This afternoon I heard a VPR announcer give the weather forecast, and said that tomorrow would bring more “nice weather,” with highs in the 70s for much of the state.

I beg to differ. Much as I enjoy not having to wear heavy coats or shovel snow, the weather doesn’t seem nice to me — it seems creepy.

It shouldn’t be this warm in mid-March. The Winooski River should not be flowing freely. There should still be lots of snow on the ground. Maple sugaring season should be in full swing, not on its last legs.

“Most of the research will show that once you go three days with 60 degree weather, you’re pretty well done. The tree can’t really recover from that, it’s going on to its next process of making the bud and making the leaf,” said Dummerston sugarmaker Steve Glabach, who tapped his first tree in 1968. “What I’m hearing is most people are only at three-quarters of a crop and not feeling good at all about the warm weather. The long-range forecast looks warm.”

…”I talked to a large producer in northern Vermont and he says most producers in the northern tier are close to only one-third of a crop and also feels the season may be ending,” Glabach said.

There’s also this, from state forester Sam Schneski:

“The thing that I hear over and over from longtime sugarmakers is that every year we get further and further away from knowing what an ‘average’ year is. The changes seem to be extreme.”

These on-the-ground observations coincide nicely with a recent statistical study out of UVM, showing that maple sugaring season is getting earlier and earlier.

Gee, you’d think maybe staunch defenders of Vermont tradition like Geoffrey Norman or El Jefe General John McLaughry would be up in arms over this obvious threat to maple sugaring, a great source of Vermontish picturesqueness and jobs, jobs, jobs. You’d maybe hope that the state Republican Party, which built itself on the bedrock of Vermont’s rural culture, would come out in favor of energy efficiency and fast-tracked development of renewables in an effort to save maple sugaring.

Nah, just kidding. They’ll keep quiet about global warming until our next cold snap. Which might be next week, or it might be next January the way things are going.

And weather forecasters: when the temperatures goes 30 degrees above normal (or more!) on Sunday afternoon, please don’t tell me how nice it is.