Let’s Talk About the Weather 2025-2026

March 1st was the first day of Meteorological Spring, March 3rd was Town Meeting Day in Vermont, and therefore it’s entirely appropriate that this week would deliver the first major thaw and the first sap run of sugar season. We are curious to witness how many days of warm temps it takes to unlock the forest and spark a sap run. If the night temps stay above freezing the maples will probably respond quickly.

While we wait let’s review the weather since April 2025 when the sap runs dried up and we pulled the taps from the trees.

Freedle Coty writes:

May and June 2025 was typical of early summer in Vermont- humid and mostly cloudy with a chance of thunderstorms. The rains were soaking, but never a deluge, the kind of rain that makes it hard to keep up with lawn mowing. Everybody was bracing for the return of flood season (late June and early July of ‘23 & ‘24 gave us multiple rounds of destructive mountain flash floods and valley high water) but the floods never came. Not only did this give us a respite, the rains dried up entirely by mid-July.

August, September, and October was California weather in the Northeast. Blue skies and sunshine on repeat. Easy to get used to for those that work outdoors, but not good for the water table. Falls Brook was just a trickle when the new bridge was installed. By mid-September the hillsides had a parched brownish hue to them, and some trees dropped leaves prematurely before peak autumn foliage. It’s easy to forget now, but there was much talk of drought and drought-adjacent events, things like wildfires and low lake levels and dry wells and lackluster foliage color. The moisture had to come eventually right? And if all of that delayed precipitation came in the form of snow, would that be so bad? We’d gladly take it.

Lew Coty, Chief of Operations, heretofore referred to as Chops, continues the weather saga:

November ’25 – February ’26 Winter Weather

The snow began accruing in early November 2025, and by mid-month had already reached record depth as measured by the snow stake high on Mt Mansfield. It never relented, and by mid-December it had poked up into record depth three more times. There were very few thaws during this period, and when they did occur a decent snowfall was always quick to follow.

Since early January the upper elevations never thawed, and coupled with frequent snowstorms the fluffy snow cover never deteriorated. I can’t remember ever witnessing such a consistent lineup of stellar skiing over hero-snow every day since early November. In these past three months I don’t recall a single day of skiing on a crusted surface, and I’m thinking that is unprecedented.

The date is currently 2/26/26 and I’ve just finished yet another day of exceptional powder skiing off the Adam’s Apple of Mansfield. It has been an exhausting winter with the surf constantly up, luring you away from chores and out into the white sublime!

[The weather story of the entire calendar year influences the health and growth of the trees and also the quality of the sap in spring, though it’s difficult to make direct connections. Many of you have asked how last autumn’s drought will affect the maple crop this year. We don’t know. We do know that the weather events after the trees are tapped, mid-February through March and April, make all the difference in how well the sap runs.]

PENSÉE PAUSE

Weather
The outer sort
Air stirs every which way
March and April in Vermont
So much to talk about.

Chops writes: A Primer in Sugaring Vocabulary

Idiom: A group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words. The sap is running cats and dogs.

Maxim: A statement expressing a general rule, principle, or guideline for behavior. A watched pan never makes syrup.

Proverb: A folk saying expressing a common truth or practical advice. Sap in the tank is worth double in the sugarbush.

Aphorism: A concise, witty, philosophical statement. Sugarmakers don’t die, they just evaporate.

Metaphor: A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable. Sugar season marches to its own drummer.

Simile: A figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind. Tired as a sugarmaker.

Slogan: A short, memorable, and often rhythmic phrase used in marketing. Maple syrup is pure and simple.

Cliché: A phrase or opinion that is overused. Sugaring is hard work.

Epithet: Descriptive phrase expressing a quality characteristic of the person or thing mentioned. Amiable weather is a sugarmaker’s best friend.

Pun: A joke exploiting the different possible meanings of a word. A sugarmaker got into an all night boil wondering what happened to the sun, and then it dawned on him.

Slang: Words and phrases that are regarded as very informal. Before the RO, boiling left time to chill out.

LC