Looks like just another day in New England! =)

What else is new? It's always "feast or famine" when it comes to New England weather.
Look at the bright side of things.

Won't have to water for a few days, saves on the water bill.
Hubby got all the lawn mowed over the last 3 days. Just in time for it to grow enough to need it again next week.

Easier pickins for the birds, the ground will be soaked, all those worms will be at the surface.

Can finally get some cleaning done in the house, instead of spending all the time putting in all the WS seedlings I have.

Will be able to get the laundry done too.
That's assuming that the storms don't take out the power and the cellar isn't flooded again.

Yup just another day in New England and we wouldn't move or I guess have it any other way, I guess

I just can't let this one go. It always amuses me when we get a weather event of some sort or another and we start talking like this type of thing only happens in New England! Well for the record: Floods happen just about everywhere in this country and in MOST of those areas, the periodic flooding is a whole lot worse than New England offers up. Cold waves happen in New England, but in many areas in this country in winter, it is usually a whole lot colder (especially compared to southern new England). Heat waves happen in New England, but in most of the country, heat waves are a whole lot worse. Droughts happen in New England, but in a whole lot of areas, the droughts are always far more severe. Snowstorms happen in New England--and yes--we do get some big ones--but New England cities do not have the highest annual snowfall amounts in the lower 48. Hurricanes happen in New England but they are always more severe down South. Tornados and thunderstorms happen in New England, but almost never with the frequency or severity of tornados and thunderstorms in many other areas. New England does have cloudy stretches of weather, but other areas have us beat in that category as well (Seattle had 45 days in a row of rain last winter!). And New England does have long stretches of sunny pleasant weather, but in many other areas, those stretches are longer. So, my message is a very contrary one to popular local folklore. New England weather is NOT particularly extreme when compared to other areas. And the data back that up. We go silent when our weather is perfect--even for very long stretches--and then when it turns foul, we start talking again like it is always foul and unique. So I think our problem is not weather most of the time. Perhaps we just need to dwell on the sunny beautiful days a little more than we do.

Rockman, you are correct. And, for the record, weather in New England does not change any quicker than in other parts of the country either. During winter, in Denver, for example...it's normal to have 70 degrees on Tuesday & 20 degrees on Wednesday. And...in Denver, people would say, "Well, just hang around...if you don't like the weather...here in Denver, it will change quickly...that's the Rockies, ya know!" The only place I've ever lived where folks did NOT use that expression (or some version of it) was CA where they do indeed get LONG stretches of beautiful weather.

I've lived in many parts of our country. My experience has been that New England gets a lot of weather (that's sounds odd but you know what I mean). But, we don't get the extremes of weather as other areas I've lived in. We seem to get frequent, mild to moderate weather events. Even this year's flooding was mild compared to other areas of the country. Our daughter was vising last week from Houston. She left home in a severe drought and returned home to a flood caused from 10-15" of rainfall in 36 hours. Houston experiences flooding on a scale worse than what New England experienced this spring on a fairly regular basis.

But, I would also have to say that we also do not receive long periods of beautiful weather either...in fact, I don't think we get much of that at all! Of course, that's a personal preference as to what one would consider "beautiful" weather.

I'm a CA native so my guage of weather will differ considerably from someone from Minnesota or Texas. What we don't get much of, in New England, are those 70-75 degree days with bright sunshine and very low humidity levels. In fact, I could count those on one hand this spring here in Mystic. When it warms up...up goes the humidity as well and it's miserable outside, IMO.

Our summer weather is rarely severe (certainly not severe my mid-Western standards..or even places like Kentucky, Tennessee, etc.). But, again...this spring, we've not gone a week without rain in quite some time...at least not where I live. My soil's saturated and my plants are rotting from lack of sunlight more than too much rain.

For the time period of December '05 to present, Mystic is still running a deficit from "average" precipitation amounts. (I realize that's not true for many parts of New England that experienced the flooding a month ago.) This year, we've had weather events every 3-5 days and cool, cloudy weather in between rainfalls so that the ground hasn't had an opportunity to dry before it rains again. New England varies and away from the coast...maybe, the soil has dried but mine has not.

