tamarack

This system appeared to have all the mets baffled, with models switching back and forth from inland downpours to coastal only and a narrow band of the heavy stuff. Have not had a drop here while Downeast had an inch-plus and EMA/ERI had spots with 3"+. Mr. Weglarz was probably not the only one to bust bigtime due to choosing the wrong model to trust.

The linked article also mentioned the "North Pond Hermit" but that fellow, Chris Knight, was a totally different critter. Dave Lidstone apparently likes to meet/greet people, even taking them to his cabin. By his own account, Knight met exactly one person in his 27-year stay in the woods, a casual wave-and-pass on a nearby hiking trail. He would stock up his sanctuary in the fall, mainly lootong camps after the summer folk had left (though he also raided Pine Tree Camp, where the profoundly disabled can enjoy a camp experience.), and stayed right at home all winter so there would be no footprints in the snow. Lidstone seems quirky but normal; Knight was weird. In the book about him, "Stranger in the Woods", the author gained his confidence over many hours of interviews and Knight never expressed exactly why he chose to disappear into the forest shortly after graduating HS. And as Phin noted, he's anything but off grid. His large NH place has a great view to the south so would be quite visible to people looking north, and it's not far off the main highway thru that part of the state. (In addition to his business work in MD/DE.)

Some numbers I've pondered concerning the notorious breakthroughs- According to the JHU site, current US vaccinations are a bit over 348 million, and considering the J&J one-shot plus those Pfizer/Moderna folks with only the 1st one, I'd put the fully vaxxed US population in the 150-170 million range. Current cases are 35 million+, or about 10.5% of total US population. Conceptually, if not vaxxed those 150-170 mm over the post-vaxx year or so would have contracted 15-17 million positives. Given the 90-95% efficacy reported in the test numbers, the now-vaxxed 15-17 mm would have some 800,000+ breakthrough cases. Why are people so upset over breakthroughs in the hundreds? (Your arithmetic may vary.)

Nice catch (both pics). Penobscot salmon run is slowly increasing but still in the hundreds, way below the 3000+ fish that would go thru the fishway in the early 1980s. Back then one could actually keep one fish. Now even fishing for them (intentionally, meaning use of salmon-fly patterns) is forbidden, though if one that hits something shiny cast by a bass fisherman it's okay as long as the fish is released unharmed. Would love to see the Kennebec run re-established, in part because the watershed's historically best salmon-spawning trib (the Sandy) runs less than 2 miles from home. Salmon eggs have been inserted into man-made redds in the upper Sandy, near the Phillips-Madrid line, for several years.

First day PM nap to kill the lag. That's what we did after our similarly timed EWR-KEF flight.

The cervid (deer, elk, moose, caribou) version of the prion-caused horror is called Chronic Wasting Disease. It was fist identified in commercial deer farms in the West, IIRC Colorado, but it's spread to wild populations there and has been found as far east as NY, I think. Nasty thing about prions is their hardiness; carcasses/bones of infected deer can transmit prions years after the critter's death. Years ago I saw a pic of a giant pressure-cooker where Wisconsin biologists would cook infected carcasses at high heat. The thing was 5-6 feet across and the locking lugs looked almost 2" thick. So far, I don't think that there's been transmission from cervids to humans. The human equivalent in Jacob-Creuzfeldt (sp?) disease, that destroys the brain from the inside out and is incurable. Yet another reason to continue my strict policy of never, ever stopping in NY/NJ when driving to NH. I would have to be in serious trouble to want to stop there. Grandkids are in SNJ. Have not been there since before the pandemic but hope to do so this fall. Usually involves a stop in NNJ before the final 150 to their home. Oh well.

Quebec produces about 80% of the world's maple syrup, most under the aegis of the provincial "cartel". Oddly, the most productive US county is Maine's Somerset, likely because its area is about 40% of Vermont's, and the vast majority is tapped within 30 miles of the PQ border and probably sold thru the cartel.

There are exceptions. When in UMaine forestry school 1973-75 I worked at a hole0in-the-wall pizza shop in BGR. Owner was Steve Seguino, a 2nd-generation Neapolitan-American from the Italian part of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. (Ironically, he grew up 5 blocks from my fil and the Norwegian section bordered the Italian.) Napoli Pizza made top flight NY-style pizza - when the manager of Pizza Hut wanted good stuff he came to Napoli's. I mostly made Italian sandwiches and ran the register - best Italian rolls I've seen, baked at Ruby Cohen's bakery - he was Sen. Bill Cohen's dad. I think the mushrooms best illustrated Steve's ethos - each week I'd go out to BGR International and pick up 8-9 boxes of fresh PHL-area shrooms delivered thru Delta Air Freight. When Steve sold the place to fulfill his goal of a sit-down Italian restaurant, the new owner would get his mushrooms from the outdated stock at local supermarkets.

Our little town has 2 places that make halfway decent NY-style pizza. At Sandy River Farm Supply we get 2 large, one pep one sausage, and a 2-liter root beer with a bit of change back from our thirty-dollar bill. (Can get groceries, hardware, rope and bar-and-chain oil, too, among many other things.) Don't miss those days, I have PTSD from the conditioning tests 56 years later I still have bad memories of two-a-days in Baltimore's 95/77 wx. One late (11 PM) evening the radio was reporting 86° with 85% rh - TD of 81 with condensation running down the inner side of the masonry walls where we bunked.

