tamarack

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.

Here's my "friend of a friend" anecdote. It's our pastor's cousin, also a pastor but in the south. This fellow was on a ventilator 2+ week then another 3 in hospital and about the same in rehab. When he finally returned home he could only take 2-3 steps before having to stop and catch his breath. Last I heard, perhaps 6 weeks after homecoming, was that he was walking up to 200 feet without stopping and has resumed some pastoral duty. Had comorbidity - cancer survivor (don't know which kind) - and is late 50s. Doesn't seem to fit depression or anxiety only.

Maine cases exploded from <20 to about 70 per day! That's just over 5 per 100,000. Yikes!

When I would be in the inevitable midsummer traffic jam where Rt 1 and Rt 172 merge going into Ellsworth, I'd have plenty of time to count Maine vs. not-Maine plates, and the latter would run about 75% of the total. Farther south, say Ogunquit, the non-Maine proportion is probably even higher.

That low average lifespan is a bit deceptive, but in a way that makes health of the young so important. Might be more appropriate to say that 500 years ago people were fortunate to make it to 10. Those that survived into their teens probably had lifespans about 60, significantly lower than now but way more than half way. A well-known case in point - J.S. Bach fathered 20 children in the early 1700s and only 7 survived into adulthood.

Norway is experiencing a mini baby-boom, with 4.4% more births Jan-June 2021 than the same period last year. Of course, that might have something to do with shutdowns limiting some behaviors and enabling others.

Kastmaster would cut thru the wind nicely, especially in the larger (striper) size. July is -2.3 thru yesterday, with maxima -5.4 and minima +0.8. Still in the running for July's smallest average diurnal range (currently 15.5° and lowest is 16.8° in 2009), though I think these last 4 days may include some tall ranges, especially Saturday.

As you know, it's all about location. The storm that tore apart trees and crushed vehicles in Belgrade Village with gusts up to 90 (as per GYX investigators) produced little wind and 0.02" at my place 10 miles away. The same system wrecked part of a friend's woodlot 50 miles east in Dixmont while a former co-worker a mile or 2 away had meh.

We were way from the house yesterday afternoon, had some light showers in the evening, and since there were no puddles I went to the gauge thinking maybe 0.05". Surprisingly found 0.44", bringing July to just a penny shy of 5". The mid-afternoon echoes, which didn't look all that great on radar, must've overperformed.