tamarack

In my experience, with our kids and the grandkids, 2-3-year-olds want to help, enthusiastically, just to be part of the action. Their "help" tends to slow things down though assigning age-appropriate tasks can get around that somewhat. Telling them to go play with their toys instead of letting them be involved is squandering a golden opportunity IMO. Kids that get to help at age 3 are a lot more likely to be willing to help at age 13. My company is hiring electrician apprentices right out of high school at $15-17/hr. 2 years later when you reach the state mandated hours and get your license you will start out around $30-35/hr. Electricians with 10+ years experience are making $50-60+/hr with endless overtime available. This reminds me of the joke I heard years ago about a doctor getting some plumbing work done. When he saw the bill he exclaimed, "That's more than I charge!" "I know. I used to be a doctor." And seeing those electrician rates reminds me, again, that anyone choosing a forester career for the money is a fool. With a BS and 45 years experience, most as chief forester for a half-million-acre-plus landbase, I haven't reached the starting-license electrician pay yet. OTOH the benefits are good, I love my work and we're never in doubt about having food on the table. We are blessed.

Thu 3 PM event total was 1.45", with maybe another few hundredths after. April is now a tenth or 2 AN.

Works fine for specimen trees, not feasible in the woods. I'm hoping that there's sufficient ash that can tolerate the beetle to keep the genus as a significant part of the forest, but I'm not optimistic.

Oaks?

Measured 0.89" from 6:30 last evening to 7 this morning, probably about 2/10" since. Radar suggests the good stuff will have passed by before noon. MIght be the biggest precip event since the 12/25 Grinch; needs to reach 1.3" to top 2/2.

That 1996 bug season was memorable in a bad way. We'd had a bad one in 1984 when we were in Ft. Kent, such that even in a 25-30 mph wind enough blackflies would latch on as they blew by to so serious damage. 1996 trumped that, in the north. 1st Saturday in June we were scoping a snomo trail around the state's Bald Mountain land in Rangeley and in 4 hours I sw maybe 10 blackflies, so the next day I noted that to our pastor and figured our Mon-Fri men's retreat up north would be fine. We got to Portage Lake and even on the tar we were getting pounded. At Deboullie it was far worse; even out on the pond 500' from shore the blackflies were horrid - maybe not enough airspace over land. It was hot - CAR touched 91 that Tuesday - and usually blackflies go hide when it's much over 80. Not this time. Only safe place (other than the sun-oven tent) was the spruce-over-boulders on the NW side of Deboullie Pond, a spot that would hold ice in the crevasses into midsummer. Temp down near the ice was about 40 and the flying little monsters stayed away.

One wrecks the lungs while the other adds protein to the diet.

That's the one. 7/3/2002 set a new, though modest, hottest temp at my transpirationally cooled yard, hitting 93° and the 4th had 91. That 93 was tied on 9/9 that year but the 79.5° daily mean on 7/3 still reigns supreme. That August CON had a 9-day heat wave, with the first 6 of those running 95 to 99. Seven of my 15 days 90+ came in 2002 and that year holds the hottest temp for July, August and September.

My bad - I was thinking April not May, and 2002 was the correct year for mid-May snow - 18th in SNE, 13th around here. I think IZG hit 90 early that month then got 2" SN a week or so later. Edit: 0.09" from the first wave, trying to keep the house from washing away.

Mosquitos sip delicately thru a straw, blackflies scratch a hole and lap up the blood, while deerflies carve off a steak and fly away to chew it - at least it feels that way. I accidentally found that if one stands perfectly still the deerflies lose interest - works for me anyway though it's obviously not a long-term solution. That phenomenon reminds me of T-Rex in "Jurassic Park". Adjusted for scale, it feels like both species have similar dental equipment. Nearest I've ever come to having non-stinging insects chase me out of the woods was while cruising timber in northwest Maine on a hot July day. (Deerflies love the heat.) There's a similar-sized non-biting fly that I call sweat-lickers, but when there's 200 of them and 50 deerflies circling one's head, it's impossible to know who's carrying knives. And when I squash a deerfly on my head, all its friends come to the funeral hungry.

