tamarack

My parents retired to Woodsville in 1981 and both passed while in that hospital and are buried in the cemetery about 1/4 mile up the hill. Water must be charging down that hill into town, and I can barely imagine what the very flashy (steep gradient, little holding area like lakes/bogs) Wild Ammonoosuc is doing, other than living up to its name. Hope it spares the Ammonoosuc Fish & Game clubhouse; it dates to the early 20th century. Don’t discount idiots who think they would make good pets either. People have let them go when they got too much to handle. Some years before the CT roadkill a cougar was reported in Cape Elizabeth, just where one would expect to find one. Hairs were recovered that confirmed it was a cougar but I never heard if any provenance was determined. I'd say 99.99% chance that was a released animal whose butcher bill got too large. A biologist co-worker (now retired - he's 4 years older than me!) said there were up to a hundred permitted captive cougars in the state and likely almost as many illegal captives. IMO there is no breeding wild population in Maine though releases or wanderers from west or north might occasionally pass thru. The plethora of trailcams plus the lack of any classic (hair scraped off, partially covered in sticks/leaves) cougar kills of deer or moose are negative factors for such a population. Nothing is impossible, of course. After seeing bobcats twice from my pickup during the late 1970s in northern Maine (it's all Canada lynx there now) I never saw another for 40+ years until one came sauntering down our road this past spring.

7.15" here in the past 15 days. 0.65" in the previous 42. Feast or famine.

For half an hour I watched as dark and promising clouds slid by a few miles to our north and skies to the SW appeared to brighten. Then they socked in again as a cell developed behind and a bit south of the first bunch, and we got exactly 1.00" from 4:40 to 5:10, with about 90% in the first 20 minutes. Also the first lightning strike inside 2 miles , though I missed the flash and can only guess at the actual distance - loud enough for within a mile or so. Another one a bit over 2 miles to our north probably hit near the powerlines along Industry Road as most of our kitchen and living room outlets stopped working. Easily fixed by resetting the breaker. Hearing thunder from another cell, which may pass to our south (or may not.) Enjoying cool 60s after a warm and humid day.

The heat pumps (times 3) at our church look like yours though about 1/4 wider, befitting a room 65' by 45' with cathedral ceiling. Off topic, but is that a Hawken reproduction hanging below the balcony railing?

Absolutely. Or one can stumble into success. A few weeks after moving to our present location in mid-May 1998, I moved a slightly damaged (by our dog) balsam fir from our shady side yard to the sunny front. It was then a misshapen 2' tall, and now is a near-perfect cone about 35' tall with branches spreading over 15' at the base. It's about 12" at 4.5' off the ground - "about" because I don't care to fight my way into the center of those branches and then goo up my diameter tape with fir pitch. Getting 12" RA in the month following the transplant surely helped, as I don't think I watered it at all. (And it's grown to the point that I would consider donating it for some municipal Christmas tree if the town would do the cut and haul.)

Cannot stress this too much. Even with proper root-pruning and good care, up to 90% of roots stay behind when a tree is lifted at the nursery.

Until the Chester, MA records were determined to be invalid, that site held the state's high (107 on 8/2/75, tied with New Bedford) and low (-35, 1/12/1981) records.

Every day this month has been AN, making it 24 of the last 26 with the big rains of June 29-30 the only BN days in that stretch. July is running +3, with highs +0.6 and lows +5.5 - all warm but no big heat, max is 82 so far and only 28° total range for the month. June was just the opposite, ranging from 27 to 90, the greatest span for any met summer month here, 1998 on. Garden loves this July so far, more than adequate rain, warm days and mild nights with no blazing heat that sends the greens to seed.

We snuck up to within 5.5" of our average, thanks to 22" post-equinox, including the season's 2 biggest storms. Near 70 this AM, very mild for here. Only 7/19/2005 has recorded a 70+ minimum. The day before was 69, also 9/8/99. Nothing else above 68, and today's minimum will probably be about there. Pleasant atm with a breeze but a high launch point for this afternoon.

