Kicked off February with a day above freezing. Two observations: The only thing good about February is that January is over. Also, winter hasn’t abated. It’s just lulling us with a temporary moment of ease.

The map below is lifted from the NWS, which of course puts it in the public domain. Looks like we’ll get at least a few inches tomorrow, while the real wintertime action is some distance away. Ann will probably experience some heavy snow. I’m glad that didn’t happen on Sunday. Rather, a bomb cyclone had just hit the Northeast. There’s a term I enjoy: bomb cyclone. But it’s not so much fun to be visited by one.

Train of thought for the day, inspired by a Google doodle. Today’s doodle connects you to an page labeled Lunar Calendar, which is a discussion of that kind of calendar, not the specific Chinese calendar whose new year is always around now in the Georgian calendar. That might give people the idea that all lunar calendars begin around now.

Then again, there are vanishingly few people who care about the subject at all. There aren’t any ardent U.S. calendar factions, such as those pushing for a restoration of the Western lunar calendar, asserting that the pointy-headed solar calendar is just an interloper and Sosigenes of Alexandria was a con man, or communities of Julian calendar users in pockets of Appalachia who quarrel with the federal government every year about when Tax Day is. It’s just a fact that most people’s entire concern with the calendar is what day is it now, and how far in the future is this planned event?

Then again again, I don’t know much myself about the Chinese lunar calendar, except that it’s a lunar calendar, it’s Chinese, and new year comes around the beginning of February. And that each year has one of five elements and 12 animals, making for a cycle of 60 years, though that’s actually an aspect of Chinese astrology, which I hold in exactly the same regard as any other astrology.

What calendar knowledge I have is fairly Gregorian and Julian, and some about liturgical calendars, and a bit about the Jewish and Muslim calendars. So maybe I should learn myself some Chinese calendar facts. The remarkable thing is how easy that would be to do in our time, sitting right here at my desk.

Which can easily become a rabbit hole. When I was reading about calendars today, I found a page about Lunar Calendar and Standard Time, which as far as I can tell was made up by some Swedes because they perceived a lack of standard units of time to be used on the Moon.