tamarack

Those manzanita hillsides and dry forests out west are fire-driven ecosystems, just like southern longleaf pine and the Jersey pine barrens. Exclude fire long enough and it's like overfilling a gas tank while next to a bonfire. On a somewhat related topic, ever torch a dried Christmas tree" Flames 20 feet high and fierce crackling and lots of sparks flying. I still wonder at how fortunate Maine was in the mid-late 1980s to avoid huge catastrophic fires with a billion or so dead "Chirstmas trees" (some 60 feet tall) killed in northern Maine by spruce budworm.

Had 0.36" between 6:30 and 11 last evening, adding to the earlier 0.01" of dz. Brief little shower about 9:30 may have brought the event total to 0.4" and the month to exactly 2". Humidity still rules.

Controlled fires in the brushy hills and dry forests of California may never be feasible either practically (droves of people have built houses there) or politically. And it would hardly be tampering with a natural system as human occupancy and fire prevention have created an unnatural condition. If fires or other fuel reduction can be done, it should be intended as ecological restoration. And referring to "controlled burn" as a euphemism, an attempt to control the uncontrollable, has some truth but also ignores its extensive use in a far different ecosystem, the Southern pine forest. Site preparation using fire prior to planting is a way of life there - probably millions of acres annually with escapes exceedingly rare.

Did you use Triclopyr 4? I think the 3A (amine) formula is more gentle to grass than the 4 (ester) formula.

We missed some of Edna's rain, maybe a bit too far west. I remember flying kites that afternoon. Hazel plastered our house with leaf salad, a phenomenon I've seen only twice. 2nd time was June 1975 in Franklin, Maine, with tender early season leaves shredded by RA/wind at Donnell Pond. Hazel held its winds for an anomalously long time over land. IIRC, it set a wind speed record at BTV in addition to NYC. 1954 was our "family" season for 'canes: Carol (cousin), Edna (aunt,), Hazel (great aunt).

LEW hit 96 in 9/02, Bridgton and Farmington 95, and IZG might've been hottest of all. However that was on 9/9, nearly 2 weeks closer to met summer than the 1895 heat. (Farmington hasn't reached 95 since that 2002 day; best has been the 94 in June 2020.)

IIRC the CAR office had the Cleveland monster as a mix and mess, which is exactly what we had in Fort Kent. Jan 20-Feb 7 featured 3 huge NE storms and my snow stake had 1" less on 2/7 than on 1/20. (And unlike 4/82, the decrease wasn't due to blizzard winds. We got fringed twice with the mess in the middle.) Today's rn 0.00". What a bust. Not that we were supposed to get more than 0.5", but low clouds and off and on mist was annoying Much better up here. We scored 0.01" in morning dz.

It's way back (1895) but Maine sites hit low-mid (some upper) 90s on Sept 22-23 that year.

Sounds more logical than a misplay of the OV Bomb. Even CAR had that one as mostly RA (accurately).

In a perfect world controlled burns would've been being done for the past 50+ years. By now there may be so much fuel on/near the ground that attempted controlled burns would be exceptionally hard to keep controlled.

Cocorahs report of 6.16" thru 7 AM from "Brooklyn 3.1 NW". Some flooded out cars in Hoboken as well. More places getting big RA than big wind.

Different kinds of storms, obviously. It's a rare fall/winter that fails to produce a coastal or three with <980 pressure. CAR had 957 in the 1976 Groundhog Day gale, a solid Cat 3 pressure.

I was hoping for a couple inches but projecting/guessing that map NE-ward suggests about the same 1/3" as Fred. And maybe a 20 mph gust.

IIRC, mets here and elsewhere were all over Sandy's sharp left turn, and a hit in the ORF to BOX area a week prior to landfall. It's the biggest lead time I can recall for such an anomalous event.

Got 0.34" from Freddie. S. Maine (York/Cumberland) had the 1-2" total that had been progged for here. Hope to get siggy RA and little wind from Henri.

For fun I did 5-year running averages for each month's diurnal temp range here, not a long sample (periods 1999-03 thru 2016-20 so just an 18-year sample) and it revealed what I think are significant changes during that short period. The average yearly diurnal range has decreased by 1.8° over the period. One month, the low-range November (only DEC's is smaller) actually increased by 0.5° but the other 11 months all showed at least 1.0° decreased ranges, led by the 3.4° for October. My place was in the woods when we moved here in May 1998 and that has not changed. The increased atmospheric moisture appears to be buffering both extreme highs and extreme lows. Raindancewx: The tree ring sample caught my eye. I've been skeptical of the value of dendrochronology as analog for temp change, except at the cold-climate edge of a tree species' range. Having measured nearby trees' diameter growth at 2-week intervals for a number of years, I've found that spring temps can alter the commencement of growth (2020 and 2021 provided major contrasts) but the annual increment is affected far more by precipitation/soil moisture than by temperature - probably by an order of magnitude. Edit: And I like eating meat too, but my favorite is deer meat and since I hunt on my woodlot with a rifle made in 1964, the GHG impact is minimal.

I remember that one. It was the final field day of our sustainability audit and I had to remove a large dead fir from our road to get in on the fun. When I crouched down to hook the tow strap to the tree, a gust whipped my rain jacket up over my head and the RA+ did its thing.

Of course, it's New England. For areal damage the October 2017 storm beats anything since Bob and it's not really close.

Radar looks like it's working on the great divide, with more to the north and much more to the south. Hoping for at least 1/4". Near 90 in Aroostook with low 60s dews.

Awesome. Up to 21.58" here with last evening's 0.19" and waiting for Freddie's diminishing echoes to do something. We're 11.63" BN for the year, through yesterday.

Amazing for sure, especially when he first hit the gravel section. Looked like a slight wiggle then, only one on the trip.

Don't know what the airport measured, but on cocorahs "Bangor 2.1 N" reported 0.30" and no one in Penobscot County reported more than 0.43".

That's a tall bar. And flooding back then extended from BDL west into the NJ/NY/PA tri-state region. A mini-55 would be bad enough.

Isolated storms. A couple of Kennebec County sites about 25 miles to my south reported 1.90" and 1.42". No other cocorahs reports higher than 0.52" and I had only 0.19". Glad to see a poster from the Queen City. Maine beyond its SW 1/4 has been poorly represented in recent years.

Radar at this latitude is moving at a crawl. Not sure how much gets up here, though GYX has us at 1-2" during the overnight. (Only a tenth to a quarter before then.) Generally, systems moving ENE and drowning SNE are much less wet here. We'll see.