tamarack

We had golden shiners up to 10" long at the NNJ lake where I fished in the 50s and 60s. My killer lures there were a large gold Rapala (silver was good, gold great) and a gold-colored hardware lure much like a phoebe but it outfished a phoebe 10 to 1. It was made by the Al's Goldfish outfit but I haven't seen one on the rack in 20 years as the lesser lure swept it off the market. I still have one, which I use only rarely - some day a big pike will engulf it so deep that the wire leader is in its gullet and the regular line in its teeth, with predictable results.

PWM hit 88 on 3/31 and 48 the next day. BD slam!

Then in July the deerflies take over. While mosquitos sip thru their straws and black flies scratch and lick one's blood, it feels like deerflies carve off a steak and fly away with it. I'll admit the greenheads at the shore are at least as bad, especially at late afternoon when the sea breeze dies and successful anglers have hands covered with fish guts. However, even at their worst I've never seen more than 10-15 greenheads around me while I've had 10 times that many deerflies lusting for my blood.

Cliff may be on the way here but it's not yet arrived. The 2 builder/carpenters (separate sole proprietors) at our church are regretfully telling prospective clients it would be well into next year before they could get to those clients' jobs.

Looked at Flying Pond yesterday afternoon, and what I saw convinced me to dump my shiners into the little tributary of Muddy Brook that runs thru our woodlot. (There was a good shiner population - otters sure thought so - in the beaver pond on the lot until the beaver left about 2010 and the dam failed 3 years later.)

CAR hit a record 73 on 3/30/1962, then their warmest March day - 2012 brought 73/75/73 on 20-22. Probably had a solid BD as 3/31 and 4/1 each recorded 3.3" SN. 3/30-31/98 there had highs of 51 and 44, with 0.8" on the 31st. On those days I was with 2 co-workers on state-managed forest a few miles outside the NE corner of Baxter Park, scoping out a later training visit. On those 2 days the 2-day temp range there was about 37/33, with occasional sprinkles and some IP on the 31nd. Some dense fog on that day as well. Had zero awareness that it was a scorcher to the south.

Too many fishers and coyotes around our place to allow cats to go outside - we've lost several in coming to that conclusion. Have not tried the permethrin-nest method here, mainly because we're in the middle of the woods and would need lots to have any effect at all. So far the grandkids haven't brought any in though dog and I have. (Ticks contrast well with a yellow Lab, especially one treated with a systemic anti-tick med, so the little horrors seem unwilling to burrow into the fur.)

Given the relative paucity of snowpack - no safer way to diminish it than the wx Sunday thru today - it would take a 2-3" warm RA to cause any flooding beyond some big puddles. And except for northern Maine, ice on streams/rivers has softened and eroded from below, so the ice jam threat seems to be minimal outside of the St. John and its tributaries.

Some tree-toppling wind in the 1st half of the month, but otherwise that's right on.

PWM recorded a 77° TD in early August 1988 - that's more than enough for me. Worst of my experience was in Sept 1965 during pre-season football practice at Hopkins. One evening at 11 Baltimore (exact site unknown) was reporting 86° with rh 85% so TD was 81. Water was running down the inside walls of the concrete room where we bunked. Practice in pads was great fun.

Or cotton batting (drier lint a good substitute) with considerable permethrin worked into it, then stuffed into tubes, like TP, or paper towel centers cut in 3rds. Placed around the lawn (perhaps under small boards to keep the rain off) in the shrubs/woods (some kind of cover) the batting is loved by small rodent tick vectors. Then the permethrin clears the critters of ticks right at home. I'm sure the recipe can be found online - I'm going by memory. One caveat: the recommendation is one "bait" every 10 feet around the area to be protected, so might be impractical for big lawns/yards. Also it would be worth checking in the weeks after placement to see if there's been rodent buy-in.

About the same minimum here, certainly a few degrees higher than yesterday's 17. Dense fog nearby (wife was up at about 4:30, noted fog here) limited cooling. Max about 63 so another 40+ range. 16th sunny day this month, tying April 2016 for most in any month

Spent several hours walking the state's Dodge Point tract - Newcastle/midcoast - looking at the recently closed-down timber harvest. No ticks noted - yet. Very little snow left there, only the deep shade and under limbs/tops of harvested trees. Too soon for the vernal pools there to wake up. The best one - deepest, most amphib species - remains ice-covered but may not be after a few more days of this.

