tamarack

Normal? Yesterday's 1° BN broke a 21-day run of ANs, and January is still 7° AN. Storms obviously can cut despite any antecedent temps, but we'd have a better chance if the thermometer looked more like January. There's even a chance that we never get below zero this month. -4 in 2002 is the mildest monthly minimum so far. (Avg is -22 and median -23.)

We were visiting at the time so I shared their disappointment. Then found out we'd had a 20" blizzard at home, best January snowstorm of my life, had I been there. (Got home about 12 hr after final flakes, then to do all the snow removal.)

Farmington (midnight obs) 6-7: 14"/26" This is the strange number. My place (9 PM obs) 6-7: 6"/18". Had S+ at 9 so prob. 12" by midnight, 12" after. New Sharon co-op (7 AM obs): 23" on 12/7.

And the grandkids in SNJ were overjoyed at the 12-16" forecast, until it verified at 1.5" which was gone 3-4 hours after final flakes.

Surprising bit of snow in the pre-dawn, 1.0" of 40:1 fluff though I rounded LE up to 0.03" - covers the dusting that fell 7-8 AM after I cleared the board. If wxeyeNH's request of 1/3 of the Kuchera fantasy were to verify, I'm all done thru 1/24 as that map had me at about 3". 06z GFS dumps about 1.5" of low 40s RA over the weekend and the ever-retreating cold has moved completely beyond 384; all 16 days show AN minima, ranging from a few degrees to 20+ during the deluge. In other trivia, yesterday's mean temp was 1° BN, stopping the AN run at 21 days. (And leaving me wondering how long before the next BN.)

Mainly to protect native brook trout, and "many" would've been more accurate than "nearly all". Lakes in which landlocked salmon and/or togue are the more important species are often open, like the Fish River chain of lakes. Most smaller waterbodies in N. Maine are closed in winter and a lot of the larger lakes open.

Unfortunately, Aroostook is bleeding population in a serious way. Great snowmobiling (N. Maine may be as good as anywhere in the lower 48) but fewer other winter rec opps - decent X-C (or biathlon, if that's your thing), a small alpine ski area. Good fishing during the warm seasons but nearly all the lakes are closed to ice fishing. Sort of "Midwestern" type scenery with all the fields - St. John Valley is more scenic but even farther from amenities.

NO embarrassed TB12 twice this season - 3rd time too?

Pass. Jan 1996 had 2 nice storms atop a snowy Dec, though the metro-blizzard was a whiff. Then 3 torch-deluges in 11 days, Farmington loses 32" of snowpack right when climo temps are coldest. I've whined enough on that other month . . .

And 12z was worse. The weekend event is now a 1-1.5" snowpack swallower and the cold finally arrives, sort of, at 384 (after another cutter.) It never happens quite that way, even with cutters. Normal low temp at CAR in mid-January is near zero. That 12z run has them never getting below 11°.

Near zero this morning, first BN minimum since 12/20. Average max here for 1/11 is 26° and the forecast high is low 30s so it's probably 50/50 whether the mean can end the string of ANs at 21. 06z GFS was not impressive, <1/4" qpf in 16 days, Fri-Sat is RA and the arrival of deep cold pushed back to the 24th. Next run will be different, one way or another.

A friend took a nice salmon thru the ice on Parker Pond (Fayette/Mt. Vernon, 10-15 miles SSW from my place.) Probably on some cove ice near his brother's home that somehow survived the Christmas deluge. Long Pond in Belgrade is about 2/3 open. Yesterday's low of 9° is the coldest since 12/20 (my last BN day) but still 3-4° AN.

Exactly, which is why this season is even more meh so far than last year's ultra-meh . However, the 12/25 rain of 2.54" is the greatest I've measured in 23 Decembers here and the 29° AN that day is the greatest positive departure for any day, 1° more than 3/22/2012.

Need some near zero nights to put safe ice on the lakes. Don't need -20.

Dec-Feb last year was the most blah met winter I can recall, mitigated somewhat by some post-equinox storms. So far, the current one is worse. It would take an amazing 2nd half of met winter to drag it up to "C" level.

