tamarack

Different world in the St. John Valley - different time too. On 3/14/84 Fort Kent sent the kids home at noon with 12-14 new and 3"/hr and everyone made it home safely, even those from Winterville, nearly 30 hilly miles down Route 11. Storm dumped 24-30 total. All IP here since precip amped up just before 9 AM, currently heaviest it's been, with a bit of wind to rattle chunks off the windows. Well over 1" of ball bearings making for interesting walking. 4-5" or more SN "wasted", but far far preferable to ZR.

I assign letter grades that score 4/3/2/1/0 for A/B/C/D/F with .33/.67 for x+ or x-, and weight snow grades twice as much as temp grades. There's also subjective(*) adjustments for pack, really big snows (or lack of them) and all-time records (3/01 for snow, 2/15 for temp) get a 5, like an A+++. (*) Of course it's ALL subjective.

Yesterday afternoon the GYX "90%/most likely/10%" line for Farmington was 4/9/10. This morning, with just 0.06" zr in between, the line is 1/2/6. Oops - looks like things shifted about 75 miles NW. Tiny IP began here about 8:45, far preferable to zr.

Today's 3-5 (yesterday's late forecast) is now 1-3, and my guess is a tenth or 2 of zr, 1/2" IP, then a windblown dusting and good-bye. A warned event that might not even reach advisory criteria. Maybe about the 10th power outage since the equinox thanks to the NW gales - can't recall a cold season with even 3 in our 21+ years here.

Odd sequence for this event - 1.5" of 20:1 fluff in 2 pre-dawn hours yesterday then 1.0" of 6:1 tiny-rimeys during the day, and perhaps 0.05" of zr overnight (bucket is warming near the stove.) GYX says 1-3 today, very little this evening and 5-8 for the 2-day total, down from 6-10 last evening. I don't think we'll even get to the 5. State offices are closed, though I think that a 2-hour delay to let the salt-sand folks do their thing would've been appropriate.

Jan '19 I had sleet at -2, a completely new experience and probably why I had 2" less snow than the Farmington co-op 6 miles to my west. Headed out to see what's stuck to the pickup - watching someone else clearing his rig makes it appear that zr hasn't reached AUG, or at least had any effect yet.

Fickle for sure. In 1981 CAR was 14.5° AN for the month of February, with the 10 days 16-25 all at least +20 and averaging +26. Blew away the season? The week after the equinox featured absolutely cloudless skies, calm winds, mornings of low singles to low teens and afternoons 40 to 50. The sugaries couldn't boil fast enough, and a year-plus later they were still selling '81 product (at the best price I ever paid for syrup.)

A long time forester and old-growth specialist with experience in the NNE mountains commented following the 1998 ice storm that serious tree damage began at the 20 mm mark. That has to be the flat surface, because a radial mark of 20 mm would be a repeat of 1998 in the WVL-AUG-Gardiner area. Twigs plus ice reached 1.5-2" diameter in that part of the state.

That's the official method but I find it counterintuitive. If my bent-over gray birch has 1st-year twigs (among the skinniest of any tree) having ice the diameter of a hot dog, calling it 0.3" accretion doesn't seem to make sense. If there were 1" precip with extremely efficient accretion, the max for the record could be no greater than 1/2"? (Not that I expect any change in the standard.) Or what T4S said.

At 6:30 cleared 1.5" of 20:1 fluff from the board, had really pretty sparkling dendrites floating down at 5 AM. No issues with the commute to Augusta, where it's been light/very light SN, maybe 1/2" in the 2 hours since getting here.

Adding up the 4 periods Thursday daytime thru Fri night, both Fort Kent and CAR show 14-26", about 3/4 coming Fri/Fri night. Farther south, GYX puts my zone at 6-9 with the next zone north 9-16.

That's what happened at my place, that and probably a thinner cold layer. QPF and surface temps were nearly identical between ORH and my place and we got at most 0.2" accretion. NOT complaining!!!

At least it's not a 2010 repeat (yet) when I had 46 straight AN days in Feb-Mar and 64 of 67 AN thru April 13. JFMA, averaged +6. That's significant for a single month, bizarre for one-third of a year.

'Till Lucy pulls the ball away? Goofus still has AUG reaching upper 40s Fri.