We got a sprinkle as the easterly cell died.

Could be. However, after posting "just about every TC" I recalled (helped by your post) two exceptions. Hugo and Katrina both were followed by humid wx and both passed to our west, though it was close with Hugo - its huge inland recurve brought it thru the W. Maine mts with gusts to 60+, amazing power for a once-TC that had traveled 1000+ miles over dirt. Our agency had loggers salvage over 1000 cords of blown down timber from that storm.

Just about every TC I've experienced has had CoC wx the day after - worked from Donna to the remains of Earl 50 years later. Not this time.

Sun briefly burned a hole thru the clouds about 10 AM but it's cloudy again, very humid but with a nice breeze that waited until after the RA to arrive. Some weak echoes showing up to my south, don't know if any will reach the gauge.

One day at 90 here, but at my transpirationally cooled site, 85 is the new 90 and we've cleared that 4 times, 87, 88(2) and 90, plus 4 more at 84. Without digging back thru my records, that might be the most since 2010 and we're just entering peak summer. Average temp clears 65° on July 9 and drops below that mark on August 9, peaking at just under 66° for July 22-29.

Radar looks pretty clen behind that band, but I don't know if you'll see much sun. If it burns thru, tropical dews ensue.

Band of moderate RA spent several hours overhead, had 1.48" at 7 AM. Temple cocorahs, 10 miles west, reported 0.37". Precip dropped to nothing about 7:20. No need to water the garden this weekend.

I've never personally seen a tree get struck (or anything else, for that matter.) My favorite strike, seen a couple months after the storm, was at the state lot in Topsham, on Pleasant Point between the Muddy River and Merrymeeting Bay. What had been a white pine 24" by 85' had become a 25' stub with a 45' treetop "planted" vertically about 4' away. The other 15' was widely distributed shards, some probably weighing over 100 lb. (12' long, 8" by 12" thick) That was in the mid-1990s and the shards are becoming compost, the treetop finishing its full descent to earth about ten years ago.

Congrats MPO?

Video wouldn't stream on my PC but the stills are impressive. Even worse is when a tree like that merely smolders, with little smoke, then bursts into flame a few days later when fanned by stiff CAA. Some significant forest fires have started that way.

Cleared off quickly after yesterday's TS and dropped the low here to mid 50s - the dews are just now rolling in. First "real" TS of the year, though the fairly frequent lightning never got closer than 2 miles. Probably half of the 0.47" RA came 5:10-5:15 PM, by far the highest rate I've seen for a while. My wife was driving home from Farmington during the heaviest and our Forester briefly hydroplaned, which was scary and led to her pulling over into the nearest safe place to wait out the RA++.

Just heard a strike that might have been within 3 miles, closest of the year, and unless the line suddenly parts like the Red Sea we should get a good show. Unplugging again...

Well, that "arm" dislocated at the elbow and we had 0.03", and a half hour of near-constant thunde0 (now fading to the SE), most to the south but some from the small piece that broke away and passed to the north. No strikes close enough to see the flash in daylight so I could count off the miles, so probably all 4+ miles distant. We'll see if our 2020 lightning shield can withstand the much bigger bunch coming from the NW. Edit: The warning area will probably extend to cover MBY, but right now there's a teeny bit of Franklin County in the "bird's mouth" between and outside of the now-connected warned areas, and our place is right in the middle of those 3 square miles.

That cell is growing a northerly arm - think it's time to shut down/unplug the computers. Would not like having to explain why I allowed the State laptop to get fried.

And I'm about 2 miles north of the smaller area's NE corner - BAU (though we'll probably get something from the north edge of that cell.)

Haven't seen that much purple on a radar scan since the August 2007 Rome defoliator. Just some rumbles here from a small but intense-looking cell, but the real action is up near the border country.