tamarack

Question made me curious about home, where it's Nov. 10. In 21 winters 1st measurable has come in Oct 6 times and once in Dec. (7th, 2006) with the other 14 in Nov. No Oct measurable for 2019 but looks good for a 15th for Novie.

Hope this didn't blow out a bunch of ski trails in the northern Greens. Maine got all the wind but only the northernmost tip got serious RA.

Relieved to read that "2015" referred to January, not November - big difference between king snow winter and king rat.

Did not check the max-min, but I'm confident that it was milder at 5:30 this morning than the 62° max for all of October. Was 61 at 9 last evening, and 10/31 was +13, only double digit AN of the month. More October data: Avg. max: 54.3 -0.9 Highest was 62 on the 13th; only 10/2009's max of 61 was more modest. (My earlier post of 64 on 10/21 was erroneous.) Low max was 39 on 10/27. Avg. Min: 35.3 +0.7 Lowest was 23 on 10/20 and 3 other days touched 24. Mildest min was 50 on the 7th. Month mean was 44.8, Just 0.1 BN and the month closest to the 22-year average. Precip: 7.76" That's 2.04" AN and boosts the month avg to 5.72",easily the wettest. Nearly 3/4 came in the 2nd half. Largest event was 2.23" on 10/23. Observed some tiny snow grains at my 9 PM obs time on 10/25, despite temps 41-42. No other traces.

When we lived on Perley Brook in Fort Kent, we'd get upwards of 200 ToT'ers, with carloads rolling in from Frenchville and Madawaska. Moved to back settlement, might see 2-3 neighbor kids. In Gardiner we'd get the 6-7 kids on our 6-home cul-de-sac road, and we've gone 22 Halloweens at our present location without a single visit.

Wind had kicked up last evening, but the final showers didn't arrive until just before 6 this morning, nearly an hour after the lights went out. Temp dropped 3° in the 15 minutes before I headed to Augusta. As of my 6:15 obs for cocorahs we'd had 0.59" yesterday/today, doubt we got more than another tenth or so. Heavy stuff clipped N. Aroostook - Madawaska cocorahs reported 2.97" and New Sweden was next at 1.15"; no one else in Maine has reported over 1". No news on whether the home front is re-powered yet. Edit: Re-checked cocorahs and saw that Westmanland, like New Sweden a central Aroostook town, reported 1.24" and a couple 1" reports from eastern Washington County. All those sites were still raining at obs times.

Power went off about 5 minutes after my alarm (battery-powered) sounded at 5 AM. Route 2 and points south had power but all was dark north of the blinker light at the Sandy River bridge in town. Couple of trees partly in Rt 27 southbound lane (Belgrade, Sidney), and the Brunswick public radio classical channel was off the air - got my music from the WVL channel. Cocorahs observer from Belmont (near midcoast Belfast) reported 68 mph gust and BHB had 59 at 7 AM. Getting too old for this lights-out stuff; Generator guy comes to scope out our place on the 11th.

We've done the chlorine-bleach shock a couple times, but for us the light is essential as the hay field uphill from the well gets animal dressing every year.

The 3 months ASO have all featured modest extremes. August topped out at 79 and September at 76, each tying the coolest max of my 22 years' record for those months. October peaked at 64, 2nd lowest max but the 41° span from mildest/coolest is the smallest for this month. (Median extremes are 73.5/19.5.) Ironically, the extremes came on consecutive days, 23 on 10/20 and 64 on the 21st.

Maybe it's my hang-up, but to me temp departures of <2° aren't "real" mild or "real" cool. I'm going to finish about -0.2°, about as close to dead-on average as one might expect. (Today's avg here is 49/30 and I expect it to verify about +12.)

We have a UV light as part of the filtration system for our shallow well, and it does the job.

Between every-month frosts and the probability that the bowl is both hotter and drier during the growing season, tough place to be a tree.

Kind of like my seeing catspaws on the windshield in late August at 1,000' elevation in Fort Kent. Not all that wintry, but slushy drops during that month are noteworthy.

Thanks. And I also thank you and Will for related follow-up comments. As one who has worked as a forester since 1976 I'm always interested in things related to my vocation.

Was forest management (especially fuel management or lack of same), considered by this study as a possible contributing factor for the massive increase in burn area? Perhaps it's not a major factor, but I hope it was part of the data that was used. (Would read the link but I'm headed home.)