Also down by 7-8" here, and season's biggest is 7.0". 46 of my 47 previous Maine winters have had at least one snowfall greater than that, and while late week may close the deficit a bit I don't think it's a threat to that 7" peak.

Rain to Greenville, ice to Clayton Lake. Not likely, though GYX is kind of bearish - sub-advisory SN (1-3) Thursday then mostly RA Friday south of the mts. That would leave my snowpack about where it is now - was hoping for a little gain.

BDL's long term average is 49.3" and they're 3" above that for the past 20 years. That's at about 170' asl and I think Ginxy has significantly more elevation.

lol I like real cold, though I no longer go on the ice when it's subzero, for one reason it's a pain tending to my topwater traps. Saturday was just about perfect, cloudy so no glare, almost no wind, only a little skimming needed. (And some cooperative fish) If the summer is coc and 70's all July, for ex, should people be outraged and having fits? Would not be the least bit upset, though the cukes wouldn't like it. Not happening, so it's idle thinking.

Hope you weren't driving that speed as you went thru PQI/Mars Hill/Bridgewater/etc. From HUL south it's pedal to the metal.

He's maybe 450 from where I-95 enters Aroostook at Sherman, and there's good trails nearby in the greater Patten area. Ashland/PQI are 60-80 miles beyond.

1953? 12z GFS changed a nice hit to muckymess all the way to Moosehead. D5 storms have been adept at slip-sliding away.

There are way fewer logging camps now as both American and Canadian crews prefer going home each night and access has improved to make that practical. Those border mills in Quebec began sawing American trees a century ago or more, at least a generation before Pinkham and Levesque built mills in the Ashland, Maine area, giving those PQ mills an advantage in marketing and sawmill efficiency. Also, much of the forest lies considerably closer to those mills than to the ones in Maine. For example, wood west of the Allagash on the Round Pond public lot is 25-30 miles from the St.-Pamphile mills and 70-75 (against most loaded log truck traffic) from the Maine mills so spruce-fir and cedar go west while hardwoods come east.

Very true, even though nearly all that area is managed forest and well roaded, though less than half get plowed in an average winter.

I tried deleting your highest and lowest winters (kind of like Olympic diving judges) and the other 11 averaged 159.2", so 160 is looking good. January stats/averages: Max: 30.00 4.51 AN. Mildest was 50 on the 11th, tied with 3 other days for 2nd mildest behind the 56 on 1/8/08. Min: 10.68 6.90 AN. Coldest was -17 on the 18th. Mean: 20.34 5.71 AN and 4th mildest of 22 Mildest mean was 38.5 on the 11th, coldest -2.5 on the 18th. Precip: 2.64" 0.57" BN, greatest day, 0.76" on the 12th. Snow: 15.6" 4.0" BN, greatest day 4.8" on the 16th. Greatest depth was 16" on the 19th and average was 10.9", 1.2" BN. Kind of a meh month, as was December. Hope February is more interesting.

The rocks on Katahdin tend to be solid though the frost can loosen some. When I was on Oahu (lower elevations only) in 2016 the volcanic rocks looked rather crumbly, which would certainly up the degree of difficulty. Amazingly, I've not heard of fatalities or major injuries from falls off the Knife Edge, though a winter climber died (1978?) when the group was hit by a sudden though forecast drop into the -30s with Cat 1 winds, and 2 died in October 1963 when the first tried coming down Chimney Ravine, got stuck so a park ranger climbed up to help, and they both perished as the tail of a tropical storm brought cold, wind and snow. It was May before the bodies were recovered. And I have to admit that Knife Edge looks scarier now than it did in 1973 when I was trotting on the easier sections between Baxter and South Peak. The real challenge was at Chimney Peak, where a group was halted while climbing the (easier) west side due to a panicky hiker. I went around them but when I reached Pamola and looked back the clouds were rolling in so I needed to get back to dad and head down ASAP. Unfortunately, that group was descending the east face of Chimney and the scared hiker was spread immobile across the trail like a starfish. Being young and stupid (I'm no longer young ) I did the go-around once more, a move which included hanging over a 100'+ drop without protection. The double traverse took me 1:50 for the 2 miles, and we hit rain just after we passed Thoreau Spring on the way down. Dad had hiked his scout troop over all the AT in NNJ and SNY so climbing the trail's northerly 5 miles was a lifetime goal.