tamarack

Realtors have it right with their 3 "Ls". SNE/CNE appear to have fared better compared to their norms than sites north of PWM/CON, but the exceptions can be great. March 2014 was one of those, with Farmington getting 3 feet and farther south getting cold wx with poorly timed (read: messy, or worse) storms. Kind of like January that year for us - AN precip, BN temps, record low snow.

Rangeley prices have been thru the roof for decades, especially for waterfront. By now, a house on the lake is probably in the "If you have to ask, you can't afford it" range.

2nd, quieter, TS brought 0.26".

Sunday, Feb 22,2015 popped up to 35, probably less than 4 hours in the 30s. Next highest was 28. That Sunday had a low of 4, the 19th had 5, 2 days had 1 and the other 24 were zero or below. The month's low was -25 and it's been colder in Feb (lowest is -29 in 2003) but that -25 was on 2/24, almost as anomalous as the -26 on 2/29/08. Feb 2015 wasn't remarkable for all time cold mornings, but for staying consistently cold all month. Temps for the month at my place were 16.5/-10.1 for an average of 3.2. Jan 2003 had a max of 34, 2nd coldest monthly max. 3rd place is 37.

At least Rumford is still buying roundwood, and ND opened an idled paper machine that uses more softwoods so that we sometimes actually get positive revenue from spruce-fir pulp. (20 years ago it was worth 5 times what hardwood brought; now it's closer to 1/10 or even below zero - sell it just to conduct proper silviculture and not leave a mess.) If the price of purchased pulp goes up much, I anticipate that Pixelle will cut and run, and the market for an older mill without a digester is mighty thin.

Those whiners need to get the "beam" out of their own eyes before complaining about the "mote" in the vaccinated.

I don't think the OV Monster of 1978 got particularly close to the 940s, maybe low 950s, though this is pulled from deep memory and thus suspect. Lowest I've seen in Maine was CAR's 957 in the 1976 Groundhog Day gale.

The side-slipper is now warned - saw a 60 dbz pixel just west of WVL. May have a 2nd chance as radar indicates RA+ in Farmington. 2nd bite at the apple was less noisy (same distance from strikes but less of them) but lots wetter - 15 minutes of RA+ probably dumped 3/10" though I'm not wading thru the wet grass to find out (until my 9 PM obs time.)

Would love to experience another band like 2/22-23/09 - 9" in 2:45 and 18" in 7:30. Then the March 2 storm busted, 5.6" with forecast 8-12 and less than 2" after that. (Two straight years with early March busts - the 10-14" "Manitoba Mauler for 3/1/08 verified at 6.1", stopping pack growth at 48".) January 2009's max was 31° here, on 3 different days, the only </=32 month I've recorded since Jan. '85 in Ft. Kent. (Max was 22 that month but it only cracked -20 once; 2nd lowest was -17. 1983 with -19 was the only other January of 10 there that failed to touch -30.)

Finally had a TS this month, tying 2 other Julys for latest thunder, though it did the usual sideslip - to the south this time. Considerable thunder, none closer than 3-4 miles (rough estimate as none was near enough to detect the flicker) and another 0.04", putting this month at exactly the same 3.89" as 7/09 thru the 21st. Had another 3.40" in the rest of the month back then; nothing indicates we'd get even close to that now. (Some drops falling presently (3:45) so we may finish the day ahead of 2009.)

La Nada has been a bit AN for Maine, though my much shorter POR is BN due to 05-06 counting for more of my 7-season group than for the full 22. 2012-13 was pretty much on my average as Nemo's best failed to get here, while 13-14 had no blockbusters but a lot of medium-large events and great retention, aided by a snowy and very cold March.

Looks like cloudy day #13 today, bringing us to within one of the 2009 record for cloudy days in July. I checked rainfall and 7/2009 had 3.89" thru the 21st while last night's 0.04" brings this July up to 3.85". Similar? Not quite. 7/09 finished with 7.29" and I don't see anywhere near 3.44" for the rest of this month. Also, June 2009 had 8.71" more rain than last month.

We had a quick-hitting 0.04" no-thunder shower about 2 AM. Still no TS this month.

Not long after moving to the small Ft. Kent house noted above, the old-fashioned piston pump became unreliable - had to go down to the cellar and give a shove to the flywheel to unstick it, repeatedly. Also, the water had a sulfur-y aroma. The only laundromat in town had just closed so every Saturday for about 4 months we'd pack the laundry down to CAR to use one there - became quite familiar with the little museum across the street, also picked up an old leaky parlor stove (as airtight as a lobster trap) to put in the cellar for when temps dropped under -20 and the small Jotul in the kitchen wouldn't furnish. Then we bought/installed a Sears "Captive-air" pump, and instead of a flush requiring one or more downstairs/restarts to fill the tank we could flush twice before the new one had to work. Sulfur smell was gone, too.

