{"id":319,"date":"2012-03-19T00:59:20","date_gmt":"2012-03-19T04:59:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/?p=319"},"modified":"2024-12-03T16:45:41","modified_gmt":"2024-12-03T21:45:41","slug":"last-day-of-winter-in-the-valley-of-the-sun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/?p=319","title":{"rendered":"Last Day of Winter in the Valley of the Sun"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Linda Burton posting from Phoenix, Arizona<\/em> &#8212; The news is in the numbers.<\/p>\n<p>56 inches at Snowbowl, what a gift! Going out with a flounce, Old Man Winter\u00a0zapped northern Arizona\u00a0with a\u00a01-2 punch. Snow Sunday. Snow Monday. Kids out of school. Snowplows out on the road. Snowboards out on the slopes. Boom for business. 29 inches of snow at Flagstaff. I-40 was closed for a while, open now, with slush.<\/p>\n<p>56 degrees was the high today in Phoenix. Normal? 70&#8217;s. After all, this is the Valley of the Sun. This is the Season. This is where people come to get away from the cold! But the TV weather-persons were raving about today&#8217;s good fortune. Water here, after 90 days with no rain. Precious water.<\/p>\n<p>Spring is official at 10:14 PM today, and the promise of &#8220;nearly 90 degrees&#8221; by Friday is laid before us. Meanwhile, a hummingbird tried to fly in my window\u00a0as the cats napped in the afternoon sun, startling the two of them.\u00a0Just beyond, against the Phoenix skyline, a helicopter rounded the high-rise, headed for the station\u00a0with footage\u00a0of Ponderosa pines to the north, branches weighted down with white.<\/p>\n<p>Other news today. Continuing speculation on the why\u2019s of the shootings. 16 civilians, mostly women and children, \u00a0shot in Afghanistan by a US soldier. 2 little boys in Phoenix shot by their father, who then shot himself. 1 young man shot by another in Florida.<\/p>\n<p>Ron Barber, Gabby Giffords\u2019 long-time aide, announced in Tucson he will run for a full term in Congress this year. He was shot 2 times in the January 2011 assassination attempt on Giffords, who has vacated her senate seat to focus on her recovery, miraculously surviving a gunshot wound to the head. 13 people were injured and 6 killed in that incident, including a 9-year old girl.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Linda Burton posting from Phoenix, Arizona &#8212; The news is in the numbers. 56 inches at Snowbowl, what a gift! Going out with a flounce, Old Man Winter\u00a0zapped northern Arizona\u00a0with a\u00a01-2 punch. Snow Sunday. Snow Monday. Kids out of school. Snowplows out on the road. Snowboards out on the slopes. Boom for business. 29 inches [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4586,64],"tags":[65,71,3059,72,70,66,69,67,68],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=319"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27202,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319\/revisions\/27202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalcitiesusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}