tamarack

Seems like about half the episodes of North Woods Law from NH include a mountain rescue. In the 4-5 years of the Maine version I recall only about one per year (not including the multiple inclusions of the Gerry Largay saga.) In other news, the groomer went by the house this morning an onto the unmaintained town road beyond, making a nice smooth path - the road is easily drivable when not snow-covered. I may go down to where the trail enters our woodlot to see whether he turned there or just groomed the mile of road/trail, to where the trail heads north into the woods. Maybe the club sees more snow than I do in the near future.

How about another Feb 2009 - nothing thru the 18th except one cutter, then 2 storms worth 33" in 5 days.

He might not have reached kindergarten when the Pack beat KC. (Back when the SB tickets started at about about $10 and the stadium was half full.)

Almost at the last minute, the old fellow from Maine got his ticket so he can keep alive his string of attending every SB.

Bottom of winter to date is -5, though we may drop below that by sunrise tomorrow. All 22 winters here have reached -10 and 18 have reached -20 (plus a -17 and -19.) Lack of real cold so far is uncanny. However, in the last 6 winters the coldest came in Feb/Mar 4 times.

Never. This is the first time any SB team has played in its own home park.

GFS shows advisory snows here (36 hr of S-) after having flurry-runs for seemingly forever. Nice D-9 storm too - wonder if it all disappears at 12z.

Tampa had F-16 receivers and the Pats had Fokker D-7s. I think Michael Phelps may hold that title. He was a literal freak of nature who did it all by himself too. Brady had teammates and a legendary coach. Swimming gets far less coverage than the NFL so in terms of recognition and star power it's Brady, of course. Most dominant athlete I've seen - not just winning but totally outclassing - is Katie Ladecki. Her margins in the 400 and 800 free remind me of Secretariat at the Belmont. The Olympics don't have the 1500 but if they did Ladecki might lap the field.

Have you crushed one?

Androscoggin's a lot closer, but yes.

Yesterday was the first day this cold season that I saw any sign of blowing snow, though nothing like the pic - only Friday's 1/2" to work with here. All other snow here would've needed yesterday's MWN gusts to be moved. Two sleds went by the house yesterday afternoon, first ones in a while. Hope they bombed straight down the road; if they turned left onto the trail thru our woodlot they had 500' of rock-dodging then 1500 of teeth-chattering icy track.

Checked out the club trail on our woodlot. Looks like 2 sleds since Saturday's storm. It's pretty much ungroomable - they would bend some metal on the embedded rocks in the northerly 500' as the trail approaches the (unmaintained) gravel road. Walking off trail was miserable, with a random 2/3 of steps punching thru the crust. Dog stayed up and loved it.

We've had the 3 cold rains but the 2 biggest deluges came with temps more like late September. This season is running far worse than last, which itself was bad.

Sure, but it's a very distant horizon. Hoping the grandkids in SNJ can get some snow to play in early next week.

No snow here in October but the wx is crummy anyway.

Noisy, kind of like sleet coming thru hardwood twigs.

Most have had a partial harvest, done mainly to create glades. In dense spruce-fir it's hard to travel on foot in summer, much less on skis or snowboards in winter. The open hardwoods probably were full of 1-2" diameter saplings too. Many stands in Maine look very little like the VT glade pics.

Had studs om my '69 Nova - NNJ often has more ice than snow on roads and that's where studs make a difference. Only other vehicle we've had with studs was our '83 Cavalier. The front-wheel drive 5-speed got 32-33 mpg and aggressive-tread snows, and was easily the best 2WD critter I've ever driven. Once we had to stop on Rt 11 on Soldier Pond hill, 10 miles south of Fort Kent and 10-12% uphill, because a pickup was losing it in the 2-3" new snow. He got it together and we had no problem starting back up. 6" snow on the half mile/250' climb to home in the back settlement nor in 6" April mud that caught bigger (15" wheels to our 13s) cars and full size 2WD pickups. Unfortunately the unibody "frame" rusted out after 10 years and 147k miles while the car still offered smooth 30+ mpg - engine never missed a beat.

Vermont upslope fluff may be unmatched, but Sugarloaf has about 1000 acres of tree skiing east of the groomed trails on Burnt Mt and Brackett Basin. No grooming there but it's patrolled. About half looks like it's lift serviced, and further east it's skins or sno-cat. (MY knees rule out any skiing but the maps look interesting.)

Will surely help, but dry snow atop cold ice is as close to a frictionless surface of anything outside of a physics lab. Studs might help. Our Subarus have never been close to getting stuck in the driveway but the little Rangers/Mazda have occasionally required lots of wood ashes - small short grade but zero run-up. If I can get up the driveway I'll make it over Mile Hill. (Climbs 300' in that mile, steepest near the top, sharp turn at the bottom to discourage making a run.)

AVG DAILY SNOWFALL (Month avg/days) OCT .02 NOV .16 DEC .61 JAN .63 FEB .81 MAR .56 APR .18 MAY .01 Not that this means anything this year.

Despite snow reports from all over and echoes overhead many times, I've managed to escape any flakes since Monday morning.

Pretty much like every GFS run since last Saturday's event, though sometimes that spot of leprosy is a bit farther north.

Odd that they left the heart. A little buck fawn was killed less than 50 yards from our house in mid March 2009. When I found it, the hammies were torn up from where the coyote(s) brought it down and the only things missing were heart, lungs and liver. Two days later bones and hide were scattered over half an acre - wish I'd cracked a femur when I first saw the critter to see how badly the deer had been starving. Marrow color tells the story - cream: healthy; pink: beginning to starve; red: critically starving; red/watery: zombie.

Agreed. Two of my biggest snowfalls this season were somewhat salvaged cutters - messy but lots better than the mega-Grinch deluge. The 3rd, Jan 2, was a cutter on models up until 2-3 days prior.