My parents bought us an upright freezer - Kenmore IIRC - in 1974 when we lived in BGR and I was in UMaine forestry school. Our current home had no good place for it so we left it to the new owners of the Gardiner house in May 1998, still running like new despite our repeated attempts to kill it. They don't make them that way any more. Our first house in Ft. Kent was small - 18x20 with 2 stories - and it had an attached unheated wood shed. Over 4 winters we'd pull the plug in mid-Dec and plug it back in early in March, to save on the light bill. We later found that was an absolute non-no, keeping the freezer in unheated space. In Gardiner we hosted our church's food pantry in our basement "freezer room" for 6 years 1991-97, making weekly trips to Good Shepherd food bank in Auburn, serving 100+ clients and disbursing about 25,000 lb/yr. The freezer was filled with both pantry stuff and our own, kept carefully separated. My dad died in Dec 1993 leaving the NH house empty. We'd make overnight trips about once a month to prep the house for estate auction (contents only) and eventual sale. Another church member had a key in case there was a need while we were away. On one of those excursions in summer 1994 we got back about 11:45 PM on Saturday and went to bed. About 7 the next morning I looked in the pantry and saw a river of melted ice cream running across the floor. Evidently, a client had been taken to the pantry while we were away, and somehow the freezer door was left 2" ajar - for anywhere from 20 hours to twice that. Everything thawed, but the constantly running 20-year-old motor maintained refrigerator temps so little was spoiled beyond the IC. Why the machine didn't die then, we'll never know. Sadly, there was about 50 lb left of a very tasty deer I'd taken the previous Nov, and with a major heat wave, I chose to cook all of it outside on the grill the next day - wasn't quite as good as it had been when cooked up fresh.

The NY/VT tiger was a tiny kitty when it reached here about 2 AM - 0.04".

A bit later here. Using the raw 23-year data, Feb. 1 is closest at 50.1% of average, while doing the same 15-day smoothing I use for temps, Jan. 31 is 49.9% while Feb. 1 is 50.8%. For convenience, I've used the Jan-Feb bridge as the midpoint for snow. The midpoint for HDDs comes earlier; Jan. 21 is both the average and median date. It has ranged from Jan. 13 in the warm late winter/spring of 2010 to Jan. 28 when record mild Nov-Dec-early-Jan turned abruptly cold and snowy in mid-Jan.

We were only in Iceland for 2 days on the way to Norway 4 years ago, and missed out on that delicacy. (Enjoyed lots of fish in both nations, though.)

RA/dz most of the day, probably <0.05", just enough to keep things wet on the surface. July temps 1-18: 2.5° BN - maxima: -6.2°; minima: +1.2° 14 of 18 days have had BN maxima while 11 have had AN mimima. Current average diurnal range is 14.3° and today will shrink that a bit. July's smallest range so far is 16.8°, another 2009 score.

Our grandkids in NJ have been home-schooled since the get go, though the oldest - 9th grade - took a science class in the nearby Christian school this past school year. Was a relief to them (and us) when the pandemic arrived.

At 2 PM Aroostook was the warmest in New England, with FVE tops at 82 and the next mildest in NNE outside of The County is 75 at EEN. Warmest in SNE was 77, at BDL and ACK(?).

Average annual TS is 15.1 , with 11.2 in met summer, 4.6 in July, max year with 23, lowest 8. As a wild guess, I'd estimate 60% are weak, 30% garden variety, 10% noteworthy. YTD is 3 weak, 1 G-V (mid-30s wind) and 1 noteworthy, though without the ultra-close strike it would've rated as weak. (And 0.3% possibly severe - 6/12/05 had 30 seconds of flying mist with leaves and branches, and toppled a half dozen tall aspens along our road, plus some other trees. I'd guess 50s to near/above 60 mph. Also dropped a handful of trees onto the road 1/2 mile to our west. As it arrived the SW view suddenly looked brighter as trees were bent downward by the gust.) --Fort Kent (1/1/76 thru 10/19/85) had fewer, unsurprisingly, with 12.1 annually, 8.7 in met summer, 3.8 for July and max/min 17/6. --At Gardiner (11/1/85 thru 5/14/98) the numbers are 13.1/yr, 8.75 in met summer with June tops at3.33 (July 2.83) and 22 in our 1st full year there - 1986 - and a low of 7 in 1992. July 1991 had none, the only July shutout since moving to Fort Kent.

None this month at my place. Farthest into July I've gone w/o a TS here is 20 days. Apart from the tree-blaster 55 yards from the house on 3/26 and another hit within 1/2 mile a couple minutes later, we've not had a strike within 3 miles in almost a year.

That's excellent, in many ways!

Off topic note: Have not seen your name on AFDs for quite a while. Did you get promoted? (Or a nice long vacation?) Light RA the past hour, despite no echoes overhead. Yesterday's total was 0.60", toward the bottom of Maine precip on cocorahs. July is going to go down in the anals of all time SNE s*** shows. Artful misspelling there.