tamarack

Gardiner numbers: 27th 11 -21 T T 28th 45 -1 1.61 2.5

That is amazing. Maybe you had clouds on the 11th and 22nd, when I had -3 and -8, respectively. Those are my only subzero mornings so far; January averages 13 and the previous low was 4 in 2002.

Likely get a good roll.

I'll take the 10 BN, haven't seen that since 12/11 and only twice since October 10th. The only day with more than 12° BN since last February was on Fathers Day.

Of course, 10 days is different from 300 years.

We had short intrusions last January, giving our frost pocket lows of -29 and -30, only the 6th morning in 25 years here to hit -30 or lower. The last extended (at least a week) cold snap came in Dec 17 into Jan 18. The week 12/27-1/2 averaged 2.4/-22.1 with a max of 7 and min of -31, running 29° BN. Extending that to 15 days, 12/25-1/8, the temps were 8.7/-14.1, only 21° BN but including a pair of storms totaling 21" and a max for the span of 22 during the 13" dump on 1/4. Fort Kent wx

Missed that one - BDL's max was 5°, tied with Jan 8, 1968 for 4th place. In addition to Jan 1957, they topped out at 3° on 1/4/81 (CAR max -16, coldest on record) and 4° on 12/31/62. AT my NNJ home that day the temp was 5/-8 and the wind is either #1 or #2 (Nov 1950 the competitor) for strongest I've experienced, with large bare-limbed oaks ripped from semi-frozen ground. I think BDL failed to reach zero the afternoon of Christmas 1980 after a low of -13 but the 17° at 12:01 AM blocked that; I once read that BOS only reached zero that afternoon. Norfolk CT, with 7 AM obs time, reported a max of -9 for 12/26, their coldest max by 3°. First Ct Lake, also 7 AM obs, had a max of -24 for 12/26, and apart from MWN that plus Jan 15, 2004 on Mansfield are the coldest max's I've found for New England.

BDL's coldest max is 1° on Jan 15, 1957. Most recent of 19 maxima <10° came on Jan 14, 2004 and 2/14/2016 topped out right at 10°. At my present location, coldest max is -8 on 1/15/2004 but the previous day's max of -7 was set the evening before at my 9 PM obs time - afternoon high was -11, with a sharp breeze. Most recent subzero max is Jan 6, 2018, a high of -6, with wind.

If it was the 2nd or 3rd Arctic blast, those temps could easily be doable, but I can't remember when a first invasion got that cold. The past 30 days are 9.7° AN; to get days of 20-25° BN it will likely need more than one surge from N. Canada.

For a winter that ranks 4th of 24 for snow, 14-15 was surprisingly frustrating - "Of all sad words of voice or pen, these are the saddest, 'It might have been.'" We had 3 warned events, Nov 2, Dec 7-9 and Feb 14-15, that each verified at 1/8 (or less) of the forecast ranges' lower end. Cumulative total of the 3 forecasts was 26-42" and we got 3.3". Then the late Jan blizzard that promised the grandkids in SNJ a 12-16" dump, up to twice as big as any storm they'd seen, produced 1.5" that was all gone 4 hours after accumulation ended, a 4th "verified at 1/8th". Meanwhile, the most powerful January storm to hit my residence in my lifetime ended 12 hours before we returned home. All over but the shoveling.

Exactly the same departure for our temps.

Farmington had slightly (2") BN snow. They have "M" for the 1st day of the big mid-March storm, but their pack increased 13" that day. Using that for 3/14 (and the qpf fits) makes it a 23" dump. Both CAR and Fort Kent had about 20" above their averages, with the mid-March event dumping 29.0" at CAR, their #2 storm, topped only by the extended storm of 12/25-27/05. We lived in the back settlement then, 3 miles SW from downtown FK and 450' higher than the co-op, and had a high-density 170" total, starting early as Nov-Dec had 16"+ qpf and 73" SN. The 18.5" surprise (forecast was 1-3) of Feb 5-6 briefly brought our pack to 61" though it was 59" by the time of my next obs. Then we had 2.5 weeks of thaw that dropped the pack to 35". It inched up to 42" before that 3/14-15 storm pushed it to 65" with a 26.5" slam, biggest snowstorm and pack of my experience. Probably had 16"+ in that pack, and on 3/15 we went up to Big Twenty Twp to retrieve a disabled snowmobile. While there I cut a long stick, marked it in 10" increments, and found a depth of 80" after ramming the stick thru the frozen layer left by a mid-Dec IP/ZR storm. (Crust from that would carry a bull moose, though it was likely softened a bit by the Feb thaw.) Temps: Nov about average, Dec 2.7 BN, Jan 1.5 BN, Feb 8.1 AN, Mar 6.3 BN. In 9.7 winters in Fort Kent, only 1.5 days of school were lost to snow. The poor forecast Feb storm caused the plow crew to sleep in and school was canceled because the parking lots were buried. At decision time on 3/14 there was 6" new with moderate snow and 6"+ to come so the buses ran as usual. Then the storm grew up with 3"/hr and 14" by noon and the kids were sent home then. AFAIK, there were no glitches in the bus routes despite the 30-mile run to Allagash with HS students and the very hilly 25 miles to Winterville with kids of all grades. Probably more than you wanted to know.

