tamarack

Odd to see one growing on a slant, as they're about the straightest and most vertical of all deciduous trees, though like all of that group it will tilt toward the sun if shaded on one side. Five feet in diameter? Which lake - there's a bunch in that corner of the state.

Hard to get the right scale, but it might be large enough (significantly bigger than hornets/yellowjackets) to be a wood wasp. They're solitary and non-stinging.

Not as good in Maine but still decent. Not interested in solar, would need to cut loads of trees and make frequent roof trips to clear off the snow. We're exploring the heat pump option, more for AC than for heat, in part because the only place for installation (without removing windows, cabinets or both) is 10-12' from the woodstove.

Thanks for the full context; I was writing from memory. My semi-quotes came from the KJV. Both are reliable versions.

Reminds me of a parable in Luke's Gospel. Paraphrasing it very loosely, a man has crop yields too great to fit in his barns, so he decides to tear them down and build bigger. He thinks that then he'll be all set for years and years. But God says, "Thou fool!" and says the man's life ends that very night, "and whose will be your goods now?"

More likely the owners didn't want to be associated with the poor folks who can only afford $5 million mansions.

"Safe" in this context is relative. The science says that wearing masks greatly reduces the chances of getting COVID-19 but I've not heard any science that says it totally eliminates the chances. Sitting in a poorly ventilated room (typical of many small-town voting places) for 8 hours while hundreds of people file by multiplies the "greatly reduce[d]" chances. Volunteers in our town are generally dedicated and will be there, but reducing the number of folks parading past the registry table can only help. Edit: 'Berg nicely describes the "lock the gate behind me" syndrome.

Depends on how one does it. When "phase 2" arrived in June, meetings of up to 50 people were okayed, with masks and/or distancing. Our pews are tape-blocked such that differing family groups sit 6+ feet apart and families with younger kids view the service remotely from a downstairs room to ensure <50. We do sing hymns, but those with louder voices (like me) mask up to sing. Choir has not yet resumed - we had hoped to present our Easter program for the church's 40th anniversary in June - no go - so now were looking at December and doing it as the Christmas program as the material works for either holiday. I'm not real confident it will go completely, maybe just the spoken parts w/o the choir. Just common sense.

With the new town hall just beginning to be built and no sizable place in town to vote, a social-distanced queue of more than 10 people will have most standing outside. November can be messy, even during the 1st week. Because of that and our ages, my wife and I will vote absentee but hand-deliver our ballots before the crowds arrive on election day. Killington folks gone wild And it may be just beginning. Less than 30 of the 65 guests at the infamous Millinocket wedding early last month got the virus, but with secondary/tertiary infections the total related positives is probably approaching 140, with 66 in the York County jail alone. When it was 54 the cases included 19 staff and 35 prisoners. Yikes!

That's almost too narrow for a kick turn. I thought that Scotch Mist (Glen Ellen's name for the upper lift line at Sugarbush North) was a pucker-power trail, but it's about twice as wide. And though it's steep, it may not be as vertical as that chute, though it has a number of very hard vertical obstacles down the middle. Back when Glen Ellen was a thing I got to where I could ski some black diamonds, but would never set a ski on that one.

As a NJ expat I can relate. However, in 47+ years in Maine only once have I had someone take issue with my being from away, and he was a politician with an axe to grind. CTS (consider the source.) I've never expected to be considered a native, however. Unlike what Skivt2 posted about born in VT vs growing up there, in Maine there's still some of the "Those kittens being born in the oven doesn't make them biscuits", or as a (humorist) Tim Sample fictional routine, "Chester Gormley was 6 months old when he and his family moved to Maine. All his adult life he could never understand why folks considered him to be from away. When he died at age 97, his tombstone was inscribed 'He was almost one of us.'"

Finally floated the canoe in North Pond (Belgrade Lakes.) Lots of small white perch but I was after what's eating fish that size. Never a bad day on the lake. - saw a fawn bouncing thru the brush next to a shoreline lawn and had a large snapping turtle surface within 5 yards of me, twice. Water is cloudy with algae so couldn't see the whole animal but its head looked like the 40-pounders I caught in NNJ eons ago.

