tamarack

I doubt anyone knows exactly how this will shake out, given the law of unintended consequences, which will never be repealed. A 20-head piggery in a PWM residential neighborhood? Animal abusers using the new amendment as a defense? ???????

Godzilla was here.

Seeing this pic reminds me of the pics I didn't get in 1998, 2 in particular, as the camera was damaged and left at home. First was a phone cable pulled down to 6-8' from the ground and covered with icicles. Stress had rotated the cable about 70°, clockwise from my viewpoint, and continued growth resulted in a bazillion 5-6" hockey sticks. Second was a recently installed utility pole carrying the main line along Brunswick Avenue in Gardiner. It had a feeder line down a side road with a long span to the nearest pole on that road, and the pull had deflected the top of that pole at least 10 feet, far more than I thought a pole could bend. 20 minutes later I looked at it again and by then it was in 3 pieces.

Farther north we had similar 2m temps and precip - rates & total - but accreted maybe 0.25". Must've been a skinnier cold surface layer. In the Jan 1953 ice storm in NNJ that probably triggered my interest in trees and weather, every tall tree near our home at 700' lost branches, often most of them, and a few trees snapped like breaking a pencil. (Noisier, though) In the next town, 2-3 miles north and 300' lower, it was mainly a cold rain. Hilltops above 800' had numerous "asparagus trees", naked stems with the lost branches piled around the base. It was nearly as severe as Jan 1998 though far far smaller in extent, limited to the hilly country N and W from NYC.

Bald cypress could certainly handle the wet and I think there are varieties that would be cold-hardy in most of CT (frost pockets excluded) but the natural range of the species is way south - Dismal Swamp in S.VA may be the farthest north for significant numbers. A reliable nursery staff is your friend.

Willows as a species are notorious for dropping branches and twigs in all seasons, and weeping willows are infamous for invading sewer pipes and septic systems. Red maple can tolerate fairly wet conditions but not if the ground is i=under water much of the growing season. RM is one of the most colorful trees in fall, and on a swampy site maybe you would have the earliest color. Swamp white oak might be another option though I'm not sure if nurseries stock it. Northern white cedar tolerates wet feet but you're too far south of its native range for it to be a good prospect. A reliable nursery staff could offer more detailed advice. GYX got a new office? Nice to see they aren't abandoning WFOs with all of the new offices being built in recent years (e.g. CTP, BOX). Nope - only the original one for GYX as the WSO used to be next to the Portland Jetport. A couple hundred yards from where the airplanes began their take-off roll is not conductive to good working conditions. Plus the radar at PWM was WW2 vintage and NWS wasn't going to put $$$ worth of NEXRAD at 50' elevation when there was a nice hill a dozen miles NW.

Too many smart people fail to recognize that trees grow, and that the growth offers both opportunities (for people like me) and problems.

Have you (GYX) contacted BPL recently. A well planned timber harvest could remove the taller trees while leaving the land's use unchanged, just with younger/shorter ones. a solution that would be temporary but the Bureau would be able to repeat it as needed. Beyond that, would NWS propose a purchase of sufficient acreage on the hill to avoid the treetop issue, as the importance of the site would IMO have a good chance of gaining the necessary 2/3 supermajorities required. Since 1993 there have been many land transactions thus approved, including the sale of several hundred acres just north of your facility.

Maine forest managers plant relatively few acres, as most of the state's high timber value species are adapted to regenerate naturally. Yale Silviculture Professor emeritus David Smith called it the "Magic Forest" due to that ability. The difference between the 500k and the 2500+ acres of the corridor is that the 500k will be managed for forest products while the corridor will be kept clear of anything that might get tall/thick enough to approach the lines or hinder maintenance access. I'll add that I was also disappointed by passage of Question 3, which I opposed due to its incomplete pig-in-a-poke (perhaps literally) language. Will the good folks on Munjoy Hill (PWM) be happy when the folks next door start raising pigs? Will this amendment create issues for addressing animal abuse? The bill made no attempt to cover those and related topics.

The link is the best explanation I've read on the issue. However, its discussion of the Public Lands portion failed to go back far enough. In 1993 Constitutional Amendment 164 was approved by 73% of those voting in a citizen referendum. Among other things this amendment reads that any such lands "...may not be reduced or its uses substantially altered except on the vote of 2/3 of all the members elected to each House." I've not read the decision on Black v. Cutko by the Superior Court judge, but my guess is that he agreed that changing commercial timber land to a powerline corridor met that "substantially altered" language. Question 1 language includes the (obvious to me) statement that things like powerline corridors, RR rights-of-way and airport runways are substantial alterations of use on the Public Lands. (Trivia note: The impetus for that amendment came when the Bureau of Public Lands [since re-named Bureau of Parks and Lands] sold 2 acres of "scarce S. Maine public land) to NWS for its new office, sited a couple hundred feet from its NEXRAD facility, which facilitated replacing the totally inadequate office and WW2 radar at the jetport.) The linked article also confirms that Maine was chosen over some other options because it was a cheap date, at least when the not-performed EIS was left out of the equation.