The intent of my original "Here we go again!" post though was to note another weekend weather event. Besides being a gardener, DH & I are also boaters. The last weekend we've had without rain was the weekend of May 6/7. We're getting mighty tired of being rained out of the marina. Also, Mystic is a summer tourist community & local business is down this year because of the weekend rains. Our season is short. The lost revenues can not be made up between now & Labor Day....even if it stops raining on Sat./Sun. So, for my neighbor who owns/operates a local retail establishment...it matters not what happens on Tuesday or Thursday.

Typically, our weather turns around July 4 to the hot/humid stuff and we'll, probably, be wishing for the cool, cloudy, damp days of this spring. But, for right now...we sure would have enjoyed a cruise to Newport this weekend on our new boat in bright, sunny weather.

As you probably know from my posts, I follow the weather closely as a hobby. Spring '06's weather is not unusual...it's just not pleasant. And, I would love to focus on a string of beautiful days...give me a holler when we have 2-3 in a row so I don't miss it!!!!

The Sunday Globe today said the Quabbin had enough water for two years before we need to worry about drought. We get our water from town wells.

Last weekend we were visiting friends in Wellfleet, on the outer cape. The weather was ideal. Boy, we were lucky. We had changed the date from the previous weekend. We were there June 16 through 18.

Remember that one summer, I'm guessing it was over 20 years ago, as I don't remember my daughter being around. But anyway, it rained every weekend in the summer for 13 weekends straight! We had to have our annual get together clambake indoors. The garbage cans with the lobsters and clams, etc. were on the deck and we spread blankets on the floors indoors. No sand, but we did place some sand toys around for the effect.

A previous Globe article said if this were snow, we would have had 180 inches.

I still enjoy New England. When I lived in Northern California, you knew it wouldn't rain all summer, but you worried that it may not rain like it should when it was supposed to. Fire was always a big worry.

I'm just getting tired of watching my more sensitive annuals (dahlias, for example) rotting away, and I'm a bit worried about the shrubs I planted a few weeks ago. But my hydrangeas are loving it! My Nikko Blue grew about a foot taller than usual and has a ton of blooms. My spiderwort is thriving as well.

The patio project I started, what, 6 weeks ago?, has been waylaid because the only sunny weekend days we had, I was out of town. So I've had a pile of rock dust sitting in my driveway since then. Very attractive, no?!

Rockman, absolutely correct. Our country is so vast with great climatic difference. Weather is always a topic of conversation wherever you travel and every part of the U.S. has its weather woes. We ARE getting a lot of rain, but luckily not the severe flooding as in the midwest.

We New Englanders with our four season love to comment on/complain about our weather..... too much snow/ not enough snow cover for the fierce winds..... dry summer/wet summer.... cool spring/no spring, etc. That goes on for three of our seasons.

Then comes the Fall; it truly is a marvelous time in New England. Who doesn't love the northeast in Autumn? I think it's our glorious fall season and our beautiful maples that make our weather so "unique" when compared to other parts of the U.S. Still, I do love all the seasons, yes, even winter!

Molie

Triciae: Yes...I agree with all of your points and it is nice to have another "weathernut" on the gardening forum. For some time, I have been thinking about writing a weather book on the difference between perception and reality--chapter 1 might be the concept of 100 degrees with 100% relative humidity or 90 degrees with 90% realtive hunidity--a common claim when describing the weather in very hot humid locations, but a combination of temperature and humidity that has never occurred anywhere in the USA, and almost never occurs anywhere in the world for that matter--but that is another story for another time. But I guess your most important point is, of course, how one defines "a long stretch of good weather". Coming from California, I completely understand your definition of 70-75 degrees, sunny, dry air, light winds. That sounds like San Diego to me. I guess nothing could be more subjective than that. When that does happen here, it is usually in early-mid autumn, so I will post a reminder if and when such an event does occur!

In the meantime, batten down the hatches for another round of heavy rain tomorrow!

I assume you all saw on the news that May-June 2006 has been the rainiest two-month period in Boston weather records, back to the 1800s. It's not in our imagination! Bummer.