. And, easily excitable friends and fans of historical averages, keep please ye in mind that the numbers now in official use by the crackerjack ANYLF Almanac Staff are larger numbers, by and large, than last year's numbers, since we've dispensed with the 'Wedding Planning' page of The Weather Channel's online festival of info, and have instead hitched our wagons to the State Climate Office of North Carolina and its affiliated rain gaugery.

In Looking Forward To The Coming Week News, remember, of course, that the National Drought Monitor releases updates every Thursday morning, and while it may be wishful thinking to say that a little storm like this one might pull us back down out of that first category, D0/Abnormally dry, I don't mind: I'll be out of bed early and often awaiting them there numbers. What I can tell you about the back yard here at ANYLF Regional Drought Monitoring HQ: not currently in drought. Currently, rather, in swamp.

The finches in our ferns continue their work. Crocus and daffodil and the first hint of color from iris in the easterly neighbor's yard. Forsythia in the westerly neighbor's yard. Not much here, but then we haven't had much of a chance. All this hanging right around freezing but not quite going below has got me dreaming of flats of impatiens, though, of gladiolas, of shrubs and trees. It's been cold, weatherers. Cold and wet and generally miserable. Except it felt like spring the whole, whole time, didn't it?

Fog and rain the next day or two. Sun and sixties by midweek. One imagines every damn living thing in town will bloom after that.