tamarack

That would be good. I think central Maine north of the 12/17 death band did worse compared to average than anywhere else in the Northeast. Guess it was our turn.

Thanks. Moderates had generally been good for Maine except for 1999-00, and 20-21 is now a 2nd stinker. Strong la ninas have generally been poor for here.

Was this winter a moderate la nina or strong? (I haven't kept track.)

Wife's Moderna #1 caused significant soreness after yesterday's shot, much better this morning.

Flood watch for most of CAR's forecast area. GYX is watching. Took a closer look at the near-road trees. 2 large fir (14" dia/70-75' tall) down or on the way - hung on another tree - plus a smaller fir also hung. The pine fork that broke was 55' long and been about 60' up the tree, total tree height 115'. Fairly good 1st-year conelet crop so maybe the other fork (assuming a SE wind doesn't take it down) and the other similar-size pines may have a nice cone crop this year. When things get less squishy I'll look at some big-fir areas away from the road to see what else is horizontal.

Oak Ridge Reservoir, about 10 miles west of where I grew up and 160' higher. Also had obs at 7 AM. 3/13/1956 9999 9999 0.06 0.5 1 3/14/1956 9999 9999 0.36 0.5 1 3/15/1956 9999 9999 0.5 0 0 3/16/1956 9999 9999 0 0 0 3/17/1956 9999 9999 1 7 7 3/18/1956 9999 9999 0 0 5 3/19/1956 9999 9999 1.35 16 21 3/20/1956 9999 9999 0.49 5 26 3/21/1956 9999 9999 0 0 20 3/22/1956 9999 9999 0 0 16 3/23/1956 9999 9999 0 0 9 3/24/1956 9999 9999 0.03 0.3 9 3/25/1956 9999 9999 0.2 2 10 3/26/1956 9999 9999 0 0 8 3/27/1956 9999 9999 0 0 7 3/28/1956 9999 9999 0 0 6 3/29/1956 9999 9999 0 0 6 3/30/1956 9999 9999 0.35 1 7 3/31/1956 9999 9999 0 0 0 4/1/1956 9999 9999 0 0 0 4/2/1956 9999 9999 0 0 0 4/3/1956 9999 9999 0.05 0 0 4/4/1956 9999 9999 0 0 0 4/5/1956 9999 9999 0 0 0 4/6/1956 9999 9999 0 0 0 4/7/1956 9999 9999 0.5 0 0 4/8/1956 9999 9999 1.6 12 12 6.49 44.3 I have no memory of the 3/17 storm but my dad measured 23.5" of new snow about 7:30 AM on the 19th with accum continuing. I call it a 24" storm. Morris Plains, 20 miles south and 300' lower, reported 23". The "sticky snow" on 4/8 brought another 12" and broke or bent some trees that had survived the Jan 1953 ice storm.

Likely that way in population centers. The barbershop where I go (most recently last Friday) seems pretty laid back. It's appointment-only and the price has bumped up a bit to cover masks, cleaning supplies and stuff (and will undoubtedly not go back down) but beyond that it's business as usual in the big town of Farmington. (Biggest in Franklin County anyway - entire county pop is a bit under 30k spread over 1700+ square miles.)

We had 11" of mid-20s powder on 3/29 and 3" paste 2 days later. My (future - married June '71) wife was at a sunrise service at the Wanaque Reservoir dam in NNJ and recalls a cold gray windy time - snow started later that morning. I was just learning to ski and after a couple noisy scraping days at Great Gorge (staff had to shovel snow onto the lift exit so we could access the snowmaking trails), skiing on quiet powder on 3/30 was exquisite.

At our (then) Gardiner home the high was 55. We matched that in New Sharon on July 8, 2009, our chilliest max for the month of July. Stratiform RA both days. I hadn’t looked in a couple days, but that Friday cold shot moderated quite a bit. The extended isn’t looking quite as bad either. It’s like all of the cold went poof. Cold and snow forecasts have been going poof for the past 6 weeks, and not just the extended - we've had far more days warmer than the day-before forecast than cooler.

My site had one 80+ in both April and May of 2009 but didn't get there again until July 29 and it was August 14 before another one. That was our coolest JJA of 23 despite a slightly AN August. The 8 weeks June 9 thru August 3 included only 7 days w/o rain and totaled 17.54". Extending that rate to a full year would mean 114". The JJA total was 23.82", which was 10.63" AN and 4.72" more than #2. We got a few ripe cherry tomatoes that summer but no main crop fruit, as fungus slowly killed the vines from bottom to top.

That's a cool list, also surprising considering the rivers in NW Maine - guess none other than the Allagash were nominated for such designations. Also surprised that someplace in the Jersey pine barrens wasn't the darkest sky region.

