tamarack

Three homes on our 2000' of dead-end (in winter) road - guess who's tail-end Charlie for power restoration. (As long as nothing gets wrecked within that 2000', we'll be okay.)

We've made a down payment for an on-demand generator but it can't be installed until the underground gas line can be dug. Glad the winter wasn't bitter cold - less frost to thaw.

"Some" people - my lament was for big April snow forecasts that didn't verify, or verified to the south. Of course, the snowblower gas tank is nearly empty. The machine was running on fumes when I finished up the 3/24 dump, and not (then) seeing anything significant coming up, I didn't want to fill the tank only to have to drain it before putting it away later in the month. Anything under 8" this time of year doesn't warrant using the blower, the trade-off being a few hours of waiting compared to hurling more driveway material onto the lawn.

They got something like 17" on April 28-29, 1987. Only about 7" for central Maine and the foothills.

Getting close enough to almost be real. April storm forecasts 3-4 days out have been fails in recent years - 2016 and 2017.1 slipped south - and even WS warned storms have underperformed here - 2017.2 and last April. GYX's 90%/expected/10% last evening for Farmington was <1"/4"/14", crazy wide range though understandable for a tightrope April event. This morning it's 4"/10"/15" and spots in the western mts have significant (>10%) odds of 18"+. Could get interesting, could miss by 1°C or a few mb less strengthening and be a total slopfest under 1000'.

They've not done all that great this snow season. Both are significantly BN and haven't gotten any storms near to what parts of SNE had in early DEC. Rangeley's biggest is 10" and while Jackman got 13 from that same end of Feb event, they had a near whiff on the Mar 23-24 storm, 1.4" while the foothills were +/-10". A later bombo might leave them short on qpf and jack the hills of northern Washington County (and NB.)

Not impossible that it could dump similar snowfall in places, but as the maps posted by ma blizzard show, a totally different animal. Instead of the usual wet April snow like this one will be (at best), 1982 was midwinter powder. From NYC, which has nothing else like it in their 151 Aprils, up thru CAR, that storm had a degree of anomaly that I would put behind only 9/38, 6/53 and the Octobomb for New England events. (Also the greatest positive bust I ever expect to witness. )

Some of the sweatiest I've been in subzero temps was while helping to break trail in deep powder. Done it the leap-frog way several times, and once on a hill climb near Hafey Mt (15miles north of Allagash Village) using the sled-snowshoe method. I had the racquets as I was the heavier one (by far) and had maybe 1% the snowmobile experience of my chum. So I headed up the unplowed road and when I'd hear the buzz approach, step aside. Rider would get another 100' then paunch it, I'd slog up to help turn the sled downhill, then he'd ride down and do a u-turn while I continued up. Wash, rinse, repeat- for a bit over a half mile and 270' elevation gain, about 10% climb. Finally we reached a plateau and he was able to ride all the way to the town line post where we would work on boundary maintenance the next day, on flat to slightly downhill terrain. After spending an exhausting hour-plus at the end of a long day, we took less than 10 easy minutes the next day getting to our starting point and refreshed 2+ miles of line, about twice the normal day's distance.

CAR is AN but Jackman is about 15" BN for ytd and Rangeley 21" BN. If they get another 24" and 31", respectively, they'll hit the averages.

In Diamond Pond's 13 full winters (98-99 thru 10-11) the average was exactly 230", to the tenths, and they recorded 15 events of 20"-36" with at least one in 9 of 13 seasons. Their "worst" winter was 09-10 with a paltry 181.7". Pack never was measured higher than 56", but I think they must've been in a windy locale as many sizable snows at well below 32 brought minimal increase in depth. Edit: The above table is slightly different from the numbers I found, but not enough to matter.

A few miles farther east might be preferable this late in the season. Also, the Euro slp map you posted puts the center closer to Isles of Shoals, which would probably mean a howling flooding 35° northeaster for my area. how close are you to average? 8" below. Here it's 17" under, and only one April of my 22 here has topped that amount. (2007, which dumped more than double!)

One page 1 of this thread Will mentioned Dallas Plantation, and if I were looking for a ski-oriented site in the western Maine mountains that would be one of the first places to check. Prices should be considerably lower than in Rangeley (stay away from Saddleback Lake) and much of the township would offer views of the Saddleback trails. It's also on the way to Sugarloaf, and though that hill would be only 10-15 miles away, Crocker Mountain (pretty in its own right) would block the view.

In the 8 Aprils since the 4/1/11 dump, our area has had that kind of forecast 4-5 times without any reaching even 4", so seeing would be believing. Ice is out early up here on two of the lakes I fish, Guess I’ll have to wait to see what happens late week, Was planning to go this weekend. Long Pond in Belgrade is about 2/3 clear with only the N and S coves remaining, and the ice there is all black and probably won't survive today's sunny 50s. The near-2" RA followed by Sat-Sun 50s took a 10" pack down to "trace" by last evening, ending the run of 1"+ at 146 days, not bad for a warm winter with 20% BN snowfall. Getting 20+ days in November helps.