The Octobomb blew the doors off for magnitude of October snowfall, but the frequency hasn't necessarily been that much greater. Using the local long-term co-op, 28 of 126 Octobers have recorded 1"+ snow, or 22%, but only 1 of the first 17 years tallied. Since then it's been about 25%. The co-op will have zero to trace this month, giving them 5 of 20 (plus a 0.5") for 2000 on. That's right on the average. October snow years have come in bunches throughout the record: 3-of-5 for 1922-26 and 1930-34, 4-of-6 in1950-55, 5-of-9 during 1961-69 including the 2nd/3rd/4th (tied with 2000) snowiest Octobers. (Tops is 8.0" ion 2011.) Other locations may show a different pattern - CAR has had 29 Octobers in 79 years with 1"+ but 9-of-19 for 2000 on, clearly more frequent. For the equivalent 19-year span 1958-76, it was 10-of-19 and included their 2 snowiest (62 & 63.)

More like 4° (I'm at 44.67N) but yeah.

Or on our front porch. We have sizable web-spinning spiders in great numbers, and some huge wolf spiders (think a grape with legs) but those use ambushes rather than webs.

The 1994 thaw lasted no more than 24 hours here, but it was remarkable for wild temp swings and powerful winds - best shown by the last 6 days of January at CAR: Jan. 26 -13 -32 0 0 35 (Tied with 1/14/57 for CAR's 2nd coldest daily mean) Jan. 27 5 -23 0 0 34 Jan. 28 45 -1 .69 3.3 34 (Probably a noontime obs, before the SE gales fully arrived.) Jan. 29 43 -3 .05 0.3 25 Jan. 30 -2 -20 0 0 25 Jan. 31 4 -29 0 0 25 Even wind chill watches/warnings in MT, WY, and CO...this is freaking nuts. Wind chills as low as -30. WTF is going on About what we had last T-Day, low was -3 and aft. high was 9, with winds 25G35+ all day. That's 11/22 not 10/30 but it's also at 400' elev not 4,000+.

However, on 9/30/91 locations from PQI and points north recorded 2-5". Ironic, because 5 years earlier (9/30/86) brought the largest convective-caused blowdown I've seen in my 46 years in Maine, 600 acres in T16R6 and T16R5, ending by tossing spruce into the NW end of Square Lake. (The Telos blowdown in October of either 1979 or 1980 was 3,000 acres of flattened spruce that from the air looked like an August oat field squashed by a thunderstorm. However, that was a synoptic system, SE gale.) sadly no older folks mentioned the desert dry of '65 Driest year on record for 6 states - DE, PA, NJ, CT, RI, MA. Skipped NY because of a drier year in the less wet western counties, but NYC's 26.09" in 1965 is nearly 7" less than their #2 driest, which was the year before. 1963 comes in at 4th driest but only a 4" RA in early November kept them from the #2 slot. And 1966 was running only 0.7" less dry than '65 thru August. ('66 remains NYC's driest met summer and is 2nd only to 2010 for hottest.) Then 9/21/66 recorded 5.54" and the drought was broken, though only the following months' being near/above norms confirmed the end. Wx trivia: Some locales in western VA got more RA in 5 hours from Camille's remnants than NYC had for all of 1965.

Has not been a great sign here, but sss. We've had November events greater than 3" in 6 of 21 snow seasons, 02, 05, 09, 11, 14, 18. Those 6 included 2 AN, 3 BN, one ratter (05-06) with the 6-year average at 87% of that for all 21 while the other 15 average 105%. (79" vs. 96") Further limiting that small sample to events of 6"+ drops 05 and 09 and leaves the other 4 at 99% of the overall. Looks like a pretty weak indicator at best.

Had 1.03" thru 7 this morning, pushing October precip over 7". Still awaiting our first max in the 40s. Have recorded 4 highs of 50 and another 4 of 51, then yesterday topped out at 39.

March 1956 thru February 1961 in NNJ was my all-time tops for big snowstorms. Even the far snowier Fort Kent couldn't touch it for blockbusters. And it's natural for March to be more of a winter month than spring the farther north one lives. We carry continuous snow cover into April about 60% of snow seasons, and 20"+ on April 1 in about 1/3.

Saw some tiny snow grains last evening, even with temp near 40 - low RH so they probably survived by subliming vapor on the way down.

My max that day was 11, one degree below the coldest max I recorded in Fort Kent and 10° below any at my current locale. And that was set at 9:01 the previous evening; the afternoon high was 9° - had a 9° afternoon high in Nov once in FK but there was no wind and hunting was good. Much nicer than last T-day, when I didn't pick up the rifle. GFS looks chilly next week, at last on the recent run. Will likely change between now and then, maybe 3-4 times.