tamarack

We rarely get siggy wind from TS but the one that just passed thru here 2:45-2:55 had gusts that must've been well up into the 30s. Didn't hear anything break but seeing some more horizontal fir on the woodlot would not be surprising. Minimal thunder, nothing closer than 3-4 miles, maybe another 0.15" as estimated from 70' west of the Stratus. Baby steps, and a chance (slight?) for some more today.

A bit better than the 0.08" that fell here 6:30-7:30 this AM.

Earliest flakes, earliest measurable: 98 11/3 11/17 99 10/4 11/10 00 10/9 10/29 (6.3" 29-30, high on 29: 31°) 01 10/31 11/1 02 11/1 11/1 03 10/22 10/23 04 11/21 11/21 05 10/23 10/25 06 10/23 12/7 07 11/8 11/20 08 10/29 11/25 09 10/13 11/5 10 10/22 10/31 11 10/29 10/29 (4.5" 29-30, Octobomb was forecast 12-16 here) 12 11/5 11/8 13 11/10 11/10 14 11/1 11/2 (0.5", forecast was 4-8) 15 10/18 11/23 16 10/25 11/21 17 11/10 11/16 18 10/13 10/27 19 10/25 11/8 20 10/26 11/3

Only July failed to have at least catpaws there, though 7/31/78 had a frost. We were at Allagash Bible Camp at 625' along the St. John on July 3-4, 1982 and both days had highs in the 60s with destructive sunshine that produced very chilly afternoon showers, especially on the 4th when a heavier shower brought enough cool air to drop the temp well down the 40s, maybe even upper 30s. Would not surprise me if there had been flakes above 1000' up in the woods, though no one reported any that I know of.

Looks a lot better than mine. I have 2 sheets 10x4 feet of 30-mil black plastic, each with 12 pre-cut round holes, that I use for peppers, tomatoes and the odd cucurbit. My dad bought them in the 1980s and other than one corner he hit with the tiller, they function the same as when I inherited them in 1994. The wind a couple days back moved the tomato sheet despite it having stakes in holes on both ends and several rocks. 5 of my 6 supersweet 100s were crushed (had grown from 6" to 12-15" in the 10 days since outplanting) and the spaghetti squash was also flattened. One tomato looks totally dead and I carefully slid plastic and plants to bring the other 4 and the squash back into the sun, then gave them a good drink yesterday right after the fix attempt. 0.08" downpour this AM wasn't much but anything helps. Oddly, the sheet with peppers wasn't moved, though it's to windward from the other and anchored in the same way.

We had slushy flakes on 9/14/77 at 535' in Fort Kent during a cold coastal (47/35; 1.62"). The old Casey Brook Road, logging road heading south from the SE Public Lot in Allagash, was blocked by hundreds of saplings bent across the road by 1-2" paste at 1000-1200'. We also saw slushy flakes at 970' in the back settlement on a sun&shower day, 8/28/82 (54/35; T/T).

He certainly was not a fan, but the bill had its problems as well. Most involved things that should've been clearly stated but either were absent or ambiguous. Another issue concerned the status of towns/marijuana sales. For alcohol, towns are assumed dry and opt in to become wet. The referendum-passed act was just the opposite - towns were open unless they took action to prohibit sales. I can see the reasoning (Let's have it available everywhere) but being consistent with the existing widespread recreational drug would've smoothed the inevitable rulemaking.

Would love to see a lot of that tropical moisture soak the garden next week, but I'm guessing that the best stays south like most everything else this year.

That and a poorly written and sometimes contradictory referendum bill in the first place. No one came out of that process smelling like a rose.

We got hooked on "Alone" a couple years ago when they made it more challenging by staging in northern Canada rather than at temperate locations.

April here averages 5.1" which is 0.2" more than November, but 3 Aprils have had only traces while all 23 Novembers have recorded some measurable snow. After never having more than 2 of the 15-year periods with more snow here than there, April did that 5 times, led by 37.2" in 2007. The Farmington co-op recorded 36.1"; their closest to that in 129 Aprils is 24.0" - the 50% gap is impressive even for a high-variability month. We squeaked past you in 2008 with 2.0" but the April Fool's storm in 2011 didn't do much out year way while dumping 15.1" here. We had 7.7" in 2019 and the 8.5" storm in April 2020 cut our power for 30 hours and (along with multiple shorter outages Oct-March) pushed us to buy an on-demand generator.

Wind field must have spread out as Bob traveled northward, as our inland location 9 mi. south of AUG had gusts probably near 60 judged by tree and powerline damage. Kept the RA though, 6.42" at my place, greatest calendar-day dump I've measured. Also the only TC in which the backside NW-lies were as powerful as the earlier SE winds - had trees toppled in opposite directions on the same acre - though 95% of RA came before the switch.

When my wife and daughter were at the Grand Canyon several decades ago, they met a fellow from Flagstaff who said he stopped going to Phoenix during the summer. Last time he'd made the summer visit, he had an Instamatic camera on the dash as he did some shopping, and when he returned the camera case was dripping onto the floor. This morning's GFS384 showed 0.8" precip on June 29-30, which would raise June's total from 0.7" to 1.5", thus keeping my 1.22" as June's lowest here. Out at clown range of course, but if it were to verify it would make 5 months in the past 13 to avert a record dryness because of a late month event, usually last day or 2 days. Statistical fluke but still strange.

