tamarack

Lots less tree damage in Maine from 2019 than 2 years earlier, but we lost power for longer in '19 and I had to cut my way out of our road so I could meet the green-certification auditors for the final day of last year's audit.

Too young for the early '60s. In 1963 a town just north of my NNJ hometown had a forest fire start in late September that burned into November. It was only 2-3 miles north of the HS I attended and we could see smoke erupting from the hot spots out of the north-facing windows. Because of the rocky terrain and thick growth, fire would travel under the rockpiles burning duff and roots, such that a firefighter might be putting water to the fire in front only to have the bush behind erupt into flame. Finally quenched by a 4" rain a week into November; the storm also kept '63 from setting a new record at NYC for driest year, dropping it to 3rd place. (Now 5th, as '64 broke the record and '65 had over 6" less than '64.) Last evening's 0.02" builds September precip to 0.15".

Makes me feel for the people clearing 5 years worth of brush (so brush saw not weedwhacker) from the trails so Saddleback can reopen in December.

Going by snow at PWM/CAR/Farmington, weak Nino and weak/moderate Nina have done better than neutral.

Welcome aboard. It's great to see the NW part of NNE adding members and geographic coverage. I hope we can get some of the same for the NE part of NNE. 10-15 years back we had posters from Aroostook but now I don't think there are any east of the Kennebec. (Though MPM can see the east side from Pit 2.)

35-36 here, won't help ripen the cukes but otherwise no damage. Couple more threats over the next 10 days.

If there have been no fatwahs proclaimed, it would seem that Islam isn't too concerned.

Odds are that I'll escape tomorrow's frost (I'd give it 2 out of 3) but not 10 days from now with its below zero 850s. Median here for 1st frost is 9/19, so one next week would be close to that. 12Z GFS has no precip thru day 14 for my area.

And my above story failed to mention the 12" on 4/8/56 that bent over lots of the smaller trees that had escaped the Jan. 1953 ice storm, and the 12" surprise (forecast ranged from 1-3" to RA) on 3/23/1961. Most fell in 3 hours and it's the one time I walked the 5 miles from HS, along with 8-10 friends who also quickly tired of waiting for buses that might never arrive.

My highs for 18-22: -14/-4/+9 (torch!), -6, -6.

January 1982 was my coldest month in Fort Kent, averaging 9.2/-12.3. It is also Farmington, Maine's coldest for any month since records there began in 1893. The first week was mild, 7F AN, but 8-31 the average was 5.4/-16.5. The month had 9 subzero maxima (9-11, 18-19, 21-23 and 26) plus 6 single digit highs. While the -7/-31 temps of the 10th were noteworthy, by far the most brutal cold came on 17-18. After a cheap evening high of 13, Sunday the 17th featured a precipitous drop with winds gusting into the 40s. It was minus teens by 8 AM (only time I've seen one of those flimsy dry-cleaner plastic bags shatter) and the bank sign read -24 at 3:45 PM. By my 9 PM obs time it was -29. Next morning the gusts had dropped a bit, probably still approaching 40, the temp was -34 and visibility was about 2 miles in light snow. (On the old WCI scale that's about -101. On the new it's around -70.) Even with the good heater-hose engine warmer plugged in, my Chevy Luv pickup barely started. That wind howled all day and my high was -14. The wind never really quit the rest of the month. On Tuesday 1/26 we were check-scaling logs in the wood yard of a pine mill across the river in Clair, New Brunswick. Temps that day were -4/-24 and there's no place hotter/dustier in summer or colder/windier in winter than a mill yard. The stench from the pork by-product rendering mill a hundred yards upwind didn't help. If you were at the 'Loaf on 1/17, I would be surprised if they didn't have a wind-hold, or an early closing due to dangerous wind chill.

Wonderful hyperbole! But that "finally" hits the (short-term) spot for Jan. 2, 1987. PWM was reporting SN at 4 AM but I had finished lunch when the first flakes appeared outside my Augusta office, around 12:30. Within what seemed like 30 seconds (more likely a couple minutes) the rate had gone from 2 flakes to 1/8 mile visibility. By far the most abrupt wall of precip I've seen from a synoptic event. That 16" storm was the 2nd biggest of my 13 mostly mediocre winters in Gardiner.

Most amazing to me is the "York County Jail" outbreak - inmates, staff, families of staff - totaling mid 70s last I saw and evidently coming via the one jail staffer who was at the wedding. Not following the written protocol at the jail was key - "no masks because they didn't want to scare the prisoners" was one bit of foolishness I read.