We shoveled and (more often) scooped snow until getting that Trac-26 for the 1994-95 winter, and of course only had 2 storms worthy of pulling the starter cord though it was a bit different in 95-96. The 4 years in the Fort Kent back settlement we averaged 144" with seasons of 186 and 171. The plow would clear about 2/3 of the road going uphill and since we were on that side of the road the banks on our side were twice as high as on the other. When the snow got deep the plow driver had the wing pushing back as much as possible and when a driveway was encountered snow was spread far and deep into it. Things were at their worst in the April 1982 blizzard - our black Chevette only had a hand-sized bit of color showing when the drifting had settled down. It was a little car but still . . .

My dad bought a Craftsman Trac-26 (8 hp) in the mid-late 1980s and when he passed in 1993 I had it made part of my 1/3 inheritance - brothers in N.VA and SoCal not interested. Tracks were slow but just about unstoppable and though the chute-direction was hand crank it was more solid than my current joystick control. Early in the 2008-09 winter the drivetrain wore out to the point that the friction wheel would only hit the power disc in reverse gear. Engine had never missed a beat but a snowblower that only moves backwards wasn't very helpful. A friend and I took the drivetrain apart and found the badly worn parts, after which I spent fruitless hours on the internet looking for replacements - no one had them. So I had to junk the machine, gave the engine to that friend, and bought my current snowblower (another Craftsmen but according to Consumer Reports it's built by Ariens) the first week of 2011. Not as solid as the old Trac-26 but faster-moving and gets the job done.

Nov was 2° AN here and Dec +4. Jan 1-8 is running +9 with minima at +14. At least the ground is white.

Total boredom on that run, 0.18" qpf (probably wet but it's days 9-10) in 16 days. Though it does have BN temps Jan 20 and beyond. Most recent BN day here was Dec 20.

Also at NYC and PWM plus most places in between. And that's despite a 2-3 day handicap.

11 hours produced 1.0" of 20:1 fluff. For whatever reason the snowplow came down our road to remove the massive drifts. At least he pushed the Jan 2 pile to the end of the town-blow the maintained road so I only have to clear the driveway to get mail. (In past years needed to snowplow the town road and plow piles.)

Way AN and with little temp contrast. Had 32/19 on 1/1 and those remain the month's high and low. 1/1-5 is 8.2° AN, the max +2.6 nd the min +13.7. Yesterday's inch of 20:1 fluff brought out the plow this morning. Looks like we may see the sun today for a bit, something not in view since about noon last Friday.

About 1/2" here - in 7 hours and counting. (All snow is good snow, with very few exceptions.)

Thanks for that info. I looked up a number of NNJ sites relatively close to NYC plus LGA and JFK and found 1983 totals ranging from 60.8" at LGA to 71.1" at Morris Plains. Maybe EWR was abnormally dry compared to the others , though none came within 10% of Central Park. Of course, the idea behind my post was the increase of temperature and precipitation, and how much snow there was in 2011-20 compared to the terrible 1980s.

Now that 2020 is in the books, some interesting (to me, anyway) changes in 30-year norms: Temp Precip Snow Location 81-10 91-20 81-10 91-20 81-10 91-20 NYC 55.41 55.72 50.01* 49.52 23.85 29.07 BDL 50.63 51.16 46.50 47.12 49.66 52.27 Snow data missing for nearly 5 years during 96-97 thru 01-02. BOS 51.76 52.21 43.93 43.43 44.29 49.42 PWM 46.51 47.04 47.28 48.02 62.63 68.77 CAR 39.87 40.43 38.79 40.86 112.36 120.33 Farm** 42.28 42.99 48.37 49.29 86.51 91.57 Average 47.74 48.26 45.81 46.37 63.22 68.57 * The 80.56" reported for NYC in 1983 is probably spurious and may have been tossed. EWR had 22" lower precip that year. If the EWR number is used instead of NYC, the NYC 81-10 drops to 49.28" and the 6-site average to 45.69". ** Farmington Maine co-op. (Western foothills)