2-day total 0.13". 15-day total 0.19". Next chance Saturday?

That final clump of precip early last evening looked like it might drop a tenth or 2 here but it died on the vine. 13 hours of occasional mist and sprinkles added 0.01" to the 0.12" I measured at 7 AM yesterday. June hasn't quite reached the 0.2" mark here. Edit: March is another month with 2 years having more here than there, though both were BN here. March '16 had a modest 6.0" and March '20 had 15.5" thanks to the snow season's biggest event (10.3") on 23-24. This past March made up for those, squeezing out 0.1" that was really 0.005".

That Dec. 17 event was outside of my totally arbitrary "Grinching" period - 20th-28th. And we were well north of the good stuff (story of winter 20-21) and got 1.9".

Looks better for you than me. Should get something here over the next 2 hours but the heavy duty stuff looks to stay south. Sun just broke thru the clouds 30 minutes ago and temps are still in the 60s. And the fat lady has sung when this current patch of echoes has gone by.

Hit the jackpot. 25 years ago about this time of year we were walking thru a few yards of sweet fern in Lowell, Maine (near WMNF) and when back in open field I had to brush off 20+ dog ticks from the bottom 10" of my right pant leg.

Maybe quenched your usually active sense of humor on this one? Seems more serious than warranted, even though the numbers here show a significant warmth, liquid precip and lack of snowfall for the few days running up to and immediately after the 25th. Probably a statistical fluke and if I had 100 years POR here rather than just 23 the anomaly would disappear. However, I like exploring wx anomalies (don't we all, here?) so I mention this one fairly frequently.

Wait until late month. Four times in the past 12 months we've averted setting low-precip records with late-month events, including one that came within one day of eclipsing the driest month in our 23+ years here. Period Precip Record Final 6/1-28/20 0.69 1.22 4.19 9/1-29/20 0.15 0.84 1.29 (April 1999 had 0.31", our driest month.) 3/1-27/21 0.55 0.94 1.53 5/1-29/21 0.77 1.15 1.73 6/1-14/21 0.06 (Another 0.12" so far on 6/15) Looking forward to an inch or so in the 28-30 period. (And maybe not much between now and then?)

"Settled" and "unsettled" have unfortunately been weaponized by certain factions. I'm no climatologist (the UMaine forestry curricula included very little on the subject when I was there in the early 70s ) but can understand the science enough to see that increasing GHGs result in warming temps, unevenly due to non-anthropogenic factors (thank you, Pinatubo) but trending upward. Predicting just how much the climate will warm given various GHG scenarios and timeframes is a range rather than a point (like essentially all models, even on rather slow-moving entities like trees) and that "unsettled" factor is grabbed by some who ignore the settled part of the science. Reminds me a bit like forecasting precipitation - mets are usually quite skillful at telling me when it will rain (a week ago this Mon-Tues was ID'ed, accurately) but less precise in predicting who will get how much, and the forecasts include such uncertainties. Some wise person coined the phrase, "Never let the perfect become the enemy of the good." AGW science isn't perfect but it's definitely good.

It's a dry heat (like my oven.)

Works well in Maine as well, until one reaches 70. I don't think they'd let one take the eyesight exam online.

We had half of a men's quartet from New Brunswick Bible Institute stay with us that Saturday night after a seasonably cold day - 16/-1. In the Sunday pre-dawn the temp dived, into the minus teens by the time we crammed their dry-cleaner bagged suit jackets under our tiny Chevette's hatchback. When we got to the St. John Bible Church after a 10-mile drive, they watched those thin plastic bags shatter (40 mph gusts helped the cold) as the suits were taken from the car. They and their accompanying teacher held a well-attended afternoon meeting at UMFK and I distinctly recall the time/temp sign on the bank switching from 3:45 to -24 as the wind howled. Down to -29 at my 9 PM obs and next morning was the gusty -34 and even with the heater-hose engine warmer running all night the company Chevy Luv (Isuzu) pickup barely started. It was snowing very lightly as well, visibility a mile or so with 0.1" of tiny snow things falling. Not much accum but with the day's temps at -14/-34 any at all was remarkable. (I'd guess the 'Loaf had similar temps but up the mountain the winds would be twice the velocity. And January 1983 was nearly 13° less cold than the year before, never got below -19 and had little wind. Missed a much nicer winter, temp-wise, though some thaws would've messed with the snow conditions.

That was my worst winter for snow with 48.2" but it included the rare February when I had more snow (17.7") than J.Spin. Also had a bit more, 33.1" in Feb 2013, despite getting a modest 11.3" from the 8-9 storm while nearby AUG and LEW had more than 2 feet. AUG had light-moderate snow all day on the 8th, with 6" on the pavement at our Eastside office. Got home and found less than an inch, and so it went. Only storm in which PWM had 20"+ more than I did since I moved south from Ft. Kent. (They had their 2nd biggest snowfall - 1st at the time - on Jan 17-18, 1979 with 27.1". I had 0.5" on the 18th after recording -8/-47 on the 17th. Jan '79 was a truly weird month in FK, recording 3 of my 5 coldest mornings there with -47, -42 and -39. It also had 5 mornings with minima 33-35; those are the only above-32 minima I've recorded in my 49 Maine Januarys. Despite 6 mornings -29 to -47, the month finished 5.4° AN.)