Looking to the north, that 75-100 blue in the St. John Valley is bogus, a product of wonky measurements IMO. In my 9 full winters there FK ran 20" below CAR and any snow-conscious resident in FK would laugh at that. My measurements in 5 in-town winters, 4 within 1/2 mile of the co-op site and maybe 15' higher elev., ran 24" above that co-op and 8" more than CAR. The 4 back settlement years at 970' averaged 26" more than CAR and 51" beyond the FK co-op. One-a-day measuring that sometimes seemed to be based more on pack change than new snow is my guess at the reason. Also, the land above 1000' N and W from Allagash should be the orange or maybe the burgundy. Areas near/above 1300' must've had 50% more than my back settlement 171" in 1983-84 based on what we found working there thru that winter. (Disclosure: My measuring technique there was the same as I've used at my current location for the past 23 winters, where I average 1-2" less than the Farmington co-op 6 miles to my west.)

Nearly 15" at water's edge from Logan. Probably a memory blank with everything else that was going on.

As our O-line coach in HS would say when a pulling guard went left instead of right, "You only missed by one!" That dew vs. snow equation might've been hit last winter, the only time it's even been close: 52.5" for the snow season with a rainy max of 54 on 12/25/20, might be close.

Probably will continue right up to closing time at the polls.

Meant to comment earlier on this pic from a forester's perspective. One big lone aspen, a species that won't grow in the shade, amidst the shade-tolerant beech, yellow birch and sugar maple. Maybe established back in the earliest days of Stowe?

Somebody was in the right place at the right time. (And of course, trends aren't absolutes.)

Only things I've noted, and less(but not zero) for bucks than does, are heavy rain and 60+ temps. The first cancels the critters' hearing and smelling, the 2nd keeps them in the evergreens during the day rather than be out in the warm sun with their winter overcoats. High winds make the deer jumpy but I don't think it inhibits their plans much.

When Burleson tore his rotator cuff in August (IIRC) 1978, it began the Sox' disaster that ended with Bucky Dent. Of course, correlation isn't causation.

Stats for October: Avg. temp: 48.74 +3.77 Highest: 73 on 12 & 13. @nd mildest of 24 Octobers, 0.01" above 2007 but 2.37 below 2017. (Would take either following winter.) Avg. high: 57.94 +2.72 Avg. low: 39.55 +4.83 Almost every month recently has milder minima than maximum when compared to average. Precip: 4.04" -1.59 Had 2.18" on 10/31. Snow: Zero Of 24 Octobers here, 6 have had measurable snow and 4 more have had traces.

After yesterday's 0.14" of showers and dz, we had 1.95" between 9 last evening and 8 this AM. Looks like another 2 tenths before the end. Saw amounts between 6" and 7" in south-coastal Maine (6.88" tops) and my 2.09" for cocorahs failed to make the first page - about 60th of 101 reports.

Running +3.6 at my place, will be either 2nd or 3rd mildest in our 24 years here, though more than 2° behind 2017.

Wxeye and Backedge both. Our climate here can't be too different from theirs, and while our big oak is only 1/3 shed, the aspens have only have handfulls of leaves remaining and everything else is sticks except a small beech, the other overwinter leaf-clinging species.

The 2/15-16/1958 storm gave NYC 7.9" of powder and the 17th had a high of 10°. Probably windy as well though I only recall the winds during the snow. On the evening of 3/19 that year we (dad, older bro, me) were at a drizzly Newark AP awaiting mom and little bro. Their bumpy FL to DC flight had to skip the Capital as DCA was closed due to fog so the nice dinner flight from there to Newark disappeared. Mom heard talk of Newfoundland but after some circling the Connie found a home at (then) Idlewild, followed by mom, 2 suitcases and an overtired 4-y.o taking a taxi to Newark. After midnight on the way home we hit snow, which continued all the next day and thru the night into 3/21, piling up ~24" of 30-32° paste - looked the same depth as 3/18-19/56 which my dad measured at 23.5" with snow still accumulating a bit. NYC recorded 11.8" at temps 31-33. (My younger brother made no friends when the airplane hit turbulence from the storm south of DC and he asked mom "When are we going to crash?" In those days, almost every TV drama that showed folks flying showed a plane crash, or at least sufficiently often to impress the little twerp. He thought it was included as part of the ticket price.) Edit: The cold snap in Dec 1962 was memorable as beginning with 4" snow (2.7" NYC) at our NNJ home, followed by 5 days with highs teens/low 20s. It was the week of NJ's 6-day firearms deer season and I would go into the woods after school. On that Thursday, coldest day of the run, I found the pump-action shotgun frozen shut when I tried to unload at the end of legal shooting time. I bent down to blow into the action but leaned a bit too low and both lips were instantly attached to the steel. Fortunately I had just enough sense to freeze (pun intended) in place and puff like a steam engine until the action was thawed, allowing a safe disconnect and unloading.

25-26 here, put 0.1" ice on the water in the washtub. Time to dump it.

Nearby places had 8-10" in that 1957 storm - odd that I have no memory on it. (Though the 24" paste Bomb on 3/21-22/58 may have wiped the earlier snow from my mind. And/or the windy and cold February storm, 15-18", which I do recall.) Only 2-3" in that 1958 event.