The Weather

Remember how people were commenting and complaining that we had practically no sun in Paris in January? By January 11, the headlines were announcing that, so far, there had been less than a minute a day of sunshine. It remained pretty dismal all the way to the end of the month. That doesn't mean it was exceptionally rainy. In fact, according to the Montsouris meteorology center, there was 2% less rain than normal and 43% less sunshine. Temperatures were about normal. The Paris-Montsouris website is quite a resource.
Back to the sunshine. In January, only 35.5 hours of sunshine. We were depressed. Now, look at February. Glorious sunshine and incredibly cloudless, blue skies. Temperatures so far above average that it seemed like late Spring, already, with a high of 20°C (68.7°F). Almost 161 hours of sunshine, 103% more than normal! I had a cold in February and it was very nice to lie on my bed with the sun streaming in as I recovered. I imagine our gas consumption for heating was down, which would be a nice side effect. With all that sunshine comes a downside, of course. We haven't had enough rain and there have been peaks of pollution in the major cities that set off measures to reduce certain vehicle traffic.
Are we back to normal on this first day of March? Well, it started raining, just a bit, yesterday. This morning, we had a little more rain. The sky is gray. However, this is not a March coming in like a lion. On the radio and TV, there is a little speculation starting, as usual, with forecasts of drought, bad fruit crops if we get another late freeze, as we did last year. Poor crops are predicted, in any case, leading to higher prices at the market. The trees are budding in our yard. If they start to bloom and a freeze does come, then yes, we will not have any plums, like last year.