tamarack

Most disruptive weather event I've experienced, and we only were dark for 4 days. 2nd place was another ice storm on the hills west/north from NYC, precisely 45 years prior to #1. Ice on Jan 8-9, 1953 wasn't quite as thick as '98 but almost every tree took damage in our NNJ area. Some trees on the taller hills became "asparagus" stems, bare poles with all branches lying at the stump. We lost power for 6 days from that one. The good effect was to trigger my lifelong interest in both weather and trees.

That winter was the best I've experienced, though 83-84 in Fort Kent is close. After watching the Wash/NY follies in the snow, we had light snow that began to intensify about bedtime. Woke up to low teens, S+ and 15"+. finishing with 18. Friend and I slogged thru the powder for a couple hours without seeing anything (NJ's firearms deer season opener) and headed toward home. There was my dad standing over a nice little buck about 250 yards from the house. He then schooled me on field dressing the critter - my first snotty thought, fortunately not spoken, was "Why can't he gut his own deer." Eight years later when I finally dropped a deer, I was very thankful. The JFK inaugural blizzard dumped 20" with temps about 10, followed by 2 weeks of cold (NYC's 16 consecutive subfreezing maxima is easily its longest) with small snowfalls, then the strongest of them all. I called it 24" but nearby sites were closer to 30 - impossible to get a firm depth in the howling wind. Pack climbed to about 45" (up to 52" in NW NJ) but the cold was gone. Had a 12" paste bomb on 3/23 to cap the season. 60-61 ended the most wonderful 5 years of big snows: 24" on 3/19-20/56; 18" on 2/15-16/58; 24" paste on 3/20-21/58; 18" on 3/3-4/60. Other than the Magnificent Seven, my NJ career of snow watching (1950-Jan 1973) had only one definite 18", 2/9-10/69, and 3 in the 15-18 range - 1/12-13/64, 12/24-25/66 (first thundersnow) and 2/7/67.

Never will happen. RA+ and 50s ate 5" snow in a flash, would've melted 15" if we'd had that much. Greatest positive departure for any day here, 1° more than 3/22/12.

All snow here, mostly tiny flakes - 2.5" from 0.26" LE. Broom snow, except for the plow pile I needed to shovel so the letter carrier can access our mailbox. (The pile is on the maintained road but the smaller truck with only one drive axle can't back up the slope. Wish they would run the 2-axle driver.) 8" at the stake.

The high-tension towers east of Montreal looked like Godzilla had visited.

At the time of the ice storm, we lived about 2 miles southeast from where the Maine Turnpike merges with I-295. Had ice 1.5"-1.75" and more damage on our 0.8-acre house lot than on the 62 acres of woodland where we've lived since May of 1998. Much of the precip there bounced rather than stuck. The greatest accretion I saw was on Greenwood Hill in Hebron, about 10 miles NW from @Dryslot. Over 2.5", first-year twigs had ice the size of a Pringles can. The most amazing fact to me, even beyond the NYC/Allagash difference, was the NH "sandwich". While Gorham was nearly all rain and MWM was setting a new record high temp for January, in between at ~1500-2500 elev. it was total disaster. When I first saw that the following summer, I thought it was clearcuts.

Jan 98: Southern PQ, northern VT/NH, central/Downeast Maine and into NB - catastrophic ice. Perhaps the country's most widespread ice storm disaster. Meanwhile, Allagash was 10° with S+ (Aroostook totaled 18-27") and NYC had 60 with RA. Light snow here, 20-21°, approaching 1/2".

Or when it's snowing despite the sharp shadows and hardwood trees fully green. Light snow here. We should be mostly snow, maybe a few pingers at worst. GYX says 3-5 plus a bit more after dark.

Coldest start to December since 1989, which was 14° BN for Dec 1-9 (in Gardiner). First flakes at 10:25 this morning, not including the 0.1" dusting last night. (Had to use the decimal as T mucks up my formulas.) DECEM 2025 Date High Low Mean HDDs Rain Snow Snowpak Departure 1 34 16 25 40 1 -2.4 -2.4 2 21 10 15.5 49.5 0.43 5.2 6 -11.2 -6.8 3 33 19 26 39 0.06 1.7 7 -0.2 -4.6 4 30 6 18 47 0.00005 0.00005 6 -7.8 -5.4 5 16 -9 3.5 61.5 6 -21.8 -8.7 6 18 -4 7 58 0.00005 0.00005 5 -17.8 -10.2 7 26 3 14.5 50.5 0.04 0.5 6 -9.9 -10.1 8 20 -3 8.5 56.5 0.05 0.9 6 -15.5 -10.8 9 18 -18 0 65 6 -23.3 -12.2

Might be 81-82. 80-81 was dry in Maine (Farmington co-op's least snowy of 130 winters) with very cold Dec/Jan followed by a spectacular February thaw - CAR had 14.5° for the month, including 9 days of +25-30, 7 of which were consecutive. 81-82 had scads of snow, capped by the April blizzard.

A bit noisier than my 5 minutes of broom work on 1.4" fluff.

Clipper produced only m0.09" LE but even with mostly tiny flakes that modest moisture brought 1.4".

Small lawn area with trees 60-80 feet tall. Mostly hardwoods but even they block about 1/3 of direct sun. That plus the frost pocket topography help to preserve pack. (Of course, our garden gets less sun and earlier frosts than most.)

Bit longer on the places I researched. Total 1"+ Consec. days CAR 134 120 Rangeley 143 131 Farmington 112 102 My short (27 yr) pack-retention spot: 123 total, 119 consec.

7-8 years ago, I wrote a short essay on potential effects of climate change on the Bureau of Parks and Public Lands' timber management. As part of it I looked at snowfall and temps for the northerly 2/3 of Maine where 90%+ of the BPL-managed acreage. I used CAR for the north, Rangeley for the mountains and Farmington for non-mountain inland areas. Temps have risen noticeably this century, particularly in deep cold - subzero mornings, important for freezing down winter roads. 21st century snowfall increased at all 3 sites, averaging 6% more. Duration of snow cover was lower (3-5%) at CAR and Farmington but up 5% at Rangeley - elevation helps, I guess. First subzero morning here - expected about -5 but reached -9, earliest in the season this cold since moving here in 1998. Maybe the wind quieted earlier than expected?