tamarack

6.7% gradient vs. 11.5% at MWN. I suspect I-70 doesn't get above 5%.

Ever hear the Rudy Vallee version? Light rain now, looks like about 0.8" in the gauge. Decent, and the biggest RA event in 6 weeks.

Moderate RA the past hour, probably 1/2-3/4" in the Stratus to boost August's 0.89" before today. Mid 50s, very October-ish.

Rain arrived here a few minutes ago - took a while to saturate the lower levels. Got down to 38 yesterday, making it 12 of 23 Augusts having sub-40 minima.

Those plus red and sugar complete the eastern natives (and some taxonomists break the latter into sugar and black maples.) Whether any of the exotics look like that I don't know - the dendrology class didn't get into those.

In the early 1970s, Ralph Nader's group published a book called "The Paper Plantation" which portrayed Maine's mill owners as acting like antebellum slave-holding plantations in the south. ironically, the stumpage contract the authors chose as one evidence of logger "bondage" was one from Seven Islands, which then had no mills - Maine Hardwoods in Portage was 30 years in the future. Pretty standard contract stating the responsibilities of landowner and logger, including that the landowner had full right to determine which trees would be cut. Not sure why that would be objectionable.

Their form is like those of the maples but smaller, and no doubles - often there are a few twins that make it to the ground attached. The asymmetrical shape is like seeds that once were part of a pair, however. Single samaras like ash have the seed in the middle. Boxelder? One of the understory maples, striped/mountain? What's growing near where you find them? Those types of seeds usually wind up within 100' or less of the parent unless there are strong winds. The Dec 1992 monster was just wind in Gardiner, where we lived at the time, and the abundant white ash seeds were everywhere.

Right. The fall is fun, landings not so much. 50 years ago while building houses I'd walk on 2nd story upper plates - 2x4 framing in those days - where a fall one way meant 8' onto a plywood deck littered with chunks of wood, and the other way 20'+ onto the rocks near the foundation. Especially dicey before the wall was braced - the plate would wobble back and forth a few inches. Probably most of us have survived dumb acts.

Maybe Nov-Dec 2018? The cold began to take over 2 weeks into October and storminess for the last week or so. Nov brought storms of 4", 6" and 7.1" - we've had only 7 snows of 4"+ in 22 Novies and 2018 is alone in having more than one - then Dec laid a rotten egg. Farther south, NYC had its earliest 6"+ snowfall, more than a week earlier than the next one, then had "T" for Dec and 3.7" total for Jan-Feb before bagging 10" in early March..

GYX talking about 1" in their morning AFD. 64/52 and 65/46 last 2 days, low this morning approached 40.

Given the 4x4x2 dimensions, he's charging the equivalent of $640/cord. Probably hopes unknowing flatlanders (meaning, anyone not from where he's from) won't know anything about firewood prices.

I don't think the wind ever quit. Coldest I saw in Maine was 41 at IZG; the north was mid 40s and I had uppers. HIE at 36 seems the coldest outside of MWN.

Afternoon high was a whopping 9F that day, with winds gusting well into the 30s. Tied with the 29th in 1978 for Farmington co-op's coldest November max. It's the only day I can recall when cold wx made me decide to leave the deer rifle alone. Of course, had I been 30-40 years younger I'd have gone out anyway. And for combo winters, I'll take March 2007-Feb 2008.

Both the bridge and the camps/farms were history when we moved to Fort Kent in 1976, though I think it was about then when Robinson Lumber salvaged the bridge steel. At one time the settlement at Seven Islands was sufficiently large and prosperous that, looking back in the late 1970s, the state held that the township (T13R15) had once been organized. If so, the 1,000-acre public lot would have gone to the town and with de-organization, back to the state. The PL was unlocated with the timber and grass rights long since sold to the Pingree heirs - forests managed by Seven Islands Land Company. If that org/de-org had indeed occurred, the Pingrees would've owed the state one-23rd of all timber revenue for the years following the organization of the town. At first 7-I was told to cease harvesting on 13-15, at a time when spruce budworm was killing millions of trees. Instead, the budworm-salvage revenues from there were placed in an escrow account pending the result of research on possible organization. The state-Pingree trade in 1984 made it moot, with a bunch of public lots both located and unlocated going to the Pingrees and large acreage going to the state, including what is now Parks and Lands' Eagle Lake and Richardson tracts.