Another mid-upper 40s morning here. 2007 was our most recent 30s-in-every-month year. In 1978 (Fort Kent) we had a frost in every month. 32° on 7/31 damaged my pumpkins and smoked the next door neighbor's beans. Then August had several frosts and a low of 28. Frost-free period of 44 days.

Phin would need to be quick. Jay played offensive line in college, probably still has most of those muscles.

More likely he'll see an incentive to switch restaurants.

Had rain on 22 days here, 18 with measurable, and 40% of your rain. (Just the right amount)

Enjoy. Volcano is merely steaming at last look. Hope it does some serious burping while you're there.

When I first read this I couldn't believe that 95% of breakthrough cases were hospitalized and almost 20% died. Then I realized that, despite the misleading syntax of that sentence, the latter 2 numbers were national totals, not just the breakthrough outcomes.

Pineapple, avocado, whatever - only things I wouldn't want on a pizza are limburger or gamelost*. * Norwegian for "old cheese", dark brown outside, evil greenish inside. My wife's grandparent were all born in Norway, and during our engagement we visited her maternal grandfather in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. He offered me some gamelost, perhaps as a rite of passage for a non-Norwegian. My impression? It didn't taste quite as bad as it smelled. This oldster doesn't do flip-flops, the same for shorts except for jammies, though I've got a pair for swimming. Short-sleeve shirts year round, though they made co-workers shiver when I'd be in my cool (65°) office on a -15 January morning - better to be a bit chilly for the 2-minute walk from the lot than overly warm for 9 hours inside. Exception would be if I was to be outside for a while in the cold - snowblowing, deer hunting, ice fishing, all were flannel time.

Surprisingly little (0.19") in the gauge this morning - west was best - but then some brief showers from tiny spots on radar. Should be about done now.

July numbers: Avg max: 70.74 -5.43 Mildest: 82 on the 16th. Only one other 80+ 3rd-4th max 56 Avg. min: 54.65 +0.16 Avg diurnal range of 16.1 is our lowest, 0.7° below 2009 Mean: 62.69 -2.64 Precip: 6.25" +2.19 Biggest calendar day: 1.68" on the 9th (Elsa)

Unless Delta lacks this profound effect on taste/smell, that would be the telltale between covid and cold. The latter affects those senses somewhat due to plugged nose/sinuses but no one I know has had one that came anywhere close to total taste/smell loss. My "summer" cold undoubtedly came from an all-day indoor meeting, masks on except for meals, on June 8. On 6/10 I had a wicked sore throat, next day a deep chest cough and congestion, and day 3 a loud hacking dry cough. By day 4 I was feeling pretty good but started into the 4-5 weeks of more frequent than usual dry cough that follows all my colds. That meeting was the first such even I'd attended since early March of 2020 - no coincidence.

Upper 60s with a breeze, but the late July sun was plenty warm while I was working in the garden. If it had been one of those cloudy muggy days I'd have come in all sweaty; not today.

After 6 hours of light rain, caught perhaps the edge of the good stuff 11:30P-12:30A. Finished with 1.26" and Farmington/Temple had just over half as much - must've just missed the heavier period. July total now 6.25", about 155% of average. However, May/June combined was only 2.78" and average here for May-June-July is a bit north of 13" so still 4" BN for that 3-month period. Shows that in the Sandy, which peaked this morning about halfway between the median flow and 25th percentile. Garden going great but groundwater could use a few more 1"+ events in August. October '96 was a unique scenario of a TC being partially stripping away by a synoptic interaction. That system dumped 12"+ at PWM and up to 19" a couple towns to the south. Forester friend who lives a few miles from Lava Rock said his garden looked better for raising trout than for veggies.

239 new cases in one day, in a city of 6 million. That's 4 per 100k. The horror.

25% chance of that, at least for what I call a Grinch event. More non-Grinches if it has to be exactly on 12/25.

And those doing that are approximately zero, unless they're replacing it with a new machine. One who has installed their AC, whether in April or June, is unlikely to unship it before mid September.

Just listened to Dr. Shah (Maine CDC) and the mask recommendation for vaccinated people at indoor public places has been applied to York and Piscataquis Counties, the 2nd most and the least populous of Maine's 16. Looking at the Johns Hopkins data - dated 10:30 AM today but obviously thru yesterday, here are the numbers for those 2 counties for July 21-27: York: 95 total cases, population 204k, 47/100k (Daily 6.7) Piscataquis: 8 total cases (5 on 7/22), population ~16,700, 48/100k (Daily 6.8) That 7-day period is somewhat higher than the previous 7 days. Dr. Shah added that the state's testing was showing a positivity rate of 1.5% and that daily tests were 221/100k or about 2,960 total daily tests. That works out to 44-45 new cases daily. 62% of Maine's total population is fully vaccinated, more have had a first dose of Pfizer/Moderna, and while I don't have the proportion of Mainers <12 years old, I'd guess that 75%+ of eligible people are fully vaxxed. Maybe I'm being ignorant, but those numbers don't seem nearly high enough for the actions taken, especially with his (unsurprising) note that more counties could be added as warranted.