tamarack

After a snowy December and several early January snowstorms (though little from the huge MA blizzard), NNE had 3 warm rain events dump a total of about 4" in 10 days. Farmington co-op had a 40" pack drop to 8", truly freakish for what's normally the coldest stretch of winter. Some ice jam flooding along the Sandy River too.

The woods pic reminds me of when we drove thru LES on I-80 in western PA early in 2012. That was the view of the thick stand of trees on the median, though I didn't dare more than a quick peek. We could see the 4-ways on the car ahead of us but sometimes not the flashers on the next one in line. I guessed 6"-per in that one but obviously couldn't verify.

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.

I'd have thought that 2-3,000' falling thru mid 20s would freeze the raindrops solid, but those in the know say ZR.

Great fun reading about this event. We escaped without a flake, as there was a wide gap between lighter SN to the north and the whiteouts to the south.

Hoping for IP. That saved my current woodlot in 1998 - it took some damage but probably less on the 62 forested acres here than on the 0.8 acre house lot in Gardiner where we were living when that storm hit. Zero IP there. (And not just worse on a per-acre basis, but less total tree damage.)

Maybe a bit more frequent for me. For my area where winter is pretty consistent with regular snowfall, I'm defining "ratter" as <75% average snow and significantly AN temps for DJFM. That omits 02-03, which met the snow criterion but was very cold. Winters meeting those criteria are 99-00, 01-02, 05-06, 09-10, 11-12, 15-16, so 6 of 21. Worst were 05-06 and 15-16 (10-year repeat?) 09-10 had 15-20" more snow than those 2, but is in the race to the bottom due to the frustration factor - 4 EC KUs that winter, and we got 3 whiffs and #4 was the most unpleasant double-digit snowstorm I ever hope to see, Edit: I think 75" would be close to long-term climo for your site, about 20% higher than PWM.

If those are nickels and dimes, my area must be getting ha'pennies. This morning's half inch (maybe 3/4 by the time it ended) marks the 4th snow event of the new year here, and they total about 3", not 14. Keeps the surface looking fresh, at least, though the weekend may leave a bedraggled pack topped by a few IP.

Midpoint for HDDs at my place is Jan. 21, though for heating purposes it's probably a week earlier due to increasing 2nd-half help from the sun. Midpoint for snowfall is currently Feb. 1. Though I'm in a colder climate than that of most New England sub-forum posters, the relationships elsewhere in the region should be similar.

The analog to the Tolland Triangle on I-84 has struck again on I-95 between Newport and BGR. About 30 vehicles in a chain reaction accident this AM, evidently due to blinding sun, with the northbound lane totally closed (may have reopened by now) and hundreds of vehicles stuck behind the mess. It's 5-10 miles north of where nearly 100 cars and trucks wrecked when hit by a sudden snowburst from an otherwise weak storm 4 years ago. At least one serious injury in today's mess, life flighted to a BGR hospital, and several lesser injuries.

You are correct, sir! With relatives in Hawaii and Japan, neither of which observe daylight savings, I'm perpetually confused about what time it is.

2 AM, not that it makes much difference. Looking at recent GFS run sequences is producing whiplash. Repeat of March 2011, when NVT got buried and Eustis had 19" while 40 miles away I had 2" IP followed by outage-producing ZR? (This following rainy 40s the day before.)

In 2 days GFS has gone from 50s RA to a high qpf event going thru RA and ZR/IP to serious SN and back to 50s RA with maybe a dusting at the end.

Very modest "extremes" in temp the past 2 months. My mildest since Nov. 5 is 46, and except for the brief -9 on 12/21 my coldest has been -2. Since my current average minimum is 6° and 2 weeks from now will be 2°, temps have been AN and meh, especially since early December. Another little snow event yesterday, quite different from the day before. That earlier one was RA to SN, an inch of 10:1 that frosted the twigs. Yesterday it was 1.1" from 0.04" LE in dry flakes and evening feathers. Maybe 3 +/- one-inch events in 4 days with tomorrow's entry?

