Anonymous Anonymous:
What happen to Global Warming?
You be the judge.
Seasonally adjusted trees staying green longer
ANTHONY REINHART
November 16, 2007
When Sunday morning broke after a frosty night last weekend, Richard Ubbens was relieved to see leaves, and not snowflakes, falling outside his north Etobicoke home.
Sure, a blast of winter would have thrown a wrench into his raking regime, but as the City of Toronto's director of urban forestry, Mr. Ubbens had a larger worry on his mind: the severe damage a dumping of wet snow could have inflicted on the city's trees, many of which remain unusually thick with green foliage for the time of year.
"Suffice it to say I'm really happy we had a good hard frost on Saturday night," Mr. Ubbens said, recalling the "spectacular" hail of golden leaves it induced outside his window the next morning. "It was just raining leaves, all across the city."
With three weeks left to put bagged leaves out for collection, and two weeks for mechanical pickup of loose foliage raked to the curb in designated areas, residents with green trees have been mulling the prospect of having to shelve the job until next spring.
It's doubtful that will be necessary given Saturday night's temperature plunge, which would have killed most remaining leaves, Mr. Ubbens said, and a stiff wind or heavy rain could be all it takes to bring them down.
Still, observers agree it's been one strange autumn, and the trees - some bare, some ablaze and others summer-green - tell the tale.
"I'm not an arborist, but I certainly have come to the conclusion that the colour-change season and the leaves on the trees are very different this year," said David Phillips, senior climatologist for Environment Canada in Toronto. "And I also know that it may very well be related to the kind of weather conditions that we've had this fall, because it's been very unusual."
October, with an average temperature of 14.3, was the warmest ever recorded in Toronto. The previous record high average for the month was 13.6, set in 1963.
"That's almost a full degree warmer than the previous warmest October," Mr. Phillips said. "I mean, in my business, we break records in 0.1 of a degree."
The normal average temperature for October is 8.9.
Further, there was no night cold enough last month to produce a killing frost, the key precursor to falling leaves, Mr. Phillips said. As of yesterday, there had been only five days this fall - one in October and the rest this month - on which the temperature dipped below zero.
"Typically, by this time of year, we would have 12 of those days," he said, including some far colder than we've seen thus far. "So we haven't had many frost days, it's been record warm, and that probably is answering at least part of the reason why we've had the kind of leaf situation we've had."
The fact that this year has been the driest on record also meant many stressed trees may have compensated by hanging on to their leaves for nourishment, prolonging the green season.
Mr. Phillips, who lives in Aurora, north of the city, is among the many getting antsy about whether his own leaves will drop in time for that city's last pickup, which looms on Monday.
"We have more leaves on our trees that are still green, and we've had maybe six or seven leaf pickups," he said.
"They're out of sync with what's happening. ... Maybe our seasons are changing and they sort of need one final call there, in the early part of December."
That's already the case for bagged-leaf pickup in Toronto.
"There seems to be a bit of a panic that the leaves may not be off the trees," said Rob Orpin, director of solid waste management for the city. "We still have three more collection cycles to go through ... depending on what happens over the next three weeks, they may still be up or they may be off."
The deadline for mechanical leaf removal is tighter, falling on Nov. 30, with the number of pickup runs reduced due to the city's budget crunch.
The worst-case scenario of leaves lying around until spring might actually be best for the lawn anyway.
"I plan to mulch my leaves, because I think it's important to keep them on the site," said Andy Kenney, of the University of Toronto's forestry faculty, referring to his home in Guelph.
"But, I've still been waiting and waiting and waiting for the other half of the tree to drop its leaves," he said, "and I was just thinking how unusual it was this year that I may be competing with the first snow."
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