Laughable map, but that silly 70+ is Katahdin, where it snows a bit. They'll add some white over the weekend and beyond. Nice 44° span yesterday with 61/17, but only took another inch off the pack, maybe more sublimation than melting as the small brooks show little effect. Seems to have stayed above 20 this morning and frost was thick, pointing toward less desert-like dews. So did the dense fog I drove thru going to Augusta, which took until the past 20 minutes to burn off.

Our 8-by-12 shed was probably built soon after the 1975 house, and looked old when we moved here in 1998. When I attempted to jack it up last spring, the base at one end was too rotten to jack. My goal this spring is to empty the shed (no small task) and take it down, saving all but the shingles, floor and its supports, siding and the door. I cut a cedar last spring and sawed it lengthwise, to make new base beams, will need to buy floor joists and 3 sheets of plywood but hope that the above-floor framing is all good. Should be able to do it for perhaps 1/4 the price of brand new.

SR may have the bullseye on its back, thanks to the "mask-rebel" restaurant nearby.

We've had 2 near misses with huge precip in the past 15 years, 4/07 and 2/10. At lower elevations (New Sharon, Farmington) each event produced 4-6" precip with 4-5" in 4/07 and 9-12" in 2/10 plus lots of low-mid 30s RA. Higher up (Rangeley, Long Falls Dam) measured 3-5" precip with 12-14" in 4/07 and 17-26" in 2/10. What Sugarloaf summit had from those 2 events, I don't know but I'd guess 40-60" from each. Looking back to 2/69 those same areas had 2.5 to 4.3" LE but temps were 5-8° cooler than 07/10 so all snow, from 23" in Rangeley (missed the best bands, I guess) to 56" at LFD.

We're +10 yesterday and today, might approach +15 Thursday if the overnight is mild enough. Not quite 2012, by 15°+, Farmington co-op data: 18 78/31 +25 19 71/32 +22 20 80/32 +26 21 82/35 +28 22 83/36 +29 23 64/42 +22 The co-op's previous March warmest was 79 on 3/20/1903.

One can easily distinguish gender of quaking aspen now (if one is interested in such things ) as buds on the male trees have become large while the females' buds haven't enlarged at all. Red maple buds should be swelling now, too, but most other trees await April.

Thru today (22nd) last March wasn't much better than this one, 1.2" vs our current 0.1". However, we were about to get the season's biggest snowfall, 10.3" on 23-24, and the 4.0" rimey paste on 29-30 brought the month total to 15.5". The west part of NNE didn't get much from that 23-24 event.

Might be different farther down, though my NNJ experience probably came after an open but seasonably cold winter - dad was digging a hole for a mailbox post in early May, and found solid frost about 12" below the surface.

That route also includes the "Patten rollercoaster", a series of steep hills and sharp turns in the 15 miles between that town and Knowles Corner where Rt 212 meets Rt 11. The "no services next 39 miles" sign (I think it's still there) as one heads north from Patten is sobering. So are the log trucks going 70. However, the road is a whole lot better than 30-40 years ago.

2nd best view is from the pullout from Rt 11 between Sherman and Patten - profiles the whole Baxter range from Katahdin to the Travelers. (Unfortunately, the last 5-6 times I've driven that route the view has been either been socked in or it was after dark.) Edit: The best sap run I've ever witnessed (the effects only, as I wasn't involved with sugaring) was the 4th week of March 1981, this despite the incredible February thaw that year which one might think would've messed up the sap season. Temps for that March week: 22 40/4 23 46/0 24 45/2 25 41/1 26 51/-1 27 40/16 28 47/6 Without 3/27, the other 6 days averaged 45/2 (44/4 with all 7 days) The Canadians, most of whom had tapped in NW Maine, were selling stuff cheap from that run a year later, $10 CA for a 4-liter can, then about $8 US.

Thank you for the memories, though the account didn't include the startling CF that followed the flood, dropping the BGR temp from 57 to 1. (49/-7 at CAR with gusts 50+, bar. 957 mb.) That 2nd pic is very evocative. One can see the rescuer swimming toward the woman from her left. There was also a "storybook" ending, as the couple were married the following summer.

Katahdin from the south, with no significant hills between and only much lower mountains beside, presents a monolith unique to the eastern US. It lacks the massive breadth of MWN with the other Presidentials, but it's stand-alone character is impressive.