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Today is the 1st<\/sup> Day of Autumn (officially), just past the Ides of September, and while the outdoor temps have been hanging around mid-70s day and night since the beginning of the 4th<\/sup> week in August, I woke to a chilly house (low 50s) and had to shut the windows. It\u2019s like someone hit a switch and said \u201cSummer\u2019s done. Get over it. Welcome to The Cold.\u201d My cat is buried under two blankets now. When will I turn on the furnace? Probably tonight. In fact, we had a dry, chilly summer here in my kingdom. Now a wet, chilly fall (normal) is underway.<\/p>\n There are strange stirrings in the air.<\/p>\n Vlad Putin is limiting natural gas sales to Europe.\u00a0 WHATTTTT???? Oh, my Dawg, how on the Great Blue Marble will \u201cwhat\u2019s her name\u201d (Merkel) ever survive??? The Horror!!!!!\u00a0 What it really means is that if Europe\/UK are almost completely dependent on Russia\u2019s resources for cooking, heating and other necessities, and Russia is reducing its volume of sales to Those People, then those concerns that should be in place (e.g., heating and cooking and electricity) should soar like frightened geese during hunting season. There is an enormous load of pure foolishness going on the UK, thanks to BJ\u2019s ecohippie girlfriend Princess Nut-Nut not only winding him around her little finger, but also yanking him by the short hairs. The forecast for the UK for winter is not good and they may have to return to coal and gas just for electricity. It\u2019s not quite that bad on the Continent, but it\u2019s still bad, because the Ecohippies and Green Idiots are trying to run everything.<\/p>\n Why does this matter? Well, France is already having weather-related issues in the vineyards, where freezing temperatures in July and August (yes, both August and July) had hit the vines and were endangering the volume of available fruit (grapes) for the vintners to produce France\u2019s best-known product – aside from cheese, of course.\u00a0 Okay, cheese, quiches, and bread\u2026 and pommes tartes Normandes\u2026 and poulet au vin\u2026. Okay I\u2019ll shut up now.<\/p>\n But if we are slapped with another and a very unnecessary lockdown, we must be prepared well ahead of that possibility. And don’t think it can’t happen. You know what sits on its butt in WDC just as well as I do.<\/p>\n If you didn\u2019t get the news bulletin, snow in July and August left deep piles down to the elevation of 2200 meters (3.3 feet per meter) in the Austrian Alps. The vineyards in France were in peril of losing entire crops of future wine. Don’t have a report on hops harvest in Germany, but they are also the fruit of a vine.<\/p>\n We\u2019re in a solar minimum, which does not make this a surprise to me or any other sensible person, but the Greenbeaners and ecohippies ignore it. They believe that heat creates cold. They really do. They ignore the simplest thing in physics, e.g., cold is the absence of heat, which has to be generated by something.<\/p>\n We\u2019re having the same things happen over here in various places \u2013 early cold, early snows here and there, too much rain or not enough.<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.msn.com\/en-us\/news\/world\/us-is-concerned-about-russia-limiting-nat-gas-exports\/vi-AAOEaBW?ocid=mailsignout<\/a><\/p>\n Well, this move by Russia may just prove tragic to the UK and Europeans, e.g., Germany under Merkel, who rely on Vlad Putin\u2019s Gazprom to provide them with natural gas.<\/p>\n According to both of our Almanacs, the coming winter will, in some areas, be harsh. Normal weather for those of us living in mountainous areas or on the prairies, or near any one of the Great Lakes, and of course, that makes for good ice fishing weather, doesn\u2019t it? And iceboat races!<\/p>\n The Old Farmers Almanac general forecast is here:\u00a0 https:\/\/www.almanac.com\/winter-extended-forecast-farmers-almanac<\/a><\/p>\n