tamarack

Classic American chestnut sprouting after the above ground stem was killed by the blight.

Had 0.36" yesterday. For this spring, that's a deluge.

Don't need? Did you get a multi-inch downpour that I haven't heard about? Those two maps put MBY in 0.2" (GFS) and 0.5" (Euro), not exactly a deluge. Maybe I'm misinterpreting something. And I should've been more clear on my "take the under" post - I'd have said the same if the odds had been 0.1%. IMO, Mr. Fisher's map should not have gone an inch north of IZG, if that far.

I'll take the under on any odds above zero for southern Franklin County, Maine, the northerly extent of that map's colors. Farmington has not reached even 95 since 2002, has not gone above it since 1995, and has hit triples just twice since 1911 - only once (hot Saturday 1975) at its current obs site.

On the WCI thread (Lakes/OV subforum) I noted having read a book titled "-148", about an attempted winter ascent of Denali that failed due to a huge windstorm. At one point a veteran bush pilot flew up hoping to check on the climbers, and reported a near "hover" above one spot while his airspeed indicator read 140 kt. Don't recall what the temps were at the climber's hiding place at the time. (And my read was years before the current WCI was developed.) That PF-posted video was wild. I thought the one serious dust devil I've seen was intense because it carried one of those waist-high ashtray thingies about 1/4 mile to the far side of a small lake, the black can describing circles in the air all the way. This one blows away that 1966 event. (Pun intended.) Edit: Two mistakes in the top paragraph. 1st is that book's title is "Minus 148" - try searching what I wrote above and you'll get the runaround. 2nd is that the team actually summited, 1st ever winter ascent, and got caught by the storm while descending, and still high up. The 1st edition of the book is dated 1969 (I read it in 1974 or 75), and Denali has been climbed several more times during winter since then, including a solo ascent a few years back.

PWM's coldest (midnight obs, so those 1/17 and 1/18 lows are 2 different mornings.): -39 2/16/1943 -31 2/15/1943 (My earlier -32 was an error.) -26 1/19/1971 -25 2/3/1971 -22 2/2/1961 -22 2/13/1967 -22 1/17/1971 -22 1/18/1971 4 @ -21: 1/24/48 to 1/20/1971. (No surprise that Jan 1971 is their coldest month on record.) I'm 99.9% sure that no other coastal site in the lower 48 has gotten colder than that -39. Even in AK, I think one would need to go north of the Aleutian Peninsula to find a colder morning.

Because NH has a station atop its tallest peak and AK does not? Disappointing 0.1" overnight. However, it's been showering since 11 AM, and probably dumped another 0.2" or so. Baby steps, especially since there's nothing on tap during the next 3 warm days.

I suspect this was a Northeast-based cold wave. The winds never quit during the coldest days (Jan 14-15), suggesting backside winds from a strong LP. Many record low maxima were measured during those two days. Seeing all the Jan 1985 WCI records reminds me that NNE missed the worst of that huge polar dome, catching only the fringes. Lows for that month in N. Maine were in the -20 neighborhood, modest for that area. However, we never sniffed 32; most locales had month's "warmest" in the mid - or even low - twenties. Dendrite's links included the brief but shockingly cold Feb 1943 blast. The cold for that one was centered well south of places like PQI. NYC touched -8, their 3rd coldest morning on record and 6° colder than anything since, and PWM - a stone's throw from salt water - reached an amazing -39, probably in flat calm. Their coldest WCI for that period would more likely have been the evening before. After a subzero afternoon (about -5, though the day's high was -2 at 12:01 AM) the temp plunged to -32 at 11:59 PM. Their 3rd coldest day was -26, in Jan 1971.

That's my threshold. Last year we reached it in May, early June, and late September, but never in between. Thanks to hard-working leaves all around, hottest in 20+ years here is a modest 93, notched in July and September 2002. The 91 last May was my first 90+ since June of 2005.

Some places just aren't suitable for warm-weather crops. The owner of a large logging outfit in NW Maine, with an office is just to the American side of the border across from St.-Pamphile, PQ, lost his tomatoes 4th of July week 4 straight years before throwing in the towel. It was a flat at 1,000' with gentle hills both east and west to allow the cold to gather right at the garden. When we lived on the flats in Ft. Kent, we saw flakes in both June and August, and a frost on 7/31/78 - singed my pumpkins and killed the beans next door. Taters, carrots, all the crucifers should be okay, but for tomatoes, peppers, squash, cukes, some sort of season-extending shelter is probably required.

Could be BWA, though it's usually more of a problem at lower elevations. It feeds on the needles, so I'm not sure if the stuff on the bark is related. Having said that, I agree that the number of "orange" fir seems higher this year that usual, and it's not always the larger/older ones as I'd expect - fir is a short-lived species so some of the older ones usually die each year. It's not spruce budworm, as populations in the US, though increasing, remain sufficiently low so that their feeding isn't noticeable. Unlike eastern Canada, PQ in particular, which is getting hammered. Farthest south I've seen fir in Maine is around mile 12 of the turnpike. However, I've noted a few along I-84 in NE PA, in the higher hills between Matamoros and Scranton.

A now-retired co-worker who lives a few miles west of CAR had (probably still has) a medium-size greenhouse. He'd overwinter tropical stull like lemon trees and bananas inside, then move their big pots out during the warm wx - had some nice lemon crops, but after 3 years with no fruit the banana was abandoned to the frost one autumn. He grew better melons up there than I could when I lived south of Augusta, but he also really worked at it. He'd spend entire weekends transplanting seedlings into peat pots, both for his own garden and to sell at farmers' markets. One summer when his 2 girls were in 1st/3rd grade, back around 1990, they were selling cukes 3-for-a-quarter from their front yard, and made over $200.

For some reason (I'm sure it's been well researched), the blight doesn't seem to affect the below-ground portion of American chestnuts, and as many folks have seen, that species' ability to remain viable and resprout is awesome. Oaks are great at resprouting, too, though I don't know if they could handle decades beneath a plow layer. However, the charcoal industry in SNE lived off oak sprouts (fancy term is "coppice management") - cut one tree and get 5-6 new ones growing like gangbusters, and for charcoal one needed neither huge stems nor nice straight, limb-free ones.

Not a huge pine pollen year here - though there's plenty it's not like 2 years ago when it looked like there might be enough to shovel. Worst pollen I ever saw was from red spruce, at Gardner Pond, some 25 miles SW from Ft. Kent. The stuff formed a bathtub ring on the lee shore that was 2 feet wide and 2-3" thick. Temps were quite warm and all that organic stuff began to stink.

And many cities chose to replace those dying elms with Norway maple. Lose-lose.