tamarack

They're everywhere! Though I've not picked up any while awaiting (unsuccessfully) for a deer - snow cover has helped with the ticks, less so for the larger critters. However, my Oct. 30 trip to the state lot in Topsham (midcoast) fetched me 26 of the little horrors, all black-legged (deer) ticks, including 4-5 of the tiny nymphs. Was stopping to kill 1-2 every hundred yards while driving out the twisty road from the tract, then did a partial strip-tease (in the commode cubicle with the door closed, of course) back at the Augusta office and found 8-9 in my clothes. Three more of the teeny ones had to be detached at home.

Falling can be kind of exhilarating. It's the landings I don't like.

Different world up there - love the Ft. Kent pic. Madawaska reporting 10" OG. Most of the Aroostook trails pre-date the ITS system, and I'd guess they have an earlier go-date.

Don't worry, she'll quickly adapt. By mid Feb a sunny day in the calm 20s she'll be out there in short sleeves.

Full pool at Umbagog is about 1250, but the point is well taken. They may have had only one day (the 10th) get above 32 in the past 2 weeks. And that was on 11/15 My temps for 13,14 were 19/6 (windy) then 24/-2 (calm.) Umbagog was probably something like 14/2 and 19/-8 those days, and they'd had lows around 10 on 11/8, 9, 12. However, the always late to freeze Long Pond in Belgrade has had only some skim ice along the edges. Last 2 days have been essentially average for means (-7 highs, +7 lows) and have boosted the month average from 8.1 BN all the way to 7.3 BN. Precip has been about half the average so far.

Dry and cloudy here. After nearly 0.6" precip the past 2 days with temps never reaching 35 and just 0.1" SN, dry is good.

To each their own, I guess. My wish-storm would be Dec. 30-31, 1962, only about 75 miles to the west of where it actually went. That event dumped 29.5" on BGR and 40"+ 10-40 miles upriver. It had storm force winds that piled drifts tall enough to snare a large bulldozer (that was out trying to free a 6WD grader, which had been sent to dig out a plow truck, and all this about a mile from I-95's current location thru BGR.) Temps cycled back and forth between near freezing and near zero. The backside NW winds shattered windows in NNJ and uprooted large bare-limbed oaks, with the 12/31 temps of 5/-8 at my place. The Bangor Daily News is nearly 200 years old, and that Sunday, Dec 31, is the only time they were unable to publish.

2013 was okay here, with snowfall that season almost exactly on my average. However, Feb. 8-9 was a disappointment. I'd watched light-moderate SN from mid-morning forward in Augusta, with 6" in the parking lot as I headed home. There I found less than 1"- my 9 PM obs was 1.3". Picked up overnight and the storm total of 11.3" made for a decent storm, but hearing that AUG and LEW each had over 2 feet was a bit depressing. (Not as bad as 12/25-26/2002,though. AUG/Gardiner 15", GYX 18" Belgrade Village 8-10", and 12 miles NW from there: 1.0".)

15.6" is meh? Fort Kent's 2" was the real meh.

Farmington's 20 snowiest winters followed AN Octobers 70% of the time, AN Novembers just 40%. Their 20 least snowy winters came with October temps 50/50 but November AN 65% of the years.

Wow. My situation was never that acute. However, the stenosis being in my neck (C-4) resulted in roughly equivalent loss of function for the whole body. Oddly, I had essentially no pain, other than some ache in my forearms while loading the woodstove. Also, my notorious resistance to cold (Please put on a jacket; you're making ME feel cold!) disappeared, or reversed. Usually I sleep under one light blanket, but the night I got home at 8 PM from a forestry meeting and found the inside temp in the 40s - power outage and wife house-sitting near BGR so no woodstove heat - I could not feel warm even under 4-5 thick coverings, despite the woodstove going full blast.

If you go there, I can only hope it goes as well as mine did.

Meh. They never make it to the foothills.

"Favored" causes of falling, for me: --Stepping on a wet/slippery stick so that foot slides quickly toward the other. timberrr! --Hooking a stick with toe or instep such that its other end gets stuck in the ground and thus rotates that foot upward - good for faceplants, especially when I'm in a hurry. Raining in Augusta, but have seen about 5 nickel-size flakes sailing down.

Necessary for sure. After looking at my MRI, my PCP said one wrong fall could mean quadriplegia, and the neurosurgeon added that the stenosis was probably high enough to affect breathing. Post-op I regained 80-90% of strength and maybe 70% of balance - still have to be careful walking thru the woods. At least the titanium has yet to trigger airport security.