Oak wilt is bad in PA, will probably arrive in NNE in the future. There's evidence that a useful minority of white ash are resistant or tolerant with EAB, while green ash and brown ash have shown no such traits. In the wild, green ash isn't common in NNE though often seen as street plantings; it's far more common (or was) in the Midwest. Brown ash is a far less prominent part of the NNE forest than white, but exceedingly important for indigenous peoples, culturally and economically.

Is there any "blond-ing" of the bark? Woodpeckers cause that as they feed on the larvae. It can be caused by critters other than EAB but if it's not present it's almost certain that EAB isn't the culprit. If the ash are large and tall, some dieback would mean those trees are beginning to fade. Since there's no better wood to cut today and burn tomorrow than white ash, you might want it for your early wood while the maples and beech season a bit. Edit: 30° at MWN at 8 AM.

True Sept furnaces are uncommon for NNE - last one here was 2002, though the 4th-week mid-upper 80s in 2007 and 2017 felt about the same.

The Depot-to-Round Pond fracas was nearly 40 years ago. You're the first person I've read about on this forum who worked in that country, making me a bit curious. Used to be no thru roads from the Blanchet Road to Reality west of the St. John, so I've not seen that burntland country.

2° departure in January is essentially a normal month. Let me know when it's +/-5 or more. In July 2° is significant. (But you knew that.)

Jan. 1994 might be even more stark.

CAR's big heat was 3rd week of June - they tied their all time high of 96 on 6/19. Their 1st 96 was 6/29/1944 and 2nd was 5/22/1977. Both '77 and this year had 95s next to their 96s. record. Comment on VD16 cold - AM was colder but I'm confident that Christmas 1980 was a colder day overall despite the cheap 12:01 max. Did Boston even get above zero that afternoon? At least as windy as 2016, too. And even more anomalous farther north. First CT Lake had 7 AM obs time which preserved their afternoon max of -24, which is the coldest I've seen in the Northeast below 6,000'.

Probably less hazardous than that but still risky, Public Lands had new cabs placed by helicopter atop 3 existing fire towers in northern Maine, Allagash Mountain (near Allagash Lake), Round Pond Mountain and Deboullie. Folks on the towers had to help guide the placements and do the fastening - glad I wasn't one of them. When the next Parks and Lands newsletter comes out, probably next week, it will include pics. The Round Pond tower has an interesting (and kind of silly) history. Some users of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway objected vigorously to seeing that manmade object as they crossed the pond. So Maine Forest service was tasked to get rid of it and did so the easy "redneck" way - remove the hold-down bolts on one side, place a stick of dynamite next to those 2 corners, easy-peasey. Of course, the next year other AWW travelers said that it was terrible that a piece of history had been destroyed by those dumb state people. That resulted in the no-longer-used Depot Mountain tower on T13R16 (a border twp 25 miles to the west) being carefully disassembled and moved to Round Pond, at slightly more expense than was needed to blow the original tower off the summit. (There's an old fable about a man trying to please everybody but ending up by pleasing nobody.)

We had 2 days in Iceland on the way to our time in Norway, though we never got farther than the Golden Circle tour. Spectacular scenery but in a different way than Norway and this forester would chafe at the scarcity of trees taller than 5 feet. On that GC tour the host said, "If you're lost in an Iceland forest, stand up!"

My 5-minute shower grew up just to my east and is now a warned storm, along with one that missed me to the south. Getting a light shower from the 2nd line, which appears to be falling apart as it moves eastward.

The Kousa should be fine in the sun; it's Cornus florida that prefers partial shade.