Just read (dailybulldog.com) that a woman driving a secondary road in Farmington yesterday was killed when a large limb/fork from a white pine landed on the roof of her car. Pics show that what came down was about 12-14" diameter and 40-50 feet long. A similar limb/fork broke out of one of our 100-foot-tall pines but was well off the road. Also saw a large fir (bigger than the lightning-struck one) uprooted and several others tipped or broken, and that's just what I can see from the road. Likely there was more damage farther in.

So now the 0.1" line is only 20 miles to my west.

We saw how well the models at that range handled "popping a secondary" for this last event.

I don't know either. Would the drug companies be doing phase 3 testing with placebos as well? Might be superfluous - with about 10% of the US population fully vaccinated and a ~5% "failure" rate, that would mean a potential 1.6 million infections of vaccinated people. Even if it's much less so far, there should be enough to observe whether the vacc-then-COVID numbers are disproportionally of variants. Moderna #2 this Friday. #1 was a nothingburger, zero discomfort unless I intentionally pressed directly on the injection site, and even that was gone within 2 days.

Heard a tree go down on the lot across the road while I was getting the mail. I could see what looked like an upper part of a fir on the ground, but it was mostly screened by other (upright) trees, and no way was I venturing in to look with this wind thrashing things. Power has blinked several times here, messing with both my work and personal computers.

House-creaking gusts here, which means near 40 mph. Had 0.95" yesterday, streams high but well below flood. Still a tattered 2" at the stake this AM, probably down to T by tomorrow afternoon. 14 of our 22 previous winters had carried continuous snow cover into April. Unsurprisingly, this year will not be #15.

We get zero upslope here but great CAD. Unfortunately, that latter phenomenon was among the missing this winter.

Have not checked out what Maine does for solar, as our house in the woods isn't well situated for it - some shade in the morning and would only get diffused rays if anything during the PM, plus the fun of brushing snow off the roof installation that would be necessary to avoid even more shade. However, we got a nice rebate for our heat pump and a tax credit from the IRS. Together they covered about 40% of the purchase/installation of the unit. We used it very sparingly this winter but look forward to cooler and less humid air this summer, the main reason for buying it.

The grade here had improved to C- right after the 9.5" on 2/2 but it's been all downhill from there. Yesterday's 0.95" came at temps 37/33 w/o even a catpaw so March will finish with 0.1" and barely that - the overnight coating on 3/13 was barely above "T" level. Early this month I opined only a 10% chance of finishing lower than the 0.6" of 2010 - was tempted to give zero odds. The long shot "wins" and winter loses. Prior to last winter I'd not had 2 successive ones w/o at 12"+ event. Will be 3 in a row unless something freaky arrives next month, and odds for that are indistinguishable from zero. At least we had the blazing mild sun of 3/20-24. Outside of those days, March was about as bad as possible.

Flying Pond in Vienna and Mt. Vernon had 17-18" when I fished there on 3/20 but by the following Tuesday afternoon meltwater from tribs had lifted the ice away from the shore. I could've stepped onto the good ice that afternoon but scrubbed my Wednesday plans because I might've had to wade/swim to get ashore after another 60° day. Will likely float the canoe in early May, either at Flying for bass or "alligator hunting" for pike at North Pond in the Belgrades.

Cloudy breezy 40s here - liked Sun-Mon-Tues a bit more. "Pack" down to 4".

Wonder if it was the 9th, after the 3rd of the many big storms that Jan-Feb. (Especially as there was no 29th in Feb 2015. )

In the running for my favorite snowstorm ever. Our place in Fort Kent didn't get CAR's 26" but 17 with winds gusting near 60 sufficed to bury our black Chevette save for a single patch not much bigger than my palm. Oddly, the snow stake lost an inch, thanks to capricious drifting - 15' either side there was 5-6 feet. Most of the snow fell with temps low-mid teens, mid-January wx. Also the best positive bust I'll ever see - late on 4/6 CAR added "flurries" to their cold and windy forecast. 3-4 hours later we had S+ and those "flurries" established a new mark for biggest snowfall at the WSO. (Since broken in 12/03 and 12/05.) It's the coldest major April snowstorm on record for most NE sites, and the day after in NYC had a high of 30, tied with a day in the 1880s for coldest April max. For New England anomalous events, I'd put it just a small step behind 3/1888, 1938 and the Octobomb.

I lied about "less than 100 feet" - it was more like 165, where it destroyed a once-75-foot-tall fir. It blew a 5-foot "splinter halfway to our house and a much smaller one 110' the other way. Most of the tree is horizontal but there's a 45' spike standing, and the top - about 25 feet of it - is lodged at 45° angle in a neighboring tree. Now I'll try again to compact the pics I took so they'll fit under the max size limit.