tamarack

Wow! 70/55, and maybe the minimum is the more astounding. Mean of 62.5 looks to be about 36° AN.

Not New England, but NYC's 72/63 on 12/24/2015 is their greatest positive departure for any day +32.5), records back thru 1869. The 4 major SNE sites were "only" 26-29° AN that day.

96 at CAR on 5/22/1977 might be a contender, along with Christmas Day in 2020 when they were 35° AN.

Hazel produced surprisingly strong winds in NE for an Oct storm that made landfall in NC. IIRC, BTV recorded their (then) strongest wind from that 'cane. In NNJ our home was plastered with leaf salad by Hazel, a phenomenon I've seen only twice, and the other was with tender mid-June leaves (1975 at Maine's Donnell Pond), not tough old October ones.

Moderate RA here but thunder has been silenced. Noted "half-dollar" hail in the warning for the storm near Ossipee.

This just doesn't compute for me, as I've been getting stung almost annually since age 4 when I wandered into honeybees that had colonized an inside corner of the house next to my grandparent's place in NNJ. My mom said my hand swelled to the size of hers (which admittedly were not huge) and slept for 30 straight hours. A year later after we'd moved from urban East Orange to the forests of the Jersey Highlands, I came screaming out of the woods one day and when all was done, mom had 7 yellowjackets lined up on the windowsill - she never told me how many stung my neck/upper body. I've not been stung since October 2019 when a passing yellowjacket picked me out of a group of 10-11 on the shore of Flagstaff Lake, perhaps the longest no-pick period since that early honeybee excursion. If I got stung tomorrow, I'd have significant swelling around the site within a half hour (got stung left hand a couple decades back, immediately transferred wedding ring to my wallet), but if I then got stung next summer, only a dime-size welt. (And some discomfort, of course.) Not sure if that's short-term immunity or a warning sign, but the swelling one year, none the next, has been SOP for the past 40+ years. (In NNJ, I think I got stung at least once in every year.) Had a short shower here about 9:15 this morning, but no sun 70s probably means not much RA this afternoon. Edit: Not 70s, high here has been 66°. Even so, we're hearing some rumbles, and showers arrived by 3:05.

Bumblebees will sting, though it takes a great deal of provocation before they make the stick, and like wasps, they can hit multiple times. I've been stung by a bumblebee on two occasions. One was while I was feeding a wood splitter and the bees had colonized one of the stove-length pieces between chainsaw time and the splitting. The noise, vibration and tumbling of wood pieces were the trigger as I got hit on cheek and arm by the same bee. Second time was when I was cleaning out part of the shrubbery for a 90+ y.o lady from our church, and the nest was in the ground where I was pulling and cutting stuff. Took about 20 minutes of my work to enrage the insect enough to attack. In my experience, yellowjackets are 10 times more aggressive than whiteface hornets. The latter will nail you if they're disturbed and you're within a few dozen feet. I've been chased and stung by yellowjackets that chased me a hundred yards from the nest. Most recent time that occurred was during one of our peer-review forestry field trips. I got nailed twice as the group walked over roadside slash (no one else got stung), then after we'd walked another 100 yards into the woods, one of the little beasts followed and picked me out of the 29 people on the trip for a 3rd stab.

In November 2019 we bought a modest-sized heat pump to cool our living room, where we spend the vast majority of our waking hours when in the house, and the machine works nicely without adding a huge amount to our electric bill. Paid a bit under $3,700 installed, got a $1,000 rebate and a one-time $500 federal tax credit, thus recovering about 40% of the investment.

September has the greatest proportion of sunlight here - fewer total hours than the longer days of met summer, but those 3 months are dominated by partly cloudy. September is usually the pause between puffy cumulus and fall storms.

No all-nighters, but went past midnight during the 1998 ice storm. In 1976 in Fort Kent when the remnants of Belle put 2 feet of water flowing across Rt 161, we spent hours into the AM deflecting the flow as it was taking out the foundation of the next-door apartment. I also tried to keep the larger stones from turning our garden into river bottom, but the silt that covered it wrecked most of the veggies anyway. Doria (NNJ 1971) woke us up about 2 AM, enabling me to empty our cheap wedge gauge from overflowing, but we went back to sleep.

None here, though the boring wx tends to have OT posts slither into other discussions. And though we've lived in Mine since January 1973, I grew up about 40 miles NE from where you are now, so I remain interested in NNJ wx.

