tamarack

Looks more like a defoliating insect, though neither Gypsy moth (can't recall the new name) or browntail moth. I don't think it's a bug that will strip the tree, but other than that guess, I've no idea exactly what it is.

The NE Aroostook rain blew out US Rt 1 last night - trench looks 15' deep.

Decent TS arrived here just before 2, 0.45" in 12 minutes, had to be some 3"/hr rates at peak. Thunder was underwhelming, 2-3 rumbles/minute and nothing remotely close - maybe C-C strikes? Just had another little shower but the best is past for this one, though increasing May rain by 50% is a win. Checked on the gauge at Dickey, St. John up to 17.2k cfs, quite the jump from 5.4k yesterday morning. The slope of rise is lessening, so I'd guess the crest will be ~18k unless another toad strangler hits. FB had a picture from Cyr Plantation (10 miles south of Van Buren) of a paved road with a gap 10' wide and 10' deep. Probably blew out the old logging road crossings on the township's public lot; last significant harvest there was 21-22 years go.

Maybe got a couple pennies from the morning shower, would bring May up to an even 1.00". Need to go north for serious rain, 2"+ past 24 hr at FVE and nearly 3.5" at Westmanland, west from CAR. The St. John gauge at Dickey was at about 5,000 cfs early yesterday and 30 minutes ago it was at 13,200 and rising rapidly, so NW Maine got dumped on as well.

Is that clear cut solution repeal of 2A and total elimination of gun ownership by private citizens, or something else?

Well BN in this part of Maine though the North is AN. Local river (The Sandy) is at 403 cfs, median for the date is 913, 25th percentile 525. However, the record low, 246 cfs, is still a pretty far away.

First fish stew in more than a year last night, after a decent morning on North Pond Wednesday. Caught a bunch of small (17-19") pike and lost several more, then when almost back to the channel toward the landing, a nice 4-5 pounder - 25" long and its weight augmented by the pair of 7" white perch in its tummy. That one's in the freezer along with 2 decent-size white perch while the smaller pike made for last night's dinner, tonight's as well. (Maine Inland Fisheries and Wildlife has handled the pike invasion in an odd sequence. Initial reaction was dismay, then when big ones were showing up in Belgrade Lakes the species was considered a game fish, with a 24" minimum and 2 fish limit - only one fish at North Pond. Then 6-7 years ago, pike disappeared from the law book - no mention at all, became an "unfish". Now IFW recommends that no pike be put back in the water alive, which might be what the initial reaction had been.)

Looks more like hickory - opposite compound leaves. Ash has the same leaf arrangement, and the white ash here are shedding those catkins by the millions.

Trees can take only so much when their "factory" gets destroyed year after year. If that tree sustains heavy feeding for another couple years, it becomes firewood. What the future is for defoliating insects in CT, I won't even guess. However, there are likely folks in the state forest service that have a lot better info than someone sitting 200 miles to your north.

Used to be even later than that. Our 1971 honeymoon trip included Bar Harbor, and on June 24 we bought 2 pound-and-a-half lobsters and drove up Cadillac so we could enjoy the view as we ate. The lobsters were delicious but otherwise it was a disaster. -We failed to grab a wad of napkins. Eating a whole lobster can create the need for a full shower. -Despite it being almost July, the Park had not yet turned on the water on the summit. Maybe we should've used the dampened Rugosa roses for clean-up, though the thorns might've hindered that. -The temp was about 50 and the view wasn't much more than that many yards in the dense fog. All good memories.

piece of paper: The US Constitution. It can be amended but shouldn't be dismissed. bunch of colonizers: You and me (unless one is an indigenous person or a descendant of slaves) In 1986 Congress passed a law making it extremely difficult for citizens to acquire/own a fully automatic weapon. It would make sense to enact a similar law to cover high-capacity clips and magazines, perhaps limiting the low-power rimfires to 10 rounds and centerfires to 7, that number chosen due to the millions of lever-action hunting rifles with tubular magazines holding 7. Adding more comprehensive background checks can help, though a lot of the murderers had passed such checks. Going after 2A is tilting at windmills, as 2/3 majorities of both houses of congress is a high bar and gaining 38 state legislature approvals a much higher one - would only take 13 deep red states to block enactment. One facet of 2A that's been a factor in high court decisions is the inclusion of the phrase, "the right of the people." That phrase is found in only 3 of the 10 amendments in the Bill of Rights, 1st, 2nd and 4th, and if it functions for free speech and freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, it has to do so for #2. (despite what former Chief Justice Burger stated)

Only 3 BN in a row here. They were low by 3" (thanks to 22" post-equinox), 36" then 21". However, the 6 years prior to 19-20 included 5 with 100"+ (avg here is currently 88"), interrupted by 2015-16.

