tamarack

We had 13.0" of dry 10:1 snow on 26-27, the only 10"+ event I've seen in November. (13 months after our late October 1985 move south from Fort Kent, they had a 21" dump. Missed again.) In 27 Octobers, we've had 6 with measurable snow, 10 with a trace and now 11 with no frozen (assuming none will fall today while it's sunny and near 70). And mid November of ‘18 was so long ago too(very nice SWFE). It happens randomly every so often. 2018 was our snowiest November with 23.5", with 5 separate snow events. However, the most memorable event that month was the Arctic blast on T-Day. Temp was 11/-3 with gusts into the 40s. And that max was set at my 9 PM obs time the evening before; only got up to 9 in the afternoon. The high of 17 at PWM is 5° colder than any other November day, POR from 1920.

PWM temp shot up to 43 on the 24th while my pace topped out at 27. (Daily minimums almost certainly at the end of the obs periods.) Data: PWM MBY 11/22 49 36 2.39 0 39 30 1.99 0.2 11/23 36 22 0.04 1.0 31 18 0.01 0.2 11/24 43 19 0.40 1.0 27 14 0.39 3.7 Maybe whatever caused the temp jump also was a factor in the spinners?

0.23" overnight, still a bit of mist. That downpour brings 2nd half of OCT to 0.24". Unless the clouds thin out some, we'll barely get over 50°.

Here it was 2005, a modest 3.7" but our daughter/SIL were visiting and their (then) home at GSP didn't offer much for snow. We had moderate SN without a breath of wind for most of the daylight hours. (Only later did we learn about the EF-1 and EF-0 tornados in the midcoast. First cold-air tors I'd ever heard of.)

We hit 11° on 10/31/2020 and 12° on the same dater in 2002. In the far north we had 7° on 10/30/1978, the year with 32 on 7/31 and 28 on 8/28. Lots of dry air that year - total precip was only 26.65". Both 1976 and 1983 had more than twice as much and the average was 40.28". Got down to 17 here but clouds arrived about 5 AM, otherwise we'd have been 14-15. Gray skies with light echoes overhead but nothing reaching the ground. Anything falling would be frozen.

Pretty weak Arctic airmass, but good radiating sites will be more like -8 to -10, then +15 on Thursday before dropping to near seasonal by the weekend.

90% of 'wildfires' (the accepted term in firefighter land) are started by human agency. That probably rises to near 100% in New England during October. Cloudless and a light breeze. At 2 PM SFM had a 14% RH. (47/-1)

On that day, 4/10/10, Portland's temp rose from 59 to 84 in 15 minutes, triggered when the warm SW wind overcame a light easterly breeze. I had a front row seat for the shift as I was in the waiting room at Mercy Hospital (wife had knee replacement) right on the Fore River.

No flakes (or raindrops) here as the echoes slid to our south. Good decoupling, however, for a low of 18, coldest of the season by 6°. Saw 14 at BML.

And we were about 130 miles east of Quebec City.

When we lived in Fort Kent, sunsets in December would be 3:45 at the minimum. On the rare Decembers with bare ground, headlights would come on by 2:30.

Folks in the eastern part of a time zone often prefer DST. Those in the west part don't like the idea of 8 AM (or later) sunrises in the dead of winter.

In the very dry October 1963, the NJ governor closed the woods completely, even for anglers fishing from boats. I suppose some angler driving to a favorite lake might toss a butt out the window. Late Oct, 80°, near calm - I just knew that the fish would be super hungry on the nearby NNJ lake. In his defense, there was a stubborn (only winter rain/snow killed it) 3,000-acre wildfire that month about 3 miles north of the HS. From some classrooms we could track the hot spots by watching where the smoke was heavy.

Low 20s progged here for both Monday and Tuesday mornings.

Not much elevation when we lived in town at Fort Kent, just some hills 6-700 feet above the flood plain, and in 1979 we had a range of 140°, with -47 on Jan 17 and 93 in both June and July. Just like at Mt. Tolland, our diurnal ranges dropped significantly after we moved to the back settlement 450' higher than in town.

A frozen dead garden isn't fake. Gorgeous out there, just saw a tiny cloud, only one so far today. Mid 50s off the frosty 28.

Maybe. October is our wettest month and is fairly consistent, with only 3 of 26 years having less than 3.46". Those years' precip and the following winter snow: 2001: 1.12" 72.7" 2004: 2.30" 94.3" 2013: 1.23" 101.3" Average snow is 89.4", almost identical for the 26-winter average of 89.0". Also, our wettest October (and wettest month), 14.09" was followed by 52.8" in my only winter w/o a 6" event since 1967-68 in NNJ. It’s the driest period of we lives Too young to have experienced 1963-66.

Snow data is missing for Jan-April 2002. Looking at temp/precip, I doubt BDL reached 20".

Mid-October is oak-spotting time here. Other deciduous trees are bare, and I sometimes spot smaller oaks whose existence had been hidden (including one less than 100 feet from where I sit). One can spot oaks even while driving, impossible when all is green. Pin oak, not native here but often planted in towns, usually offers a deep scarlet. White oak will sometimes have a purplish hue. Best of the rest is reddish-brown, like the 20-foot-tall N. red sapling outside of my window. A lot of Maine sites reported 0.01-0.04". Not a drop here in Franklin County.

We had 55 last December 18, but any awakened bugs quickly drowned or got blown to Canada. 50/50 day, with fog/cloud thru noon then a quick switch to sunny and mid 60s.

Dream on - west Pac has been well BN for ACE. (So far. Atlantic basin was significantly BN until this month.)

The trend looks to be valid but the numbers are a bit hyped. So far in 2024 I've recorded 13 days with means at least +15 and 55 days at least -3. However, the increased minima are a major driver of warming. Last month's average diurnal range was 0.3° AN, breaking a run of 15 months with ranges BN, sometimes far BN.

Long term averages in the NW part are +/-40". Cape May less than half that much, though it had the state's greatest snowfall, 34" in the arctic blast of February 1898. (Tallahassee recorded 2" and -2 at that time, for more state records.) Mount Arlington in NW Jersey initially reported 35.1" in the early February storm in 2022 but quality checking knocked it back into the high 20s. A couple of NNJ sites recorded more snow in Feb 2022 than my Maine foothills had for all of 21-22. The sizable ski area in Vernon depends mainly on the snow guns, no change from when I learned to ski there in the early 1970s.

I'd add Titcomb Hill in Farmington, owned by the town and run mainly by volunteers - only 300' vertical but the T-bar is only 1300' and the hill's midsection is ~35%, steep enough for a good slalom course. there are X-C trails connected as well. Mount Blue HS trains there in both disciplines and they win more than their share of trophies in the state races.

Not native to Maine, either, but there's a planted one about 45" dbh/85 feet tall in downtown Farmington. It has some frost cracks but is otherwise vigorous. It had to have been a big tree (30" dbh?) in 1994 when Farmington set their coldest on record at -39. Produces abundant seeds, too, and the nearby 20-foot-tall tulip tree is likely the progeny of the big guy. The NNJ woods near our home had mostly oaks, maples, hickory and black birch, almost no tulip trees. The terminal moraine is about 10 miles south from where I grew up, and tulip trees become more common south from where the glaciation scraped all the soil from the hilltops and pushed it southward.