Yup. Had my 1st (and worst) back spasm about 39 years ago and still get occasional twinges. That also stemmed from a collision, in our case a pickup vs. a fully-loaded log truck, with predictable results. My non-displaced leg fracture led to a month with a walking cast - one leg 3" longer than the other - punctuated by the muscle spasm a couple days before the cast came off. (And 30 years later when a herniated disc in my neck led to my barely being able to walk or tie my shoes, I got a plate and 4 screws to fix things. My neurosurgeon and I both trace the spinal stenosis back to that crash. My fusion surgery was very similar to that done on Peyton Manning, so the only differences between us were 30 years and $100+ million.)

The cold surely relaxed after that amazing 40 days (from 11/22 thru 12/31 [7 AM obs times] averaged -15.0 at Farmington), but at my (then) home in Gardiner the warm-up still allowed for 51.5" of Jan-Feb snow (30% above avg) and a 5" surprise at the end of March. At least it wasn't like the current event, RA at 33 with trace ZR at home and perhaps 0.15" accretion at 800' five miles to my south on Mile Hill.

My snowiest winter (07-08) south of Fort Kent reached 12" just once, 12.5" on Jan. 1-2, with only the Dec. 3-4 storm reaching double digits. That winter my biggest storm was only 8.8% of total snowfall, whereas 4 years earlier the 24" on Dec. 6-7, 2003 was 33.0% of that winter's snow. Add the 13" a week-plus later and over 50% of the snow came by 12/15. For ORH, since 1950, there have been 80 events of 12"+....but obviously some winters go without one. So in those 69 winters, 44 of them had at least one 12"+ event. Farmington's 126-year POR shows 147 events of 12"+, which is an average of 1.17 per year, and at least one in 83 winters, for 66%. My 21 winters have featured 27 such storms with at least one in 14, for averages of 1.24/winter and 67% of winters with one or more. For those same 21 winters, Farmington has recorded 27 storms of 12"+ (1.29/yr) and also 14 with at least one, though they missed in 07-08 (only 11.3" on Jan. 1-2) while having 2 last winter while I topped out with 11.7" on Jan. 19-20. And BOS has 4, two of 2 feet+, 2 of 16 inches from 1/22/15-2/28/15. Think about that. When I think about that, it's with some frustration. Storm #1 dumped 20" of 9:1 sand at single-digit temps at home in the best January storm to hit my then-BY in my lifetime. Unfortunately we were in SNJ at the time where we got to watch their 1.5" disappear in about 3 hours. Got to shovel/snow-blow it all when we got home about 12 hours after final flakes, however. Storm #2 was 7.5" with most coming at -5 or colder, #3 brought 4.6" from the storm's northern fringe and #4 is known by some at GYX as the V-Day massacre because the massive blizzard-warned event fled eastward, dropping 1.5" at home and 25" in Machias.

Only time I saw 4 storms of 12+ was that 1960-61 bonanza in NNJ, one each in DJFM. Closest since then was 1981-82 in Fort Kent, with 11.3" as 4th best. Even 3 has been rare, 3X in 46 Maine winters, all at my present location, 00-01, 16-17, 17-18. Then there's 05-06 when my top 4 were 5.9, 4.3, 4.3, 4.0.

That's often true. We had 4 storms of 20"+ in NNJ, all during the period 3/56 thru 2/61. Only 3 in 10 Fort Kent winters, neither BGR (3 years) nor Gardiner (13 years) came close, while I've measured 6 such storms here in the foothills going into winter #22, plus a 19.9" event in March 2018.

Only -7.8 at my place, but that includes the +11 on the 1st. Since then we've been -9.0.

I've yet to experience even a pair of 2-footers in the same winter, much less 3. My biggest for winter's 3rd best snowfall was 18", the December entry in 1960-61's snowfest. That year was one of only 2 (2016-17 being the other) that had even 2 with 20"+.

Love this image. Among other things, it really shows well the Jersey pine barrens. Cloudy with a raw wind in Augusta while at 10 AM PWM was reporting light rain and 31 - lovely. Yesterday's 29/0 made it 2 zero-or-below mornings earlier than getting even one in any of my other 46 Novembers in Maine. And while I have no doubts about Island Pond's low of -11, that 39° max seems a bit high. I had full sun all day yesterday, and should not have been 10° cooler.

Stayed a couple degrees above zero here - wind was light but still moving at 10 last night, so less time after the inversion sets up. Walking in the woods yesterday was explosively noisy as the Friday "thaw" followed by an 8F low produced a solid crust, and the leaves were nice and crunchy underneath. Every deer within a half mile could probably hear me.

Jeez, below 0 already? Earliest here by 8 days, and 2nd year in a row to advance the below-zero threshold. (T-Day last year was far more uncomfortable and anomalous.) The 14th is even 5 days ahead of my earliest subzero in Ft. Kent, though we had only 10 years there and this is November #22 here.