tamarack

Freezing drizzle and upper 20s in Augusta at present. After 6 hours of (very) occasional mood flakes yesterday, steady S- began about 2 PM though it began to accumulate an hour later. Measured 2.7" with 0.25" LE at 9 PM, another 0.5" of rimey snow/sleet with a thin zr cap at 7 this morning, total 3.2" with 0.42" LE, perhaps 0.02" of that as non-frozen. At 6:30 saw that temps were teens up north, 20s/30s elsewhere except EPO, which was reporting 55.

PWM TV met's map this morning looked essentially identical to the one they had last Thursday, with my area in the 1-3" strip. That verified at 0.1" last week due to lack of precip (0.04".) This time it would be due to P-type. Hoping for an inch before the ZR takes over.

That's what I had last evening, upper 20s with the clouds this AM. Big change from yesterday's 14. Still spots holding the 0.1" from Thursday night - late fall sun angle.

That's decent, though that weird little 5.7" blob in Maine is centered on a bunch of 4,000-footers, Abraham to Bigelow. Doesn't work that way.

Already put about 1/3 cord thru our Jotul. Low teens tonight?

Reminds me of Feb. 2017 when some guy from RI noted the 76" depth report from Andover, Maine and drove up there expecting to find giant snowbanks along the roads. He also got onto a back road (East B Hill Road) where his GPS didn't work and his gas gauge was low and he had no idea where the road would take him. He then posted about "fake news" and vilified all things Maine, not realizing that the plow operators tend to push the snow a little farther than they do in RI. (Also not realizing that an old fashioned paper map can be your friend.)

Only measured 0.04" precip for the whole "event". Had a wee bit of graupel yesterday late morning, some light showers during the day with catpaws as I approached Belgrade Village about 5:30 PM. Roads were dry at home but had S- after 7. Only "T" by my 9 PM obs time but had 0.1" (0.02" LE) OG this AM. Temp was about 20, had to pry open the pickup door, some black ice on the roads and small ponds fully skimmed.

Shades of last year? My T-Day high of 11 was 28° BN and that high was recorded at my obs time the evening before. The afternoon max was 30° BN. In 21+ years I've recorded highs that were 30+ BN on 4 days, Jan 14 and 15, 2004, Dec.28, 2017 and Jan 6, 2018. November hadn't sniffed even a 20° BN max before last year.

Unless things change, I think (based on current radar) that precip is mostly gone at my place before any significant changeover. Was planning to take tomorrow off to chase the wily whitetail on snow, but anything less than a full inch (preferably 2 or more) would mean frozen slush on frozen leaves at sunrise, and I won't burn vacation time to hunt in those conditions.

Woke up last Nov. 10 to see 2" on the ground. Did not see bare ground at the stake until April 21 - 162 consecutive days with 1"+, which is 20 days longer than any other such streak here. Not sure that whatever we get today/tonight will survive Sunday's 40s, but if the Tuesday event holds together it might be the start of another long run of white ground. (Unless it's stolen by a super-Grinch.)

Going back even further to my NNJ days, the ice caught on our small (50-60 acre) lake prior to Dec 15 but a warm wind took out all but the cove nearest the house. Then Dec 20 dawned cold (near zero) and calm. I went out on the old ice, 4-5" thick, and knocked a small hole in the overnight catch, 2" of black.. A high school fellow from maybe 1,000' away skated across to berate me for wrecking the beautiful smoothness, though the 2"-wide hole probably didn't compromise things too badly. Next morning was even colder adding another 2" and we then had almost 40 days of mostly BN temps and less than 1" of precip, some light RA maybe 3-4" snow total which mostly blew off the ice, and we could skate or walk on 12"+ and see right thru it. Thickest black ice I've seen. Could you last year? That Thanksgiving time cold shot was nuts. W-a-a-a-y too windy, even with the afternoon max of 9. Might've been able to skate on a lee shore splash-over.

A skilled builder of models for forest growth once told us, "All models are wrong but some are useful." I consider that to be good advice.

Don't know its full extent, but 11/17-18 that year brought 8-12" from PWM to BGR and points west. Only 2" where I then lived in Ft. Kent. During the 70s and 80s the 4 places I've lived in Maine (BGR, Fort Kent, Gardiner, New Sharon) had among them more than a dozen events of 10"-21", and I managed to be in the wrong place for every one. Yes it’s 89. Had a good storm. Rode my sled around the neighborhood that morning before T Day dinner. A good 6 or 7 inches fell. Only a few tenths in flurries, but the T-day max of 17 is easily the coldest for my 13 Novembers in Gardiner. Far more interesting was the thunderblizzard 2 days earlier that ushered in the 6 weeks of brutal cold. Temps for the 41 days 11/22-12/31 were 15.0° BN at Farmington, with 34 of those days at least 10 BN and 7 more than -20. Cold left the building after that but snows continued.

