tamarack

I'd take dust for our gravel road. Something about the wx sequence caused the plow to "chatter" when pushing off the 1" slop on New Year's Day, and now we have a washboard surface that tries to shake the fillings from our teeth - 1st time that's occurred since moving here in 1998. The pattern may be far different than 15 years ago, but that LP stuck so long in the Maritimes brings back bad memories. So does the relatively long stretch of nothing; in 2010 we had a 25-day run with nothing but a few traces after the Jan 28 WINDEX, a streak ended by 3.8" precip that included 10 inches of "snow".

I'd be okay with a 2" event if SNJ was getting 2 feet. We can catch up later here.

If the state isn't harvesting at Seboomook, there's loads of logging roads that don't need deep snow to ride.

Grandkids in SNJ may see 6"+ for the first time in at least 4 years (maybe not since 2016).

When we lived in Fort Kent (1976-85), schools there lost only 1.5 days thru that whole time. Folks joked that it was because the superintendent lived next to the high school. He said that was not the case. He would send his German shepherd out to get the morning paper. If she made it out to there, school would be open (even if he had to go and help her back to the house!)

March 2018 had those 4 huge storms and like you we whiffed on #1 and #4, but the middle 2 totaled 36.4" here, pushing the season into triple digits.

Near 50" here as well, with storms 16.0, 11.3, 4.7, 9.5, 7.3 plus some scraps for 49.3". had some meat, too, with total precip 5.73", all flakes but ~1/2" of IP/ZR in #4. The syzyzy storm was 2nd biggest of our 13 winters at Gardiner and went from 1st flakes to 1/8 mile visibility in <2 minutes, a classic wall. The pack was well sustained, with 24" and ~7" SWE at the equinox. March 23-30 had +8 temps but there was still 8" with perhaps 4" water in the very ripe pack. Then 4.57" RA on 31-4/1 with temp near 50 (some gusts of 50, too) blew away the snow. The Kennebec had the greatest peak flow in Maine records - 232,000 cfs - reaching 22 feet above flood stage at AUG.

0.5 BN here December 2024: Avg max: 30.9 Within 2 hundredth of the average. Mildest, 48 on the 12th Avg min: 12.4 -1.2 Coldest, -7 on the 27th Mean: 21.7 -0.5 Precip: 5.08" +0.21" Wettest (and all RA), 1.34" on the 11th Snow: 22.5" +3.3" Had 9.1" on the 5th 297 SDDs, not quite twice the avg (157). 2024 averaged 44.38°, warmest of the 26 full years here, 0.13° above 2010. Annual precip: 52.08" +2.81" 8 of 12 months were AN. 2024 had our driest February and wettest March.

Maybe the cold weekend will turn our few inches of white into marble, forcing all the little rodent owl and coyote food to skitter across the surface.

My whining about 09-10 must be in the top 10. Winter basically ended at 1 AM on Jan 3 when the 21° with SN at 10 PM became 34° and RA. Just as Cool Spruce had predicted. We had advisory-level snow on the MLK weekend plus the nice WINDEX on the 28th, but that was IT for wintry precip. I don't consider the 4:1 sludge (thanks, Will, for that term) in late Feb worthy of being called snow.

That "rainer" is a mix at CAR; their forecast has a few inches on the ground by Friday morning. Far NW Maine might reach double digits.

Storm total 0.95" but still 6" at the stake, 27 for the low and half of a 5-gal bucket of ashes for the driveway. Entertainment yesterday was 2 guys extracting and hauling out an ancient truck with a logging crane, last used in early 2008, all this during the heaviest rain and with temps still in the mid 30s. They had coats on but neither one was wearing a hat.

Not everywhere: Snow SDDs White Christmas 12/23 17.3" 92 Brown ground. still draining off the 12/18 monsoon 12/24 22.5" 284* 12" and 2nd deepest of 27 Dec25s here. * Thru yesterday, still 7-8" pack as I type. Dec 24 will also finish 5-6° colder than 23.

Had a sudden influx of dense fog and thought "here comes the warmth". Ten minutes later the fog was gone and we haven't yet reached 40.

Best of both worlds?

Guilford to Auburn? Hope you don't have a daily commute. Moderate RA here trying to scour out the CAD but still 8" and I think we keep about 4 after this mess.

Hope the worm turns like it did when I was much younger. We moved from uber-urban East Orange NJ (30k people, 4 sq.mi.) to a lake community in the Jersey Highlands in summer 1950. The first 5 winters there were all BN and with no storms of note. The next 6 winters, 55-56 thru 60-61, averaged more than 150% of climo and featured 7 storms of 18-24" and a depth into the mid 40s after the last of those 7 in early Feb 1961. Not impossible?

The year before. Some sites there had more snow in February than we saw for the whole winter.

We take. Those are the 2 snowiest Februarys I've experienced, each >45".

I'd leave out 'Northmost' NNE. We had lots of rad cold when we lived in the riverside area of Fort Kent, down to -41 at the apartment and -47 at our 1st house. When we moved to the back settlement, 450' higher than in town and on a slope, those 4 winters never got lower than -34 (and howling - lowest WCI I've experienced, abt -101 old scale, -70s new) but had 18 mornings -25 or colder, including 8 in the -30s. Places like Pittsburg and the Northeast Kingdom probably have similar temps at non-rad sites. Just being picky.

CAR was nearly +15 that month; the only New England month that comes close to that magnitude of departure, + or -, is Dec 1989. (2/15 is a contender at some sites.) Going into it, CAR's warmest Feb temp was 49. 2/81 tied that mark twice and topped it 7 times. The St. John ice ran, unheard of in midwinter, taking with it the logging bridge ~30 miles SW from Allagash. (Normally, that bridge would be disassembled in late March and reassembled in May.) This after the coldest of the 9 Decembers we lived there and 2nd coldest of 10 Januarys. 80-81 was also the least snowy (43") of the 130 winters at the Farmington co-op, 1" less than the previous winter.

One of my favorite snow trivia came in that period. New Jersey's greatest snowfall (34") came in its southernmost town. Cape May's average annual snow is the state's lowest; that 1899 dump was 2 years' usual production.

Would not mind a repeat of Feb-Mar 1899; Farmington co-op totaled 66" for those 2 months.

Today's prices boggle my mind, though it's almost 44 years since I last skied and almost 54 since I learned parallel during a ski week at Glen Ellen (now Sugarbush North). For $45 one would get 5 days' lift tickets and daily lessons plus 2 "parties" - spiced wine and ski films immediately after the lifts stopped. Except that year they cut the January price in half!

Living in Gardiner then, and 12/31/89 reached 38 after 32 days of highs 32 or lower (29 were 24 or lower). December's mean of 8.9° was 13.1° BN, then January came in at 17.4, which was +7.0. However, 12/89 brought 21.6" while Jan had 24.9. Lowest temp in Jan was -1, the same as December's average low, as that month featured 17 days at/under -1. The cold arrived with the Nov 21 thunderblizzard. I'd parked the ancient Subaru (2WD) pointing north, and the wind filled most of the space under the hood and froze the throttle cable, causing some "fun" as the battery was low - start/roar/shut down 3x before the cable ice shook off what I hadn't been able to scrape off. We were too far north for the T-Day storm but the max of 17 (with flurries) was easily the coldest in our 13 Novembers there. (Punched my deer tag that day as well. ) Next day's min of -1 was lowest by 6°.