It's El Niño.

12-17-15 SHORT HILLS: It’s still in the fifties today, and we’re getting rain. While we were in VT, a big ash tree, the biggest and oldest in the yard actually, lost two of its five main divisions and part of another. Two years ago it lost the first of the divisions. It is now a remnant of the original tree, and the arborists are going to take down what remains to avoid any more damage. The falling tree limbs damaged parts of the fence separating this yard from the neighbors, and crushed a laurel bush, another ash sapling, and did damage to a hemlock.

We have lost a lot of large trees to storms and disease over the last several years. In the parts of the yard not mowed, new tree shoots pop up every year, especially in areas where trees have come down which open that part of the yard to sunshine.

The April-like December we are getting has encouraged plants to bloom including creeping myrtle, forsythia and flowering cherry trees. We are finishing what will be designated the warmest year on record as the winter Solstice approaches. Is this warmth due to climate change or El Niño? Or both?

El Niño has pushed our section of the Jet Stream far to the north allowing warm Gulf air into our region, which is super-imposed on climate change warming. I’m sure that some place in the northern hemisphere, they’re getting unusually cold weather.


Forsythia has open flowers, scattered here and there on a few bushes.

Creeping myrtle, Vinca minor, has bloomed.

Elsewhere in town, a flowering cherry has blossoms.

A closer look at the flowers.