MidHudson News reports that it is maple syrup season locally, but the weather has not quite agreed yet. “So far no. We had that Arctic cold. You want the sap to run around 40 (degrees) and freezing at night, so you get that difference in pressure, the expansion when the sap runs,” said Carl Heitmuller, from the Hudson Highlands Nature Museum in Cornwall. “When it does run, it runs for a week or two, and it runs heavy.” The process is fairly simple, as maple trees are tapped for their sweet sap. It takes about 40-43 gallons of sap boiled down to get a gallon of maple syrup. Sap season runs from four to six weeks from the middle of February to the end of March. “The sugar we are collecting was from last year in the summer. It shuts down and stores the sugar into the root system,” Heitmuller said. “And now it pulls the water up into the tree, goes over the sugar and becomes sap.” Temperatures will warm this week, possibly reaching the 60s by Feb. 23 with cool or cold evenings, which should get maple syrup sap flowing throughout the Hudson Valley. Read more about this story at MidHudson News.