tamarack

We put out suet and seed-encrusted blocks - no mess but the blue jays probably eat 90% of it, with woodpeckers, chickadees, various finches and the first red-breasted grosbeak I've ever seen sharing the rest.

Without that 0.96" deluge, we'd have had only 0.33" in the past 38 days. Even with it, 1.29" (0.06" this month) is pitiful, especially in garden establishment season.

Seen this play before. It's like the northern Greens and the Whites split the advancing RA, with some heading NE and the rest going SE, and folks easterly of the Whites waving good-bye.

Comparing notes, your monthly totals are above mine about 90% of the time, no surprise since your snowfall is nearly 80% more than here and is less synoptic dependent. --Skipping super-stochastic October, I had more than you in November 2009 with a 3.4" event in early month but trailed in all other years, by only 0.2" for 11/11. --December 2013 had 2 events 10"+ and a total of 30.9" and the 21" dump of 12/29-30/16 left me a tenth shy of 40". --For January only 2015 gave me more snow, thanks to the "absentee blizzard" on 27-28 dropping 20" while not doing much in NW NNE. January 2008 was only a tenth behind your total but other years my snow wasn't even close to yours. For the 14-year POR and 3 months thus 42 data points, you've had more snow 38 times and I've not been very close 36 of 42. Your snowfall seems a lot more consistent than mine, with the one exception of 15-16 which was terrible here but far worse in VT.

Looks like the first attempt at RA will be a whiff north of LEW. Though the garden is quite dry, the deeper rooted trees are doing just fine. The 10 trees near house and lawn that I've measured bi-weekly since the 2012 growing season are doing fine. Their diameter growth thru today is the best by mid June since 2013, significant for 2 reasons. As trees get larger they often maintain or increase volume growth but with slowing diameter increment, as that increment is on a bigger start size and the tree gets taller. Second, I've done nothing to give those trees more growing space, so they've been subject to increasing competition year by year.

That final sentence should've read, "Despite my frequent laments here, they don't all miss." In 2008 I'd already recorded just under 120" by Feb. 29. With the March 1 "Manitoba Mauler" forecast as 10-14" here and a solid 43" at the stake, I saw mid-50s pack in my future. When it pooped out at 6"/48" I was quite disappointed despite it being my snowiest winter since my Fort Kent days. Shameful.

Love it! Our Abby (2003-16) was a mudder as well, so I'd toss a stick into our spring-overflow pond by the well (and with no mud from there to home) to wash off the coating. Sometimes it took a 2nd toss into the pond.

The sun is trying to come out here, and the significant precip (half an inch?) has been moved mostly to tomorrow.

Interesting article, though I had to laugh at "remote coastal town", which conjures up toothpick-chewing retired lobstermen on weather-beaten porches. Cape Elizabeth is about 5 miles south of PWM and if not the richest per-capita community in Maine, it's certainly in the running. I'd also dispute (mildly) a couple of other statements. Though I've seen chestnut's awesome sprout power on the state lot in Topsham, "more sustainable than other hardwoods" is overly broad. Many thousands of oak-dominant forest in SNE and the MA were coppice-managed for firewood over many decades. Also, placing the north extent of chestnuts at the midcoast ignores the natural origin trees on a state lot about 25 miles north of his publisher's office in BGR. On the other hand, it's exciting that there's a two-pronged effort for restoration of the species, multiple hybrid crosses and this gene-spliced version. I hope both can be a part of bringing back this great tree to American forests.

Not quite, though our 1.79" since May 1 (0.96" came Memorial Dat weekend) has to be near dead last. However, we also had a run of 5 out of 6 winters with 100"+ from 13-14 thru 18-19, and 16-17 featured 2 storms of 21", only the 2nd time I've experienced twin 20s - the other was 60-61 in NNJ. They don't all miss.

June is our 2nd wettest month with 5.25" - Oct averages 5.70" - and we're at 0.06" through today, and forecasters appear to be backing off precip amounts for tomorrow/Tuesday.

That's my total for June - terrible timing for a dry spell. Well-rooted plants in August can tolerate a lot more dry than new seeds/seedlings just put in the ground. Average (including this year) precip YTD is 19.5", 2021 is at 13.1".

This time of year I'd prefer yesterday afternoon's sunny and near 70. A month from now a low-dew 80 fits CoC but my average max for today is only 70.

More than a little high. To increase the 30-year norms by 4° in a single 10-year advance would mean that 2011-20 was 12° warmer than 1981-90. Without diving into the numbers, that seems like 3-4 times more than reality.

Same temp and sky. Had a few drops pre-dawn, looks like that may be it until late Sunday. Today's sprinkle made it 7 of 11 days with at least a trace this month, but 0.06" in 11 days works out to about 2"/year. In Fort Kent planting my garden turned on the wind (and snow in 1980.) Here it turns off the rain - it's done that each of the past 5 years though last year and this have been the worst.

