tamarack

300% AN? 4 times the average? Wouldn't that be near 170" for BOS? 14-15 was super for the eastern half of SNE, but that super? (Just idle curiosity, which has gotten me in trouble before.)

I wonder what killed all the roots on that tree - too much Lesco? And also wonder how it remained upright as long as it did. 0.14" yesterday, winds gusting close to 30 but no issues beyond a few twigs in the road. Also happy to see the GFS backing off yesterday's ridiculous QPF, now under 1" for next week instead of 5". More changes inevitable.

About half of my 142" in 07-08 was "nuisance snow" but it kept building the pack. We take (unless my nuisance 2" is 12" both north and south of here.)

4 PM obs 67mph, TSTM. Fun!

Light RA in Augusta, appears to be letting up and barely made puddles. Really hope 12Z GFS is out to lunch for next week. Tuesday-Friday is our annual forest certification audit, this year in northern Maine. Two days ago that period was dry but latest GFS op has 3-6" RA pretty much statewide, highest BGR to MLT and north. It's Day 6-9 so will undoubtedly change multiple times between now and then, but if it were to verify things would not only be uncomfortable but we might have trouble with flooding on the logging roads blocking the auditor from reaching what he needs to see. (Or blocking our way out of the woods after he's seen it.)

Got 2.8" here.

:Small sample size - 2 stations, NYC and Farmington, Maine - but with PORs of 152 and 128 years: Calendar day precip, 4"+ and 3"+, percent change in frequency NYC: 1869-1969 vs. 1970-on, 4"+ up 74% 3"+ up 95% Farmington, same periods, 4"+ up 127% 3"+ up 44% Not sure if UHI affects precip, though Farmington's population of 5000 probably offers little of it.

Though Maine's new COVID cases are up from a month ago, their active cases have been running about 550 and hospitalized 10-15, ICU 1-2. With newbies averaging about 30/day, that plus actives would mean about 18 days from Diagnosis to recovery, which seems a bit long given the low numbers in hospital. Seems like Maine CDC has remained pretty conservative about declaring recoveries.

That's why a winter with 112" snow, about 125% of average, was frustrating - I had 4 of those mega-busts, events that verified at 1/8 or less of the low end of the forecast range. In addition to the SNJ bust (sad because it would've been the biggest storm ever for the snow-loving grandkids) the other 3 were: --November 2: forecast 4-8 (had been 8-12 the day before) verified at 0.5". Meanwhile the midcoast north of PWM got 8-14" and places downeast about 20. --December 9-11: forecast 10-16, verified at 1.2" plus 2.5" of 33-34F RA. Meanwhile western Maine mts above 1500' got a 15-25" paste bomb. --V-Day massacre: Forecast had been 18-24 when blizz warnings were first posted but dropped to 12-18 just before first flakes. Verified at 1.5" while BOS got 16 and Machias 25. (That eastern Maine town at 20' elevation had pack climb to 74" that winter, more than 2 feet higher than any winter at my pack-holding site. Best I could do in 14-15 was 31", barely above my average.)

We're in the woods of northern Maine all next week. Isaias came up to threaten our annual peer review field trip, so why not have Delta mess up our green certification audit? 12 hours ago, PhineasC said: I've had plenty of all stainless stuff rust out over the years though. There are different grades of stainless steel. "Stainless steel" is a marketing term. The military's "CRS" (corrosion-resistant steel) is more honest.

That was the only double-digit snowfall I personally witnessed that good-but-frustrating winter, and my only November storm of 10"+, anywhere. We did get 20" on Jan 27-28 but my only "witness" was behind the snowblower 12+ hours after final flakes. During the storm we were in SNJ, anticipating the forecast 12-16 there, which verified at 1.5", all of which was gone less than 4 hours after snow stopped.

Quaking aspen is usually the last to change, among trees that actually become colorful. There was enough around Fort Kent, often in abandoned farmland, to give us a 2nd look - yellow/orange/red in late Sept and all yellow about 10 days later.

Maybe "suspect" would be a better word. Or why we opened the wallet for an on-demand gennie last April, after several significant (up to 31 hr) and minor outages beginning last Oct. Ran for 10 hours last Wednesday - I can recall winder days in the "oughts" that did not affect power, or at most a blink or two.

That was the light-pillar storm at our place in Gardiner - vertical beams above the streetlights. We were getting rimey SN+ at 5° while 30 miles east RKD had 40s and SE gales. Then temps rose to 30 then dropped quickly to the minus teens. On I-95 south of BGR it had briefly risen above freezing and the snow plus cold froze lumps of stuff so solidly that one dared not exceed 10-15 mph, or risk having one's fillings shaken out. Even a grader was having trouble getting it off the pavement. That 12/12/2008 map is reminiscent of the "layering" during the Jan. 1998 ice storm: NYC area - 50s/60s and some RA. SNE - 40s and more RA. Southern Maine - 30-35 with cold rain and/or light/moderate ice. Central Maine (IZG-AUG and on downeast between Rts 1 and 9) - disastah, 27-31 with 2"+ ZR. Western Mts/foothills - mid-upper 20s and mostly IP, with some moderate ice. Aroostook - singles to teens, 18-27" of 8:1 cornmeal over a 5-day period of near constant precip.

To this forester, "BS" is unfortunately dismissive, and I think that the literature review posted by Don S. on 9/24 support that opinion. We need to be doing much much more in energy sources/use and lifestyles to mitigate the increasing effects of climate change, but that's a long-term project. Improved land/forest/vegetation management can reduce the hazards in the short term, especially in the wildland-urban interface. It's not either/or, though cc-mitigation must be a global process while improving land management is more local. (And when I use the phrase "long-term project" it's in the sense of growing trees, as exemplified by this proverb (either Chinese or Japanese, can't recall), "The best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago; second best is today." Same goes for cc-mitigation.)