Farmington has recorded only 5 such Novie snowfalls in 125 years, and that includes 21-22, 1961 for which their snow data is missing. However, all stations from AUG/LEW north and west had 10"+ and places like RUM and Andover had 24-27". Farmington did record 2.32" precip so my guess is 18". Their 10.6" on 26-27, 2014 was their 1st double digit snow in 25 years, and the only one I've observed in 46 Maine Novembers (or in all my NJJ Novies.)

Their biggest snows that month came on the 3rd (9") and the 8th (10", north edge of the big mid-Atl blizz) which built the pack top 27" and I'm confident the city had a parking ban in place, SOP for large snow events. Both those storms came with temps mainly low teens but PWM dropped to-10/-12 on the 5th/6th.

Nice hole in zone just about over my home.

Low teens at our place, with 18" powder - doubt I'll ever again walk out for the opening of deer season with deeper snow. And the storm of Jan. 19-20 that winter was 3-4° colder and dumped 20". Nearly snowless, suppressed pattern that crushes NC to DC. It could be worse, we take. 2002-03 up here, though SNE did quite well along with the MA. DJFM had temps 4° BN here, while snowfall was 23" BN. The cold allowed for continuous cover from mid November thru early April despite the paucity of snowstorms.

Temps and snowfall for March & November, Boston, and Farmington, Maine: Boston: MAR 38.6 8.0" NOV 45.0 1.2" Farmington: MAR 28.2 17.0" NOV 34.6 5.4"

Sounds like the MWN/valley inversion sandwich - mostly RA in Gorham, record January warmth (45, topped by 48 in 2013) on the Rockpile, and forest destruction at 1500-2500'.

After 16" on 3/22-23 and 19" eight days later, there was 48" at my stake on 3/31/2001, for the date taller even than any Fort Kent winters, by 2" over 1984. And a monster storm was progged for the next day and night - track shifted east and buried Newfoundland, big snow and gusts to 150 kph.

Could be like nzucker, who moved for one winter from the NYC area to SNH, only for it to be 2011-12 with less snow in Rindge than he'd seen in the previous winters in Westchester.

Co-workers from the Farmington area reported outages of generally 24 hours or less, in some cases much less. Our (then) home in Gardiner was on a cul-de-sac 400' from Brunswick Ave. (aka Rt 201, aka main trunk line for power.) We lost power for about 90 hours, but if anything had broken - beyond our telephone line - on our little road we'd have been 2 weeks plus. (As we were with the phone, and damage to our service entry cables caused the phone tech to mount a junction box on a front yard pine so for 4-5 weeks we had a "tree phone.") The temp gradient from that system was remarkable: NYC area - 50s/60s RA SNE - 40s RA S.Maine - Low 30s, RA/ZR, light damage (they got smoked later that month, though not nearly as bad.) C.Maine and E.Maine inland of Rt 1 - Upper 20s to 30, 1.5-2" ice (near 3" on Greenwood Hill in Hebron, NW of LEW) and massive tree and infrastructure damage. Foothills/mountains - Low 20s with more IP than ZR, 2-6" IP accum, moderate to occasionally severe damage. Aroostook - Singles and teens, 5 days of continuous gritty SN, 20-27" total. Deepest IP I've seen was in mid-Dec 1983 in the woods NW from Allagash. Serious ice at our Fort Kent home with lots of IP, made a 3" crust with 1.9" LE, 1/2" clear ice with 1.25" ZR-annealed IP above and below, would carry a moose. To our west and above 1,000' elev there was 6-10" of IP, as tough to plow as a 3-ft snowfall.

Maybe another Nov. 22-23, 1943, only a little farther east? Farmington bagged 30" of 7:1 paste from that one, and BML reported 56" - elevation helps.

Not huge sample size but long periods of record, and 3 of 4 sites averaged AN (slightly) for those winters. To the nearest inch, BOS avg was +2", BDR +3", NYC -4", PHL +1". Average across all 4 is within 1" of average.

Farmington actually had considerable IP in that event, and though there was considerable damage there, it was much less than places 15-60 miles to the south. We moved in May 1998 to our current location in the town just east of Farmington, and our 63 forest acres had less cumulative damage than did our 0.8 acre houselot in Gardiner, where it was all ZR. While scoping out the future Kennebec Highlands acquisition by the state, we encountered a huge difference in damage a bit south of Watson Pond in Rome. The change was from significant loss of sizable branches (north) to "asparagus trees" to the south - naked trunks surrounded by piles of limbs 6' deep.