Not a day goes by that Nick Ferrante doesn’t scrutinize the grapevines in his vineyard.

It’s a habit as old as the winery itself — to spot any troubles and to fix any problems, first you have to look.

Ferrante walks over yellowed grass instead of snow and he wears a jacket instead of an overcoat. The unusual temperatures are neither good nor bad for the grapes or the wines, but the vines have to be monitored, he said.

“This warm weather is well above the normal high and low temperatures,” Ferrante said. “The amount of snowfall is also well below normal. A positive note about the lack of snow is that we stay busy without bad weather driving concerns.”

But snow is good from an insulation standpoint — if you are a grapevine.

“Snowfall is welcomed from the viewpoint that it adds to the insulation around the base of the vine with the hilled-up dirt to protect the graft unions,” he said. “The warm weather also affects the cold hardiness of the vine and its buds. It is best to stay cold — below 40 degrees — because the vine reaches its maximum cold hardiness in December.”

Too many days of warm temperatures above 40 or 50 degrees lowers the cold hardiness of the buds, Ferrante said, but it will not affect the growing season or the wine made next year.

“We are likely to experience much colder temperatures at the end of January and February,” he said. “And very cold temperatures below zero will kill the buds.”

The warm January weather won’t harm Steve Kiraly’s apple and peach crop, either.

“I don’t get concerned so early in the year,” he said. “If the cold lasts past the middle of April, then I start to worry.”

Kiraly, who owns Kiraly’s Orchard on Route 84 in Saybrook Township, said the cold is a bonus to his orchard as a bug blaster.

“You like some good cold weather for a few weeks to kill the insects and bugs naturally,” he said. “If you don’t get that cold snap then it’s twice as big a battle in the spring with the bugs.”

Kiraly said he won’t complain about the lack of snow, especially when the rain was his nemesis last year.

“Last year it was the rain we worried about. We fought the rain spring and fall, so this year we will see what the weather brings,” he said.

While apple pies are safe, pancakes may need some help this year, local maple syrup producer and conservationist Paul Mechling said.

The warm, wet weather will give Mechling’s maple syrup a lesser sugar content this year.

“This weather is no good,” he said. “We need some winter. We need the cold to get the carbohydrates in the trees down in the roots.”

Pair the warm with the wet and you have big problems with syrup, Mechling said.

“All the rain we have had this last year will dilute the sugar content in the syrup. A warm winter only compounds the problem. We are not anticipating good syrup crop this year.”

Last year Mechling made 925 gallons of syrup at his 3,500-tap sugar house.

Mechling also keeps track of local snowfall and he said Ashtabula County is far behind on the white stuff.

“We had 115 inches of snow at this time in Pierpont last year,” he said. “This year so far we have only had 32 inches. We could use four to six weeks of good, cold weather.”

Deer, raccoons, chipmunks, squirrels, skunks and opossums are benefiting from the warmer weather, Ohio Department of Natural Resources division of wildlife spokesperson Jamey Graham said.

“For terrestrial wildlife, the warmer weather will certainly have an impact to a degree,” she said. “Squirrels and raccoons are particularly active through winter and even more so if the weather is mild.”

Graham said groundhogs usually torpor, or mildly hibernate, but not so much this year.

“We are seeing a lot of groundhogs now and the chipmunks love the sunshine,” she said. “Animals are having a really easy time finding food, birds included.”

While food is plentiful for animals during mild weather, it also makes critters more susceptible to predators, Graham said.

Songbirds and waterfowl may be more affected than any other species, she said, as the balmy temperatures may hinder their natural inclination to migrate south.

“The little cold snap we had may have pushed some birds to migrate already,” she said, “but osprey will migrate just enough while others will go farther south.”

The deer are here to stay, Graham said, and while the warm weather won’t make them more active in the winter, it will spare some older deer from their natural death.

“Older, less healthy deer in a normal January would be susceptible to the weather and probably perish, so there are going to be more animals that will survive the winter because of the mild weather, which will boost the population,” she said.

Graham said the one animal that may be in trouble this year is the snowshoe hare. These white rabbits are easy to see and easy to hunt when there is no natural snow camouflage.

“We have introduced the snowshoe hare to Ashtabula County and for a number of years we have been working to monitor their success,” she said. “No snow makes it difficult to track these animals and the lack of snow will almost certainly impact the population of these almost exclusively white hares.”