tamarack

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.

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.