CHANGE IN THE WEATHER: From balmy yesterday to "sharply colder" tonight.

WEATHER FORECASTS: We feel cross with our local weatherman for bursting our bubble. We were enjoying the back-in-the-day March weather until he wrote in the local paper that the chilly, snowy trend was due to climate change, that the jet stream has wandered off course because of extensive ice melt in the Arctic. Does that make this terrific sugaring weather wrong?

Then he said on the radio, in an authoritative tone, that only twenty percent of sugar season was left. A man in Craftsbury heard that, and said, "Jeepers, I'm just getting my first run." We heard it and said, "I don't believe it," but were rattled nonetheless. This guy's the guru; we catch him at 7:15 am daily on WDEV. But what does the twenty percent refer to, percent of freezing nights or percent of syrup yield? I take his twenty percent to mean three or four more freezing nights. In fact, we can make lots of syrup with just one freezing night, as we did yesterday and today, especially at this point in the season.

TMI. I'll trust the trees.

CHANGE IN THE SAP: Less sweet, more foamy, back to heavy sugar sand (niter). This year's syrup doesn't sheet off the scoop. And today's foam reminded me of an I Love Lucy episode in which she and Ethel bake bread, and when they open the oven door to take out the bread, the loaves come and come, til they're four feet long, pinning Lucy and Ethel against the table. I watched as the foam in the float box rose and rose.

SYRUP STATUS: 2,345 gallons