Highest I've seen, and that part of eastern Maine was the jack (for the US, might've dumped more in New Brunswick.)

About 25 miles to the NE from Lee, Orient reported 14". They're on the border with Canada, right where the squiggly border (East Grand Lake and trib) turns toward the north. Missed all the squalls, as they slid south while the precip that dumped on NE Maine stayed just to my north. However, 3.2" on May 9 warrants no weenie complaints.

Last time NYC had a sub-40 temp in May was 1978. Last time they had 34° as late as 5/9 was...never, at least not since Central Park began keeping records in 1869. Still flakes in the air (and not just from the trees dumping) but accum is done unless we get a squall later. WCI's about 20 (teens in Aroostook) - happy May!

Cool! IMO, 6"+ icicles on May 9 is more rare that 6" of snow in May. Finished with 3.2", with the 1.2" after 7 AM only 0.07" LE - 17:1 snow in May. If the Farmington co-op git as much as here, it would be their biggest May snowfall in 57 years and 4th biggest ever measured, POR 127 years. If the changeover to snow had occurred at 10 PM instead of 2-3 AM, we'd probably have had closer to 5", but still the biggest May snowfall I've seen.

Back to S- with small flakes, another 1" of fluff since 7 for 3" total, more than any May snow in my 10 years in Fort Kent. (Though had I still been there in 1996, my 970' location would've had 10+ on Mother's Day weekend.)

2.0" of 9:1 snow at 7 AM (after 0.15" of RA/mix that didn't stay on the board.) Nicest dendrites yet now drifting down, and temp just dropped a degree.

22" and 9+ pounds - that's a really fat fish! (Though the estimator equation - length*girth*girth divided by 800 - works out to 9.9 lb.) Many years ago (the year Lauri Rapala's lures became widely available in the US) I caught a non-skinny 22" largemouth that weighed 5 1/8 pounds from the nearby NNJ lake.

57058 for NYC metro was much AN: NYC Oak Ridge Reservoir (35 miles NW from NYC) DEC 8.7 14.0 JAN 9.2 6.9 FEB 10.7 25.5 Cold storm of 16-17: 7.9" NYC, 19.0" Oak R MAR 15.9 42.0 Paste bomb 20-21: 11.8" NYC, 28.0" Oak R (Pastie on the 14th: 4.1 and 13.0 respectively) APR 0.2 4.5 TOT 44.7 92.9 % Avg 155% 215% 3rd of 63 Rank 27th of 151 (and easily tops for the futile '50s; only 55-56 had more than half as much.) Had some family drama resulting from the equinoctial storm, but that's another story.

I've seen 2 such >22" events in 22 winters here, 12/03 and 2/09, and have to go back to 1984 (in Fort Kent) to find another one. Unless you're at Stowe or Jay Peak, or in prime LES country, that kind of dump isn't coming every winter.

"Relatively" being the operative term, as 22.4" (Philly's 4th biggest) isn't too shabby.

Full whiff up here from Jan '16. My 1st (of 3 lifetime) thundersnow came 12/24/1966. I learned 2 things that day as I was out hunting in NNJ - first, that 345 KV powerlines are hot (temp-wise) as I could hear flakes "popping" as I walked the edge of the R-O-W. 2nd one took 2 booms to convince me, as #1 merely confused - "It can't thunder during snow, can it?" After the 2nd and louder one my thought was "This is going to be something special." By then we had SN+ and 4-5" new, and the storm finished about 15".

2" in the foothills. That season had no snows greater than 3.4" thru Feb 9, then 21" with some thunder on 10-11 plus 5 more storms for another 39" thru March 12.

I've read and heard from more reliable sources that arson is suspected in a number of the Australian wildfires. That doesn't change the fact that abnormally hot and dry weather (at a time when climo is already hot and dry) is making those fires far more catastrophic than they would be with normal weather, and far harsher to those trying to control the fires.