We had slushy drops in late August 1982, near 1,000' in Fort Kent's Violette Settlement. Also snow, not quite enough to whiten the lawn just a very pale green, on 6/9 80 at about 550' in town. None in July though we lost half our pumpkins to frost on 7/31/78 at that in-town location and the next door neighbor's beans were toast. (No competition with the Chic-Chocs for year-round winter, of course.)

Don't even try - that would be the path to exhaustion and frustration. When we visited DC in 1988 they had (probably still have) a bunch of conveyances called Tourmobiles - jump aboard to get to one's 1st stop, then take another one to the 2nd stop. Driver of our first ride (on day 1 of 3 visiting there) said that there was more than 2 million things to see on/near the Mall so impossible to see them all. Pick what you really want to see, and you'll have enough time to really see them. Good advice anywhere.

Female white ash (there are very few green ash in New England outside of planted specimen trees) tend to have deeper furrows in their bark than male trees. Those planted green ash around here tend to have less deeply furrowed bark than white ash of similar size, but open-grown street trees usually have bark a bit different than forest grown ones, no matter the species. In the pre-EAB forest, green ash was a larger component of the ash population in the Midwest than in New England.

Could be, though there are other bark-resident insects that the woodpeckers enjoy. You're not far north from the confirmed EAP populations in NH. That tree looks like a female, the worst kind to lose if we wish to keep ash in the forest.

At 1 PM the only Maine station reporting TD of 40+ was PWM. The 4 Aroostook sites had dews 26-30 and MLT only 24.

Like wise, but we're early-year boomers so can't compete with today's desires. Our current house ha a 960 sf footprint but might squeeze out 1500 sf if loft and part of the basement are included, and it's our biggest in 50 years (next week) of marriage. Our daughter/SIL and the 7 kids are in a house only slightly larger - has 1.5 baths and we've never had more than 1 - but they're organized, even helping to make work the 11-people-one-bathroom scenario when they visit. We had 2 trips-of-a-lifetime, in 2016 (Japan, visiting son/DIL) and 2017 (Norway, where my wife's grandparents were born) but that was enabled by her dad's passing in 2014. Other "vacations" tend toward watching the older kids while parents tend to the newest arrival, helping with fix-it projects and light construction, battling the abundant poison ivy, etc. We head home exhausted but joyful and blessed. And thoroughly middle class in my sort-of white collar job - white because it requires a 4-year degree, blue (or wool, perhaps) because it involves time in the puckerbush with the blackflies or at -20.

Given the bulk (and abundance) of Tom Clancy technothrillers, it's likely that you would not get to "Rainbow Six", well toward the end of the Jack Ryan odyssey, so I'll offer the "intent vs. happenstance" gist of the story: SPOILER ALERT!! Some deep environmentalists decide that the only way to save our planet is to eliminate nearly all the people (not including themselves, of course.) These are biomedical scientists, and they create a nano-capsuled Ebola virus that can be spread in a mist. They also develop a 100% effective vaccine against Ebola. Their plan is to insert canisters full of those nano-capsules into the cool-mist system at the Sydney Olympics, estimating that those infected there would take the virus home, with an estimated 6 million fatalities. But . . . they inform the pandemic-panicked world of the wonderful new vaccine and like heroes they promise to provide it worldwide free of charge. However, there are 2 "vaccines" and the 2nd one actually contains the encapsulated Ebola. That's what they will send around the world, with an estimated 99% die-off of humanity followed by the "heroes" owning the planet. (In an earlier novel, Clancy also [SPOILER ALERT] included a jetliner flying into a government building, years before 9/11.)

Despite an unexpectedly large budget surplus and lots of federal $$, Maine state employees were initially offered a contract with zero raise and some benefits take-backs. Latest offer includes a tiny increase. A very intensive study of comparative wages for equal tasks recently determined that Maine state employees earn about 15% less than other public and private sector employees doing the same work. It's good that I really like my job!

Some trees do grow like crazy. A few weeks after moving here in mid-May 1998, I transplanted a 2' tall fir from the dog-trolley area (he'd damaged the tree somewhat) to our front lawn. The tree is now 38' tall and 13-14" diameter at the conventional (diameter breast height) 4.5'/1.4m above ground. Would be nearly impossible (and a pitch bath) to fight my way thru branches to the bole and actually measure it. Branch span at the base nears 20'. If you know someone/some town that wants a BIG Christmas tree, give me a shout out.

And starting in 1935 during the great depression is like tracking global warming with "New Ice Age" 1970 as the starting point - only one way to go from there. GW is real and adverse income distribution is real, but as Phin noted above, there were some (fortunately for humanity) unique factors included.