Date: 03/26/2012

Number: 1

After all the talk of Milkweed I decided to go outside to check my gardens earlier tonight. I live in northern New Jersey at about 1,000 ft. (305 m) elevation. We've had sustained warm temperatures here between 60F (15.5C) at night and 78F (25.5C) during the day for the past couple of weeks. I did in fact find 3 stalks of Common Milkweed beginning to grow. The smallest one is approximately 1cm., and the tallest about 2 cm. I just checked my old reports on Journey North dating back to 2006 and this is a full month earlier than I've ever seen Common Milkweed here in northern New Jersey.

Before today, the earliest I've seen milkweed here has been 4/24/2009 and the latest has been 5/6/2007. Unfortunately the weather here is taking a turn for the worst tonight as Don is sending down some of his ice cold Canadian air. The wind is howling right now and it's 35F (1.6C) and tonight
temps are supposed to fall to near 20F (-7C). I actually fired up the
wood stove for the first time in many weeks in anticipation of tonight's freezing temps.

Courtesy of Monarch Watch

Newfoundland, NJ

Latitude: 41.1 Longitude: -74.4

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