Mreaves is on the right track. The state forester can discuss your objectives with the land and offer some insight on the possibilities offered by your forest. That person won't run your timber sale (at least not in Maine, probably not in VT/NH either) but can point you to reputable private consulting foresters. A number of surveys have consistently demonstrated that timber sales with forester supervision result in a more valuable residual forest and bring more revenue to landowners than jobs without forester input. As a long time forester I was able (and eager) to write my own management plan and mark all the trees to be cut, but for my timber harvest 7 years ago I worked with a forestry company with better connections to markets and loggers than I'll ever have.

The co-op in Hartford (Maine, of course) averages nearly 110" at 745' elev, though its POR is only 22 years. It's about 20 miles NNW from LEW and less that 10 miles from Route 26 in West Paris. That highway goes right to the access road for SR, maybe an hour from Hartford, depending where one is in the town. Probably not a whole lot farther from Wildcat. The Sumner Hills (of which Hartford is a part) are notable snow catchers.

3-pounders. Those are big bugs. 1st burgers on the grill here in a couple hours. Clouds moving in after 6 hours of mostly sunny.

Surprising sunlight here, and snow atop the overwintered carrots was thin enough for me to move it (and the leaf mulch beneath) and dig. Broke a couple with the garden fork but they are super tasty after sleeping all winter.

If Seven Islands has timber harvesting on C-Town or we (Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands) have a job on the lower half of Richardsontown, the South Arm Road will be plowed all winter, otherwise it's a sled trail. The downside of it being plowed is that you WILL meet logging trucks and the road isn't all that straight, or wide.

Some place in Roxbury (between Rangeley and Rumford) might make sense. For snow you would want to be up and away from Rt 17, the main road thru town. That road gets above 2400' on D-Town and Rangeley Plantation but that's all commercial forest land and they're not about to sell 30 acres. Where people live south of height of land (and its beautiful view from the turn-out) you could still find land above 1500' for triple-digit average snow. If in Rangeley, look for something away from the lakes - prices there could crater by 50% and they would still be hideous.

I'm about 30' lower than the Farmington co-op, but we're in the woods. Our "lawn" covers perhaps 1/20 acre with 50-70' trees to the SE and SW, though most are deciduous. Cold air drains down from the SW-facing field across the road and stops at our place, other than what can filter into the woods. It's about perfect for retention, given the modest elevation. Only 3" left this morning as nearly 2" RA took most away. If you reach Farmington via Route 27 from Augusta, the real snow catcher is Mile Hill - road gets a bit over 800' along the "plateau", which is on gently east facing slope. The town/county sign is about 2/3 of the way up the south side of the hill. (It's named for the length of the north-facing hill, which drops about 300' in that mile.) If you check out cocorahs, look for the obs from Temple, especially in borderline snow events. That observer is at 1,224', which can result in some interesting reports. In the late Feb mashed potato mess of 2010, the Farmington co-op had 8.8" and Temple 26.4", only about 6 miles away. (And 800' higher) Edit: Yesterday morning I reported 7" to cocorahs. The Temple observer had 18" - not surprising.

Kennebec flood warning posted at Skowhegan, though the forecast peak is only 101% of flood flow. I guess if it rings the bell the warning gets posted, whether the overage is 400 cfs (like now) or 40,000. If it crests at 35.4 up there, it's unlikely to reach flood stage in Augusta as the heaviest rain was on drainages north and west of Skowhegan.

March snowfall here (15.5") was below the mean of 17.5" but above the median of 14.9" - getting 55.5" in 3/01 skews the average a bit. Ground's been white from 11/11 onward but with only 7" this morning it's only got a few more days. Current consecutive run is 145 days, and amazingly given the quality of this winter, that trails only last winter and is 4th for total 1"+ days. We'll pass 2002-03 (another low-snow winter, but due to suppression) on Sunday and would tie 2014-15 at 150 if the cover survives until Wednesday evening - I think not. SDDs are well below both average and median, same as 02-03 though we're a bit higher than that winter.

25 hr of continuous RA thru 7 this morning for 1.83" total, maybe another tenth after that. Yesterday's temps 39/33, classic early spring blecchh. However, that was the first >32 minimum since Nov. 5. Not much coming down here in AUG but a lot of air moving sideways.

Signs of spring this week, other than the usual cold rain: --Wednesday morning - turkey gobbling just out of sight in the field across from the house. --Thursday (and especially this morning) - Worms on the sidewalk, means the ground has thawed enough that the rain drives the poor critters up for air. Storm total precip (all RA) was 1.83" at my place thru 7 this morning. Probably not quite enough to enable the Kennebec to wash the west-shore parking lots in Augusta.

That might excite the Kennebec a little bit.