BURLINGTON, Conn.—A monster early sap run and unseasonably warm weather has sugarmakers scrambling and scratching their heads.

“It’s been an odd season,” said 5,600-tap sugarmaker Rob Lamothe of Lamothe’s Sugar House in Burlington, Conn. during a visit from The Maple News on Wednesday, when temperatures hit 65 degrees.

“It’s been abnormally warm and we're not getting freezing nights ahead. It should not be this warm,” Lamothe said.

Lamothe has been making syrup for more than 50 years and said the weather patterns have changed.

“It used to be we would’ve never tapped a tree before Washington’s birthday and now if you’re not tapped by February 1 you lose a third of your crop,” he said.

Lamothe’s neighbor, Ray Kasulaitis of Barkhamsted, Conn. said the season might be over before it even got started.

“Trees are already started to bud out,” he told The Maple News on Wednesday.

In Berlin, N.Y. longtime sugaring partners Kent Goodermote and Todd Hewitt, who have been making syrup for 48 seasons, were getting ready for their first boil of the season on Wednesday.

Earlier than normal they said, but when the season is here, it's here.

"We've made syrup with bare ground outside before," Goodermote said, as he flooded the front pan of his Leader 3x10 for the first time of the 2023 season. "This is nice weather."

In the Midwest, some sugarmakers were flummoxed.

Sugarmaker Alvin Shetler of Lakeview, Mich. was torn on what to do this week. Either put out his 400 sap bags and take advantage of the the big sap run or wait for the traditional season in March.

“When we check the forecast it says one thing, and then we look at the calendar and it says another,” Shetler said.

Producers on vacuum pretty much everywhere made that decision—it’s go time.

“The weather has been insane here, we are boiling like crazy to keep up with the sap flow,” said sugarmaker Rachel Courtney of Sugar Mama’s Maple in Mansfield, Pa.

Allen Kauffman in Snover, Mich. also decided to tap.

“We tapped tubing last night and it was coming in,” Kauffman told The Maple News. “We’re not going to put our bags out until our next warm snap. I hope we’re making the right decision.”

In West Virginia, the season might be over already.

“It’s been too warm—it was 70-some degrees yesterday,” said 200-tap sugarmaker Jimmy Ferguson of Bridgeport, W.V.

Ferguson said he stared boiling on February 5. He’s boiled three times since then but worried the ultra-warm week might’ve shut down the trees already.

“I’m going to wait and see,” Ferguson told The Maple News on Thursday. “If the sap has gone buddy I’m not gonna fool with it.”