I think he was seeing precip inches close to his SN total that month, too.

Had 5.3" but by late morning when I started snow clearing it was down to 3-4", and it took about twice as long as did the 10" I cleared on Monday. Of course, that event had 0.66" LE while this one totaled 1.16" with probably 0.9" or more still in the glop.

Getting fringed by the early month frigid storm was just the start. Thru the 15th we were running 5° BN, with 3.46" precip and 2.1" SN. Rest of the month was dry and near normal temp.

Moving this slop was about as bad as expected and there's another hour's work. Stuff was too slippery to clog the chute but so heavy that the machine could only toss it 5-6 feet at best, forcing me to toss much the same snow twice. Currently mostly cloudy (sun peeks) with mid 30s, down a few ticks from the max. Today's temps will be 12-14° AN, added to the 9.1 AN for 1-25.

Can't quite match that, but Jan 2014 had 3.77" here, 120% of average, plus temps 3.5° BN (11.1° mean) while getting only 5.1" SN, lowest of 25 Januarys. For the Farmington co-op it was worse - 4.3", ranking 129th of 130 Januarys. Sometimes even the best hitters swing and miss on a meatball hanging curve.

Feb. 2015 was a bit odd in that it set few daily minima records while setting many all-time records for the month, some places for any month. At the Farmington co-op, 2/15 is coldest by nearly 2° but never came closer than 5° to tie a daily record. No/few record cold mornings but just never got mild - the above co-op had 22 days with subzero minima and the mildest morning was 7°. At my frost pocket the number were 24 subzero lows and 5°. The month had maybe 3 hours of temp >32, reaching 34 on 2/22 while the next highest max was 30 three days later.

Fair enough. The long-term average for that part of Jersey, north Morris and south Passaic/Sussex Counties, is about 40" but the period 1956 (when my quantifiable snowstorm memory begins) through 1971 (when I moved 10 miles SE and 500' lower) had a 55-60" average, with both 60-61 and 66-67 cracking the 100" barrier.

Until the record-smashing 22nd/23rd, it was an odd coincidence that the 2 highest March temps came on the same day of the month. Our 28.3" is well over the 20.0" average (includes this month) and 3rd highest January, trailing 2015 and 2019. The month is also running 9.1° AN and will probably finish right about there. Previous mildest January was +7.4° in 2006.

If one is old enough (like me) one can dig thru memories. From March 1956 thru February 1961 our NNJ place in the hills at 700' had 7 events dumping 18-24", the last one possibly more as the wind was screeching and the pack gained more than 2 feet. Even in Fort Kent we never had that kind of big snow period.

It was 2012. The Farmington Maine co-op has records back thru 1893 and their 5 warmest March days are below: 83° 3/23/2012 82° 3/22/2012 80° 3/20/2012 79° 3/20/1903 78° 3/18/2012

LAT/LON for that obs is very near (-0.03/-0.02 difference) to the New Gloucester obs, which makes sense even if the reported total doesn't.

Absolutely. News reported that 2 men in Penobscot County died while clearing snow this morning.

That's probably about what I'd have reported had I gone out with the yardstick at 4 AM. At that time, we had SN- at upper teens and there was 4-5" on the porch railing. At 5:30 it was mid 20s with pounding IP and maybe 1.5" on the railing and at my 7 AM obs time we had light ZR at near 30, the railing was down to <1" and I could only report 5.3" of very soggy stuff. I'm not looking forward to running the snowblower as shoveling was awful - no matter how hard I tried to hurl the stuff, only about half the load would detach from the blade. Total precip thru 7 was 1.12" and I estimated the ZR at 0.10" using the accretion amount. Assuming 7.5" at 4 AM, perhaps ~0.60" LE followed by ~0.40" LE from IP. QPF was consistent with the forecast 8-12" but this one makes up for the 22-23 overperformer.