I'd put that next to 3/1888 in the Hudson Valley, with April 1982 not far behind. 2/78 is right up there as well. (Not quite old enough to have seen 1888 but I'm 1-of-3 for the others - 2" in Ft. Kent from 2/78 and 4.5" from the Octobomb, while 4/82 blasted Aroostook.)

About 30 years ago when we lived in Gardiner, we were headed to my dad's place in Woodsville, NH on the Saturday of the holiday weekend and as usual we rode the Kanc westbound and would drive HIE-Gorham-Bethel coming home. Many vehicles but no issues until we were about 1/2 mile west of the hairpin. From there it was 2 hours (4-6 PM) to get the 7 miles into Lincoln. The first hour we played leapfrog with 3 college-age ladies who were on foot, then "sped" past them at 5 mph. We had no set time to get to dad's, it was in the 70s and colors were late that year and still beautiful, so we put the 5-speed Cavalier in neutral, opened the windows and coasted. Never saw any particular cause for the jam, but maybe the Loon leafpeeper lift had closed and traffic out of that place overloaded the highway. No such issues thru Kinsman's Notch, which was just as pretty.

Maine's record pike was 31+ lb and 47", came thru the ice on North Pond in February thus fat with eggs. Back along I took a 30"/8 lb pike from Great Pond in March and the day before that Great Pond fattie a retired fisheries biologist caught a 33"/11 lb fish a few yards from where mine had come out. Years earlier I'd caught one 33" and 8 lb at North Pond in May - post spawn. 3 lb of eggs in that 11 pounder? No wonder pike populations can skyrocket.

Water year here finished at 45.88" which is 3.11" BN, all due to AUG/SEP which combined for 3.08" compared to the average of 7.52".

Unfortunately, not much if any of that has trickled back to forest landowners and loggers. Markets are tight and prices modest and not moving much.

Took about 9 hours to get 0.20" yesterday. Had it been the first RA in weeks the moisture would not have penetrated an inch, but with 1.14" on 9/30 moistening things, even 2/10" is helpful. Surprisingly cool (30°) this morning. Fortunately it was just wet in the garden (some shelter from the woods to its east) and the peppers are now safely inside w/o frost damage.

If "going to renewables" means total elimination of fossil fuel use by 2035, IMO that would be a bridge too far - 70-80% seems more doable for this non-expert. The transportation nut will be a hard one to crack. I see moving to renewables for electricity generation as doable but creating the necessary technology and distribution system seems a bigger hurdle. For one thing, we'd want/need batteries in vehicles that charge a lot faster than today - it's moving in the right direction and I'm confident there's lots of research but wonder how far (and soon) it can go. We might need a nationwide effort in the same general manner as creating the interstate highway system.

March 1960 was 18" cold powder, and 8" was on the ground as we climbed aboard the buses for the midday release. That Dec we watched the Giants and "Washington Football Team" trying to play with 8-10" on the ground/tarps. (Field had 6 full width by 20 yard tarps, crew spent 45 minutes almost getting one moved off and the coaches said forget it.) It was well after dark when the real stuff reached NNJ but slogging thru it next day - opener of NJ firearms deer season - was an adventure. My friend and I slogged, my dad found a nice oak to lean against and dropped a little buck in its tracks, waited for us to return and handed me the knife. Eight years later when I finally shot a deer, no one in sight, I was glad for the lesson. The Jan/Feb storms were separated by more than two weeks of temps well below freezing - 16 consecutive days for NYC, longest such run on record - and depths around our place probably reached 45" as places within 15 miles recorded pack of 50"+, tallest in NJ records by nearly a foot. By late Feb it was all gone. 12/24/66 I was heading home from hunting (squirrels/partridge) in SN+ when I heard a loud noise - sonic boom? Couldn't be thunder, could it? In a snowstorm? Next boom made it clear, my 1st thundersnow and I've experienced only 2 since.

It seems to be. The US Senate is a tight race as well, so money is pouring into Maine to pollute the airwaves. As of a couple days ago, $98 million had had been thrown at that race with the Ds tossing a bit more than half. I've heard that it's the most costly non-presidential contest in the country. After about 100 of the Collins/Gideon ads, one for Jean Shaheen sneaks thru. Getting back to wx, September stats. The month started warm, had a very cool middle (1st time here I've had 4 straight mornings in the 20s) and finished with dewey warmth - 27-29 averaged +15 and wiped out the last of the BN margin. Avg. High: 69.0 - 0.95 AN, warmest was 79 on the 10th Avg. Low: 45.0 - 0.39 BN, coldest was 25 on 20,21. The 64 on 9/28 was warmest by far for so late in the season. Month avg: 57.0 - 0.27 AN, 2nd consecutive month within <0.5F of average, both AN. Precip: 1.29" - 2.26" BN and 2nd consec month >2" BN. Aug/Sep total 3.08", avg. 7.52". Had 1.14" on the 30th, preventing this month from being the driest I've recorded since October 1963 in NNJ. 10th of 23 Septembers with no thunder.

Finished with 1.14". 12 miles west Temple reported 1.76". All that water gushing into the Sandy brought its flow from 41 cfs all the way to 70. Lots of dry dirt to saturate before much gets into 4th order watercourses. At least the river is no longer setting low flow records.