tamarack

Stayed Wednesday night at a sporting camp north of Baxter Park, and several attendees at this forestry/training field trip stayed up to watch meteors. Saw mostly clouds. And next day probably the fewest deerflies I've ever seen in August hot wx - usually those horrid beasts love HHH.

Two days in the woods north of Baxter Park, one cloudy and sticky, one hot and stickier, and very few deerflies. Usually they love the heat. Only the occasional skeeter, and blackflies absent.

Driving home yesterday late afternoon from our 2-day "peer-review" trip in the north woods, I turned off I-95 in Newport and the whole western horizon was dark. Continuing west I watched the dark slide to my right and never saw a drop or wet road. My wife said there had been distant thunder for hours when I got home about 6:45. May: 1.73", temp 1.5 AN June: 1.05", temp 4.1 AN July: 6.25", temp 2.7 BN Aug.: 0.36", temp 1.8 AN (to date) One of these things is not like the others.

Different vibe here: 0.36" August; 6.25" July; 1.05" June. August is behaving like May/June with near misses and little precip so fa. Thank you, July!

More likely it's Jackson Mountain, about 8 miles west of Mt. Blue and over 400' higher.

Was there significant advance warning that this step would be taken? Otherwise, one week is mighty short notice. Imagine someone getting Moderna #1 last week and having 2-3 weeks unpaid leave until that person can receive #2 and be fully vaxxed. Or would getting the first Pfizer or Moderna count?

Volcano says wish you were here - bubbling up throughout the main caldera when I checked an hour ago with multiple incandescent flows.

First sentence in PF's "observational" post: Purely observational, was it a combo of masking and hygiene theater that seemed to completely nip any sickness at all out last winter? Didn't look the least bit surprised, just posed rhetorical questions with an obvious "yes" answer.

Bit warmer as the sun came out - 81/67 at 4 PM.

Snow at Okefenokee?

More than a year ago I saw (and did not save the link) a test comparing exhale distance for the common cloth mask, a bandanna with and no restriction. Nearly all of the exhale thru the mask stopped in less than one foot while unrestricted had considerable out to 3-4 feet and the bandana was a bit closer to unrestricted than to the mask. The test showed no data for shouted (or panting) exhale, which likely would've shown greater distances for each practice. It would seem that the mask has limited effect when folks are cheek to jowl, especially indoors, but with at least some social distancing, that (now anecdotal, since I don't have the link) data would mean the mask would be useful in limiting spread. (Even if it's doing less in protecting the wearer)

Just checked the JHU site, which pegged Iceland's total cases at 8,900, about 2.7% of the population, and 30 deaths, or about 1 in 297 cases. Could not find the recent infection numbers there - maybe just didn't look hard enough.

Last year we had a long and (usually) informative COVID-19 thread. Then a minority chose to troll incessantly and trash other members to the point where the mods understandably closed the thread. Hoping that doesn't reoccur (and it took a half dozen or so folks engaging in that boorishness to bring it down, not just one.)

Much less Thanksgiving pack here, not a surprise. 9 of 23 T'days had 1"+ depth, topped by 11" in two different years. --In 2014 the final 5.5" of a 13" storm came in the overnight, ending well before dawn. That's the biggest storm and only 10"+ I've recorded in my 48 Novembers in Maine. --Novie 2018 had more snow and mores storms than any other here, and only 1983 in Ft. Kent had more. T'day was just after a 3" event and with a max temp of 11°, no melting. Next most was 8" in 2011, as the day before had a 9.7" storm, the biggest that "winter". Two years had a 4" pack. --2005 featured a 3.7" storm, with 6 hours of moderate snow during the middle of the day. (Also EF0 and EF1 tornados on the midcoast!) --Novie 2019 was slightly colder than 2018 though with nothing like T'day the year before. 2.4" fell on the holiday itself. In 2002 there was 2" remaining from the 7" storm 10 days earlier. Had 1" cover in 2000, 2016 and last year. 2000 also featured 0.1" new and 2016 had 0.2" Those 2 plus the storms noted above are the 5 T'days with measurable. Last year was the only "T" for snow. Thanksgiving days were colder, wetter and snowier than the averages for Nov 22-28, the possible T'day dates. Those averages are in parentheses, below: Temp: 27.6° (29.6°) More than half of the 2.0° BN came from T'day 2018, which was 27° BN. (Most recent years, 2010-20, ran -4.7 and averaged 0.74" snow but only 0.16" precip.) Precip: 0.23" (0.19") Snow: 0.52" (0.31")