GYX has under a tenth here. Two days ago it had over 1". Typical

From March 1956 thru February 1961 we had 8 snowstorms of 18"+, including 2 with 20" and 3 with 24". (I wasn't into precise measurements but my dad measured the first one at 23.5" with snow still accumulating, giving me at least a subjective benchmark.) Even in snowy Maine I've not had a 60-month period with 8 storms of 18+. The (cherrypicked) period April 1984 thru February 2001 failed to hit the 18" mark even once. Even if I drop the threshold to 15" (the NNJ 5-yr run had no storms 15"+ but <18") the best I can find is 5, once in Ft. Kent and twice where I now live. Using 18" the top is 3 in 5-years. (Of course, outside of the wonderful 56-61 run, we never had even 2 of 18+ in another distinct 60 NNJ months. Jan 1964 and Feb 1969 are the only other 18s I experienced there, unless one includes the 1966 blizzard in Baltimore when I was at Hopkins.)

Surprised they're last. Is Electric Boat no longer building submarines? And I'm amazed at that $4k figure. Our household income is slightly above Maine's median and we've never sent as much as $4k to the IRS. My guess is that CT's average income is way above the median due to the abundance of plutocrats, and that enough of that population is paying at the top rate and enriching Washington.

Not surprising thanks to Laura. Same ACE, twice the TCs.

Up here March 19-20, 2014 was forecast for 3-5 and we got 13.3" before it changed to rain. Farmington had less rain and recorded 16.9". The Jan 2015 blizzard was forecast for 8-12 in our area and we got 20", but we stayed an extra day with the grandkids in SNJ (where the 12-16 forecast verified at 1.5) so to avoid driving thru the storm.

Jan-Feb 1979 were freaky in Ft. Kent for the extremes. In 10 Januarys there we had 5 days with minima above 32 and all were in '79. We also had 5 mornings at -39 or below (6th place is -37) and 3 were in that same month. PWM had 62.4" of snow that month, most for any month, and their 2nd biggest event- 27.1" - came on Jan 17-18. On the 17th my max-min touched -47. I'd been at our company's camp just across from St.-Pamphile, PQ and it was "only" -40 there. At home my wife noted that the red alcohol on the indoor-outdoor was well below the -40 bottom of the scale but the max-min on the detached garage measured down to -60 and so caught the record. PWM had 6.8" on Jan 25-26 and 8.6" on 30-31 while Ft. Kent had rain and mid-30s with catpaws. Finally snowed a bit on 2/1 as temps gradually slid downward. Feb 10-17 never got above -2. The wind on those 8 days never quit, which kept the mornings from dropping below -22 but at times the wind was such that one could not face it without tearing up, and first blink froze the eyelids together - "walk backward" days. Then March was nearly snow-free. The early '50s were awful in NNJ though they included the Jan 1953 ice storm that jump-started my interest in both weather and trees. The 24" storm of March 18-19, 1956 was a revelation after 5 winters w/o anything above maybe 8".

The "good" in the 1980s was mostly in the far north. The 1980s were Farmington co-op's worst for snow with 73.5" average compared to the long-term average of 90". 1979-80 and 80-81 are 2nd lowest and lowest snowfall winters they've recorded. For 79-80 thru 84-85, my last 6 winters in Fort Kent, they recorded an average of 68"/year while I measured 127"/yr. If I (or some Methuselah) had recorded Fort Kent at my locations there from 1893 on, their average would probably be about 120" compared to Farmington's 90.

I don't think anyone had bunches of months of the BN temps, AN precip and record low snowfall trifectas during those winters. Also, 81-82, 83-84 and 86-87 were pretty good in NNE. The first 2 were especially big winters in Fort Kent, the 3rd had 4 warned storms plus an advisory event in January to build the pack that produced the greatest peak flow ever recorded in Maine, on the Kennebec on 4/1/87.

But if one of those 1-per-game hits is a "perfect" grand slam, 2-out walkoff while 3 runs down, that's what folks will remember. A 20-game streak with .400 BA but only one HR (this year) or the "perfect slam" (1992 when August 15 arrived w/o a singe named storm), it only takes one - as many have noted - and this year is "one, so far". Edit: I wonder if the recent awakening of the previously somnambulant West PAC has any bearing on our TCs.

Considerably less prevalent here, only 32% (7 of 22 with 3 others having "T" OG and 2 getting a 1" cover the following day.) The white T-Day years, with AN winters boldface: 2000, 2002, 2005, 2011, 2014, 2018, 2019. Those 7 winters averaged 90.4", or 0.2" B below my current average - essentially dead on. The AN winters include #2 (2000-01) and the BNs have 2nd lowest (2005-06). Deepest is 11" in both 2014 and 2018. My conclusion is that T-Day snow cover tells us nothing about the coming winter here.

But 60" over the next 50 days once that month was done healed (almost) all wounds.

September (and April-May) snow in Denver isn't terribly unusual. Snow 2 days after 97° is record-setting, and hard to comprehend.