Other than their looks, the only real difference between the "tactical" rifles and semi-auto hunting rifles available for the past 60+ years is clip/magazine capacity. My Remington pump-action .30-06, produced in 1964, fires a far more powerful cartridge than the .223 most often found in those military style weapons, but my rifle only holds 5 rounds. The venerable (19th century) lever-action .30-30 holds seven. Since removing the 2nd amendment is probably a lot less likely than the US being carbon neutral by 2040, other steps could be proposed.

What a great (and terrifying at the time) pic. IIRC, the NYC water supply was down to a low number of weeks when the 9/21/66 deluge arrived - followed by normal/AN precip afterwards.

Seeing tolerance of the blight is a great sign, perhaps better than not seeing blight at all. The nicest chestnuts I ever saw were planted in 1969 next to Forestry's entomology lab in Augusta. By the mid 90s they were 60-65' tall and arrow straight with small limbs, and no sign of blight. Some folks old enough to recall pre-blight chestnuts said those Augusta trees were the best replicas of the great form of the chestnuts of the past. Then the 1998 ice storm took out about half of those trees' branches, and 2 years later they were all dead. Obviously the healthy and fast-growing trees had kept their defenses (in this case, uninjured bark) intact, until the '98 catastrophe. All those wounds plus the blight inoculant already present ensured the trees' fate.

You're too young to have experienced the 1960s.

Substitute "beech bark disease" and that could be the headline in 1922, but the species hangs on. Comparing it to chestnut blight is probably (hopefully) not valid, for 2 reasons. First, as important as beech is in the Eastern hardwood forests, chestnut was likely the single most abundant tree species in that forest pre-blight. Some accounts state it was one in every four trees. Second, the blight killed trees quickly, and to date we haven't seen that kind of quick death in beech.

34 this AM, crisp. PQI had 29 but that's not unusual for late May at that site.

That's less than 15 miles to our southwest, the storm that barely grazed here (0.01") though we had 45 minutes of near-continuous rumbling. Another 0.05" around 10 PM bringing the May total to 0.98". The big heat didn't make it to here, high was 81 yesterday - 15° AN but nothing like the previous weekend. Nice crisp air today, dews 40s.

Warned storm (half-dollar hail) looks to slide to our south, giving us only sprinkles (unless it changes course). Dog not thrilled with the rumbles.

1st rumbles of the year last evening between 9 and 10. Saw one nice C-C bolt running horizontally, counted to 61 before the noise arrived. That's about as close (10-12 miles) as the storm got before either dying or sliding to our south. Typical. Cellphone popped up with a tor warning ("take cover immediately!") about 7:30, but no location given. There'd been a SVR warning earlier for a storm some 20 miles NW from Moosehead.

Hot Saturday, 103 at PWM, 102 at BGR, both all-timers. 100° at BHB just feet from water that was probably <60°. We (wife, 3 y.o. son, BIL and his Hawaiin wife) drove from BGR to Gouldsboro where there were blueberries in abundance on non-commercial land. Got there late morning and it was already blazing. My wife and her brother hid in the shade with our son, BIL's wife had grown up in the pineapple fields and kept on picking. So did I, due to stupidity. Probably could've made jam simply by sprinkling sugar on the berries. We then headed to Acadia and found a place to park by the water just south of Otter Cliffs. Only 3-4' deep, calm, and the one and only time I've gone swimming in Maine salt water that was actually warm. Sunday's forecast was for another 100+ day and our cheap apartment was roasting when we got home that Saturday, but then during the overnight came the most blessed BD ever - 70 and sprinkles on August 3.

Quite the heat wave, hasn't been above 60 since Wednesday. The 0.02" of dz overnight was just enough to make everything wet.

Morning drizzle makes it 5 of the last 6 days with measurable RA, total 0.45" and 0.90" for May. Everything's wet except the soil.

Some have postulated that trees getting taller/bushier have impacted Central Park obs, but I don't think that was nearly as much of a factor 56 years ago. Airports tend to be hotter anyway because it's harder to distance the instruments from the tar. Central Park itself is hotter than the official NYC site thru 1960, Battery Place, near the south end of Manhattan. (And I'd love to access those old records - for instance, where SPK has 3/1888 as 21" all on 3/12, BP has snowfall over 3 days, 3/12-14: 16.5/3/0/1.4, which more closely jives with written descriptions of the blizzard. BP also was measuring temps to 0.1°, greatly limiting ties.)