For me, Ohio will always be my prime meridian

Heap on more wood! The wind is chill,

But let it whistle as it will,

We’ll keep our Christmas merry still.

— Sir Walter Scott

THE THIRD WEEK OF EARLY WINTER Lunar phase and lore

The Pussy Willow Cracking Moon, new on December 26, reaches apogee, its position farthest from Earth, on January 1 at 8:31 p.m. It enters its second quarter on January 2.

Rising in the morning and setting in the evening, this moon passes overhead in the early afternoon, encouraging creatures to be more active, especially as the cold fronts of December 25 and January 1 approach.

Weather trends

Highs in the 50s or 60s are more likely on the 23rd and 24th than on most December days, such warmth occurring 20 percent of the years. Christmas Eve brings precipitation 50 percent of all the years, but a white Christmas comes more like 35 percent of the time (since sometimes that precipitation arrives in the form of rain).

Christmas day is generally cold and partly sunny, snow remaining on the ground three to four years in ten.

The arrival of the fifth high pressure system of the month on or about the 25th often brings snow accumulation (or at least flurries), and chances for highs in the 50s or 60s are only five to ten percent. One Christmas in a quarter century remains below zero.

The 25th and 26th are historically some of the brightest days of December.

It is not unusual for the 27th to initiate a slight warming trend; as the New Year’s weather system approaches, however, the sky usually grows cloudy, making the 28th one of the year’s gloomiest days.

The natural calendar

December 27: Across coastal Georgia, sweet gums and yellow poplars finally lose their leaves, and their buds swell almost immediately to replace the loss.

December 28: After a mild December, snowdrops and a few daffodils have grown up a couple of inches in the yard. Purple deadnettle has expanded into mounds, and the most precocious pussy willows have cracked. For deer, mating season is over. White-tailed bucks have their gray winter coats now, and they are starting to drop their antlers.

December 29: Sometimes after a very windy Christmas or New Year’s storm, orange polygonia butterflies are shaken from their overwintering quarters and may appear on the south side of your house if the sun is warm.

December 30: The heating season in the Lower Midwest typically lasts from the middle of October through the middle of April, depending on the character of the year. The cold is created by approximately 37 major cold fronts passing through the region between the third week of October and the third week of April. By today, 17 of those fronts have normally arrived, almost half the season.

December 31: Tonight, Orion will be almost overhead at bedtime, and Gemini will tower behind it. The evenings of early spring push Orion deep into the west, bring Cancer and Leo overhead, and by the time late spring reaches the 40th Parallel, Orion will have disappeared from the dark sky, and boxy Libra will be rising in the southeast, the Corona Borealis above it.

January 1: The season of deep winter begins today. This season has six significant cold waves, and it lasts from January 1 - 26.

January 2: When the first crocus leaves push up in milder years, then the first pussy willow catkin could open just a crack.

In the field and garden

The period of winter stability is setting in.

In most states, average high temperatures fluctuate only about two to three degrees between December 21 and the approach of early spring in the third week of February.

Force all the hardy bulbs you can for the coldest days of January. If you haven’t already prepared your bulbs, go out, dig up a few that you can spare from your March or April garden, and tell them that it’s spring.

Have all seeds ordered for starting under lights at January’s new moon ( January 24).

Journal: Home is the prime meridian

When I am restless, this landscape around me doesn’t seem enough, these few acres of woods and houses just a taste, only a promise of the great world.

But when I go too far out, I need to gather my landmarks of home around me.

Distant locations only make sense against my local gauge.

Time benefits from a master point like Greenwich; from that arbitrary marker, one can know the sun throughout the world, make maps, even plot the instant and the physical place where the past and future blend to a single day and balance in a temporal vacuum.

Even if I do not live in Greenwich, I know its longitudes follow the sun through the entire globe. In the same vein, place has no scaffolding without home. Home is the prime meridian. So if I know where and when I am in Ohio, I know also, if I were to travel, comparative time and location.

The winds across my land are not parochial. The hills above the paths are not barriers.

The river, disappearing around the last bend, goes out to the end of the world, proceeding from and returning here.

Poor Will’s Almanack for 2020 (featuring 60 privy stories by Almanack readers) is now available from Amazon. You can also purchase The Weather Book of Poor Will’s Almanack and Bill’s Home is the Prime Meridian: Essays in Search of Time and Place and Sprit from Amazon or, for autographed copies, through his website, www.poorwillsalmanack.com.