Something wrong in Oliver's Woods

October 7 and I decide to make a quick, short return to the Woods. I hear ticks are declining and mosquitoes are bad..but I can handle mosquitoes. At 5 PM I set foot again on the NW entrance trail - for the first time in 2-3 months. After the inch plus rain this morning the earth and trail surface are sodden. I go looking to see if there have been big changes. The air is full of warmth and humidity, like a tropical lowland rain forest; but I am troubled.. maybe it is the low barometric pressure. Tornado was sighted an hour south of here. Here the air is still. At the NW pond the water depth is 2.5 ft. One large adult whitetail deer on the south shore of the pond stands and runs, splashing a short 10 yards through the water then turns to look back.
No other signs of large vertebrates, no turtles etc. The water level is high enough to reach the second square stone from the trail, and almost to the first. Carrying on east through the big trees I see two monarchs pausing on their southward flight from Canada to Mexico. Been a lot of them through Norman this fall. Amazing that they can keep on course and make their way.
  The East pond is 2.15 feet in depth and quiet.
Across the Woods new leaf fall is beginning, covering all the forest floor..but only a thin blanket. In the canopy > 96% of the leaves are still there. They should be turning and falling soon.
  This warmth and humidity feels wrong. The warmest August the planet has ever seen. Temperatures have not fallen here in central Oklahoma. No crisp cool fall days. Cold front is coming.. but it feels odd now. With the changing climate, I wonder which forest species will win and which will lose. Maybe Celtis sugar berry and others continuing to put on new leaves late into summer and early autumn will gain an advantage. Maybe those with early leaf drop will lose some advantage. I see one spider on its web.. a Micrathena..usually a spring / early summer species.. no Araneus, more typical of late summer. I wonder if some species will begin to produce a second or partial second generation.
  Walking in the Wood and feeling the unnatural warmth I have a slight feeling of foreboding. The climate change cliff threshold that has been so much discussed.. I think it is happening. I think we are going over the cliff, and that positive feedback loops are accelerating the rate of change..with release of methane from boreal / polar regions and other places like ocean clathrates. I think 20 years from now the natural planet earth will be very different.