I pull the Stratus for the cold seasons, Novie thru mid-April. Cocorahs' snow procedures recommend taking out the inner tube and leaving the outer, which is said to tolerate some rain-then-freeze. However, sequences like below while we were in SNJ with the grandkids might disprove that, and I'd rather not have to buy a new gauge. December 2018 21 37 34 2.09" 22 49 30 0.08" 23 30 8 (Afternoon max was probably about 20 and the low likely came at my usual 9 PM obs time.) 24 30 3 The 5-gal bucket I use to catch cold-season precip had a major bulge on the bottom due to the ice cake within when we returned home. I was surprised the bottom hadn't broken, but the bucket is somewhat softer plastic (and slightly tapered) compared to the Stratus.

Here the stink is December and March during the past 4 winters. All 8 months were BN with their total a bit under 60% of average. Jan-Feb those winters were very slightly AN.

I'd guess 21-22", back-figuring the weight estimator formula of (length*girth*girth)/800

More evidence that NAO isn't well coordinated for snow this far north? Those 9 Februarys averaged 24.9" here, 2.0" AN. The December streak averaged 0.8" AN while January's run was 1.0" BN. Of course, there's evidence it does matter: March 2018 had more than twice its average snowfall.

North (Andover) of Bethel and south (very flashy Wild River at Gilead rose from 20 cfs to about 1,700, down under 600 now.) Edit: 1,700 cfs is peanuts for the Wild River. It reached 37,800 from Irene and 32,200 from the pre-Halloween gale in 2017. Oddly, the great 1987 flood only reached 17,000 - maybe the watershed's snow was gone before the 3/31-4/1 downpour?

Measurable rain on 11 of 24 days here plus 2 more with T, total is up to 2.58". August averages 3.93" here, so a good chance for the 9th BN month in the past 11.

Could hardly be different winters here. 1970-71 trails only 1968-69 for snow and 1917-18 for cold. 2020-21 had the 8th mildest DJFM and 9th least snowfall of 130 winters at the Farmington co-op. Looks like anything from a full-on ratter to a monster snow-cold winter is in play.

My clearest memory was listening to the hurricane center in Coral Gables as they reported a gust of 164 mph, followed by a very audible crash as the radar dome blew over. Several days later, we were supposed to get siggy RA plus storm force winds from the remnants, got some sprinkles and winds 20-30, not enough to cancel a bass-fishing day with fun-only "contest" in Newcastle, all fish released after measuring.

Cocorahs from Bethel reported 1.06". 15 miles north in Andover, 2.85". Big drop to Temple/Farmington, 0.62"/0.58". A few miles east, I'm at 5th place with 0.19", though the 2-day totals for the 3 Franklin County spots are all in the 0.7"/0/.8" range.

I've ranted on this as well. CAR is near the extreme in the Northeast. When we lived in Fort Kent, I recall an ad from an equipment place that promised a 10% rebate of a snowblower purchase if the Caribou WSO had less than 50% of average snowfall. Pretty safe offer, as they've never had below 50% Their least snowy winter was a bit under 60" in 1943-44 while the long-term average is 115". Even their biggest snow year - 198" in 2007-08 - is only 72% above that average.

Saw a report of 8" from there on last evening's 11 PM news, but no others above 4". However, after the TS that parked over CAR on August 17, 1981 dumped 6.67", mostly between 10 AM and 1 PM, I can accept seemingly anomalous reports. 12 miles to the south, PQI had only 1.37" and some town within 20 miles had <1/2". Only the remnants of Edna (6.21") approach that CAR record - 3rd biggest in their 83-year POR is 4.08"

With 103 reports, high end for Maine cocorahs, top is Hollis Center with 4.19". 2nd place is Buxton at 3.95". Both towns are inland York County but #3 at 3.64" is Kennebunk. Next is Standish, southern Cumberland, with 2.39". I've no idea where the 6-7" was measured. Had RA 9P-3A for 0.54" here, would've loved 3 times as much but no complaints, as the 2 cocorahs observers in Farmington had only 0.22".

My favorite case i point: Sept 21. 1966 for the broad NY metro area. Central Park reported 5.54" that day, and though it took several more months of AN rain to confirm it, the 1960s drought in the Northeast was broken that day.

Do the birds nest all over that beach? In Maine, least terns and piping plovers (the latter are US threatened, Maine endangered) tend to nest together in relatively compact areas. Where encountered, those areas in Maine are usually fenced and signed, leaving the rest of the beaches unaffected. On state parks motor vehicles are prohibited on the beaches/dunes and dogs are excluded or required to be on leash, while 95%+ of park beaches are business as usual - attendance has been setting record highs over the past three years. Thus, shutting down whole beaches would seem an overkill. The less restrictive practices here have enabled piping plover pairs to increase from near 10 to almost 200 over the past 25 years.