tamarack

This winter's D+ was the 4th D in 24 years here. A: 2 (00-01, 07-08) B: 9 (02-03, 04-05, 06-07, 08-09, 13-14, 14-15, 16-17, 17-18, 18-19) C: 5 (98-99, 03-04, 10-11, 12-13, 19-20) D: 4 (99-00, 01-02, 11-12, 21-22) F: 4 (05-06, 09-10, 15-16, 20-21)

Going from my experience, that spruce probably won't get much bigger in its first year there, as up to 90% of its roots stay behind when it's lifted for transplant. That makes keeping the soil moist (not soggy) extra important, though you probably know that already. The tree should do much better in years 2+.

Would be fitting after Mehrch 2022.

Jan 21 thru Feb 6 earned an A, with record low temps plus storms of 12.4" and 9.5". Unfortunately, the rest of the cold season gets an F.

As noted on the loop, we were right on the rain/snow line and stayed there thru most of the storm - 1.11" LE, 1.4" SN. Blecch. (But likely more snow than we see this April.) Down to scattered patches, and here the wood frog "quacks" are heard a week or 2 before peepers. A couple upper 50s days and the frogs may sound off.

Unless there's some slush later this week, this might be my first flake-free April here, given the warm-up progged for mid-month. 4/99, 4/09 and 4/12 had only traces.

Looking for another 1976 or 2002? In Maine, "furnace" and "April" don't work together unless there would be a 1982-like cold snap to make the machine run like it's January. There's been a handful of ~90 one-day spikes but nothing like the heat waves of those Aprils noted in the query. BDL topped out at 96 in 4/1976 and 95 in 4/2002.

The way I weight the different months, by proportional average snowfall, that wouldn't be possible. Currently we average 49.5% of total snowfall by the end of January, and if I had B+ thru then (didn't get close despite a good Jan) and then had F's from then on, lowest I could get would be C-, unless I had something like last March snowfall, where 0.1" (and that was generously measured) was so ridiculous that I scored it -1 on my 4 (A) to zero (F) scale. +/- grades score X X plus .33 and X minus .33, respectively. Months establishing new records for cold and/or snow at the Farmington co-op (129 yr POR) get a 5. Subjective? Of course. Currently at D+ and given April/May's weak weight (6%), neither F's nor A's would be likely to change it. That would rank this winter 19th out of 24, bottom quartile. This winter and last are easily the worst consecutive pair since moving here in May 1998, and adding 19-20 makes for the worst trio.

Titanium plate and 4 screws in my neck since fusion surgery at C-4 in April 2011, no adverse reaction and they don't trigger the TSA scanners. My wife's 2 artificial knees mean a full examining every time.

No scoffing intended, and I agree that purchasing power was greater in the 60s to 90s than now. One issue I see is the "mandate" that one must go to college. There are probably lots of debt-burdened college grads who would've been happier and more prosperous if they had learned a trade. There's an old joke about a doctor having some plumbing work done. When he sees the bill, he exclaims, "You charge higher than I do!" "I know. I used to be a doctor."

My son, born 1972, sent me a book called "The Age of Entitlement" which laid that title on boomers. I'm in that age group but have had a quite different experience than the "entitled" folks addressed in the book, so no offense here.

Same here. March 18 was sunny and 61 here, and we had windows open on the sunny side for much of the afternoon. Our thermostat is set at 62 but the woodstove keeps things warmer, though we got down to 63 by sunrise on one of January's coldest mornings. Furnace runs mostly for domestic hot water. Reading others' cost for window replacement makes me feel quite fortunate. Six+ years ago (Nov. 2015) we paid about $4,500 to replace 8 separate double-hungs plus 2 more with the picture window assembly, and one casement over the kitchen sink. Nice Andersen products, wood frames to fit our cabin. Also got a new storm door in that 4.5k.

Climo for March 2022: Avg temp: 29.81 +2.34 Avg high: 39.87 +1.27 Highest 61° on the 18th Avg low: 19.74 +3.40 Lowest -10° on the 1st Precip: 2.97" -0.54" 4th consecutive BN March and 7th of the last 8. YTD is 0.76", precip is 92% of avg. Max day: 0.68" 12th and 19th Snow: 10.0" -6.4 Also 4th consecutive BN Max day: 3.5" on the 12th Avg. depth: 15.4" -2.4" Season TD for SDDs: 1,512 (and probably <10 more unless April brings siggy snow.) Avg: 1,763 Median: 1,478 Deepest: 23" on 2nd/3rd Grade: D for both temp and snow. (Maybe D- for snow given the pitiful largest event.)