Two sugar maples a mile from us are changing. They were 1st to change last year but it was about Sept 1 when it became as noticeable as it is now. Those trees are only 10' from pavement and few tree species are as salt-sensitive as SM, so I'm confident those trees have serious health issues.

I know at least one boomer who's not asking such questions, and has zero regrets on being vaccinated. Actually, it's 2 boomers.

Except in Chicago, where 5 had similar symptoms and tested negative. Plus Spanks45's family with 5 negs. Suppose all 10 were false negatives? Reports of loss of taste/smell? (Or does Delta not have that to the same degree?) Undoubtedly some of the malaise cases are delta, but as others have posted, there's other viruses out there and full de-masking (for a disappointingly short time) after a year-plus maybe brought out those "normal" critters. I had my "summer" cold start on June 10, two days after a full staff get-together in Orono, 45+, masked indoors except for meals. Classic tamarack cold protocol though worse than average: wicked sore throat on day 1, deep chest cough D2, heavy dry cough D3, followed by decreasing dry cough for the next month.

Moss-covered ankle-breaker lava. The thought of having to walk a long distance thru that stuff gave me the shivers.

We stayed at Air BnB's in Iceland and most of the time in Norway, but the 3 hotel stays included by far the best breakfast buffets I've experienced - intimate at Aurland, gigantic at Geiranger and in-between in Alesund, each scaled to the lodgings. (The 4th and last hotel stay, in Oslo, our alarm failed to work and with no time for breakfast and a mad scramble to the station, we made our train to the airport with 30 seconds to spare.)

"The dose makes the poison", a lesson learned in college. At one extreme, years ago I read of a person overdoing the "water cleansing" that supposedly would take away all the bad stuff. Consumed so much water so fast that the body's osmotic balance was totally wrecked and the person died. One could go the other way and eat 4 cups of salt at one sitting (unlikely that anyone could gag down that much) and would have a good chance of dying.

Variola major, the most common form of smallpox, had a historic fatality rate 10-20 times greater (among the unvaccinated) than that of COVID-19. Might this difference have a bearing on the power of stare decisis?

Stand with one foot on Europe and the other on N. America, but don't wait too long or it could become painful. We landed at KEF at 6:15 AM on 8/6/17, almost exactly 4 years ahead of you, and took off for Norway at 7:50 AM on 6/8. Return trip on 8/18 gave us an 8-hour layover on Iceland. Blue Lagoon was booked solid so we visited the Viking museum on the north shore of the peninsula, ate lunch under a 70' reproduction Viking ship. Never topped 60 while we were on the island though it barely rained. In Norway temps topped out about 70 and we had at least some rain each day but only one washout and we'd already made that our Oslo museum day.

90% scale of Manute Bol. (IIRC, he was 7'6" and 190.) Well better get there haha. Best chance outside of vaccines. Should Ginxy take out the superfluous 11" from top, middle or bottom.

Looks like Gullfoss. I only went down the wooden steps there, better view of the lower rapids, poorer for that upper fall. We did the touristy Golden Circle tour and Gullfoss was the highest highlight. (Though the host's comment "If you're lost in an Icelandic forest, stand up!" drew laughs, especially from a Maine forester.)

And everywhere else, though we have less excuse than most.