DEET works for me in moderate to heavy levels of blackflies and it's near perfect for mosquitos. In super heavy swarms of blackflies (June 1996 at Deboullie in NW Maine) Ben's 100 lasted only 60-70 minutes, but in that year and place the flies were so thick that folks wearing bug netting had issues seeing thru all the bugs perched 2" from their noses. Different folks have different body chemistry - years ago on a forestry trip a fellow student found Cutters to work well on mosquitos. On me it acted like A-1 sauce. (As does DEET for deerflies. Only thing that works for them if you're outside is remaining underwater, though a friend once said flaming kerosene might work.)

My understanding is that the ubiquitous blue and while cotton mask doesn't stop many germs but dramatically cuts down on their exit velocity, thus allowing diffusion close to the mask-wearer rather than germs sprayed directly into the face of some poor shmuck standing 3-6 feet away. If so, the mask is irrelevant when one is outside and away from others but could have some use outside in close quarters with others. (Of course, my understanding may be flat out wrong. )

On April 16-18 BDL had highs of 90/95/92. 26 years earlier April 17-19 had 92/95/96. I think those are the only April heat waves there.

A few were out today but just checking the menu, probably because I earlier posted "no 70+ since 4/10" and 5 hours later it hit 71. 1st blackfly appearance 7-10 days earlier than the average.

Agree. The 6-month persistence being quoted has been prefaced by "at least", as that's the time limit for a large enough sample size to draw any conclusions.

Had 76 that day, no 70+ since and none forecast for a while. Blue skies and low 60s here w/o much wind (for once).

Pouty faces are hard to discern but with most people, their hidden behind the mask smiles are signaled by their eyes. Far short of a mask-free smile but still a pleasant sight.

Spectacular at the right tide and surf conditions. However, when we took the 2 oldest granddaughters to Acadia in summer 2019, Thunder Hole was so placid that a 5-year-old on a kickboard would've been safe. Calmer than I thought possible. The opposite was when we lived in BGR (early 70s) on a March excursion right after a strong coastal rainstorm. In those days the park loop road remained available (though unplowed) during the park's off-season, and free. That day waves were routinely and noisily redirected 70-80 feet upward, and when I looked away eastward I heard an extra-loud WHOMP and turned to see spray 150'+ high and just starting to descend. Looked almost like a WW2 newsreel of destroyers dropping depth charges.

However, when we were there in late June on our honeymoon many moons ago, we bought a couple cooked bugs and rode our Flintstone car up Cadillac for a lobster lunch in the sun. Lobsters were great but visibility was 100 yards in fog. Also, we had neglected to bring napkins and the park hadn't turned on the water yet. Anyone who has picked apart a whole lobster can imagine the result.

Right. At the state parks in S. Maine - Reid, Popham, Crescent Beach - 7/4 might be 75 and clear while it's a sticky 88 and hazy 20 miles to the west. Of course there's the occasional summertime stratiform mess but that's miserable for all. Despite a late opening and travel restrictions due to COVID last year, Maine parks crushed the previous record for attendance, including the ones on those beachfront ones.

The 7-day average max on that forecast is 69.7. My average here for those days is 59.1 and I'd guess BDL's is 65+, so nicely AN but nothing out of the ordinary.

1-15 here averaged 44° and +7. Since then it's run 42° and -1.

About 20 years back a couple of coworkers were out on Rangeley Lake in early May and had to keep clearing the snow off the fishfinder screen. Don't think they caught anything that day except maybe a cold.

Nope - campaign manager. I was the Veep candidate.

Last time I looked, New England has exactly one Republican member of Congress and she's often called the most bipartisan member of the Senate. However, Maine's highly rural 2nd district went for Trump last year (and 2016) while the state as a whole went the other way, and by a greater margin in 2020 than 4 years earlier. It's a long way from 1936 when only Maine and Vermont voted for Alf Landon.