One of the few times in the past 6-8 years when climo ruled. And it was close here - our 2 big events dropped 13.5" and 13.3". Six miles west, Farmington recorded 18.5" and 16.9". GYX totaled just 4.5" from the 2 storms.

2014 is the coldest March in the 129 years at the Farmington co-op. 1984 is #2.

0.2" of IP during the wee hours, brings the month to 10.0", about 60% of average and 4th consecutive BN March.

Only a trace in northern Maine, but still nearly 4' pack from the mid-month dump.

We had 7.5" in Gardiner but not from the big dog IIRC, but from a much lesser and northerly system running 12-18 hours ahead of the monster. Worst commute in my 2 years of Gardiner-Farmington travel, took 1:45 instead of the usual 50-55 minutes. Can recall listening to the bombs-away forecast for SNE while muddling along at 15-20 mph in a seemingly endless line of vehicles. Scott's during-the-storm pics remain my favorite snow pics ever on the forum.

Like February, late month cold modified a very AN finish to one a bit more than 2° AN.

Catch and release. Wildlife > Humans That's my usual practice with critters I don't plan to eat, but one winter the red squirrels got into our unheated back porch and tore things apart, warranting an exception - rat traps. Caught 4, lethally of course, and the depredation ceased. Our "log cabin" is actually stick framed and clad with 3-sided Northern white cedar logs, very irregular. That spring I took 2 narrow strips of 5/8" plywood left from an earlier project and with scribe and saber saw fitted the strips to the siding. No more squirrels though mice still can enter, usually in places other than that porch. Our cat also follows your philosophy: Catch and release Catch and release Catch and release Catch and release . . .

About 10 years ago a co-worker gave me a bunch of black walnuts from the tree at his Waldoboro (midcoast) home, still in the husk and enough to nearly fill a 5-gal bucket. He'd planted nuts in his yard several times with zero success - nothing made it out of the ground. One Saturday afternoon I planted about 2/3 of the nuts in various places on our woodlot, putting 2-3 per hole because there were so many. I left the nut-bucket on our porch with another such bucket fitted inside it, the 2nd bucket holding about 20 lb sand. Thinking that would foil the local rodents, I didn't check on the buckets until Monday after work. The lower bucket had 1-2" taken down from the rim, not enough to reach the nuts but a sure sign that the red squirrels and chipmunks were very interested. I doubt there is a black walnut within 20 miles of my place and even its cousin, butternut, is probably a mile or more distant. Those rodents had never sniffed anything like those walnuts, but that aroma was enough to drive the critters nuts.

I still brag about how hot it was in my workplace on 7/3/66. (150 between grill and counter?) The place was incredibly crowded, and all the visitors were hot/sweaty. At one point in the afternoon, a customer wondered why we weren't as sweaty as the folks outside the counter, and I said the "furnace" was evaporating our sweat immediately. I also learned something odd about coffee consumption, at a time I'd never consumed a hot coffee in my life (while brewing the stuff in a 50-cup urn!) Iced tea demand went up and down with the temp, but coffee consumption was directly proportional to how many people came thru the gate. We sold more on that blazing Sunday than any other day I worked there.

It's cold but nothing too uncommon here - yesterday was 10° BN and today will probably be 12° BN. The final week of March 2014 had days at 25° BN. The oddity of this cold is that SNE is as cold or colder than here, also flake-free these past few days while points in every compass direction, including parts of SNE, have been whitened/refreshed. Big CAD sites usually come with big downsloping.

Hottest summer of my experience, especially July 2-4 (Sat/Sun/Mon) when EWR had highs of 102/105/100. (NYC a modest 100/103/98, LGA 101/107/99) Obscenely hot next to the griddle at Curtiss-Wright's private lake resort in NNJ. On Sunday, the busiest day of my 2 summers working there, it was Death Valley plus - the cheap coil thermometer 10-12 feet from the griddle rotated well past the 120° top of its scale. We couldn't do our usual bun-browning beneath the griddle flame - they would go straight to black, with maybe a nanosecond of brown stage.