Perhaps the most awesome inversion I've seen from GFS - can't recall ever seeing modeled temps colder at H9 than at H5 (and 13C below H8 for AUG.) Verbatim AUG's 1.5" qpf looks 1/4 RA, 1/4 ZR/IP, 1/2 SN in that order. Highly doubt that sequence.

We hear a great horned on occasion but have yet to see one here. Barred owls, and saw-whets during the milder seasons, make up 95%+ of owl calls heard around home. On T-Day (or near it) we had a barred owl sit like Mitch's pic but in a hardwood tree for an hour or so until some blue jays mobbed it and it left.

October 1947 in Maine - 25° cooler but same situation. The CF turns winds from SW to NW, so that the fire's left flank (as one sees from in front) suddenly becomes the head. Very dangerous, and since a typical large fire has wider flanks than its head, strong wind plus wider head often means disaster. I read 500,000 animals dead, not sure how they came up with that stat but some of the videos are heartbreaking Wildlife biologists usually make estimates of animal populations. That plus burn area offers a very rough estimate of casualties.

Top ten Decembers I've measured, from a variety of places: 1. 61.5" 1976 Fort Kent 2. 47.3" 1978 Fort Kent 3. 46.2" 2007 New Sharon 4. 46.1" 1981 Fort Kent 5. 44.8" 1983 Fort Kent 6. 43.2" 1995 Gardiner 7. 39.9" 2016 New Sharon 8. 38.4" 2003 New Sharon 9. 34.6" 1977 Fort Kent 10. 32.3" 1984 Fort Kent My 9 Decembers in Fort Kent averaged 36.4" and I never had 40+ in another month there - 39.5" in Jan. 1977 is closest. #11 is either 2013 in New Sharon or 1966 in NNJ, each about 31". This year's 15.9" ranks 13th of 22 here, 26th of 47 since moving to Maine. (Add NNJ, using sites near where I lived, makes this year 31st of 73 - yay, top half!)

My average low temp dropped into single digits just after Christmas, and the last 6 days have not even gotten below 20 - will be 7 with today and may not end until Monday. For grins (and groans) I compared those 6 days to the same dates 2 years ago: 16-17: 1.8/-23.2/-10.7; 28.6° BN 19-20: 32.5/21.3/26.9; 9.0° AN Highs 31° milder, lows 44.5° milder.

Top 20 on Kevin W's table include 9 from MA, 5 from NH, 4 from VT, and 2 lonely ones from Maine - South Portland and Portland (of course!)

Coastal sites don't even need a BD for crazy temp swings (in this case, upward) - early in April 2010 a wind shift from E to SW rocketed temps in PWM from 59 to 84 in 15 minutes.

Ellsworth was his home, IIRC, about 10 miles NE of Blue Hill. Demand. If you can offer higher resolution, in my backyard type forecasts that's what people are going to want. And we don't have the computing power to run two versions. And running a coarse model and downscaling it to 13 km isn't really helping improve things either. Probably way too simplistic, but if those resolution numbers represent square "pixels" then 13km offers about 38 times as many bust opportunities as does 80.

70.027W here. Not sure exactly where on CC/ACK those two live. And Borderwx take the north trophy. We've had some people from Ft Kent and Eastport in the past. When I joined Eastern in March 2005 the fellow in Fort Kent was posting some impressive snow pics, with more from the post-Christmas 3-footer that year. I think he moved sometime after 05-06. Don't recall any posts from EPO. Either I missed them or they came prior to 3/05.

I'm about 42 miles north of Jeff and at 390' a bit higher, and 57 miles NNE of (though 300+ lower than) Lava Rock. No elevational help here and longitude can be good or bad depending on track, but topography makes the Maine foothills perhaps the CAD kings of New England.

Sadly true - I'm at approx. 44.66 N. Don't know exactly where PF's and Alex's homes are, but using 1.2 miles per (latitude) minute, I'd guess I'm 10-15 miles N of PF, maybe twice that far N of Alex. We used to have posters from Aroostook and more recently one from the BGR area. By far the biggest geographical hole in the New England sub-forum is the northern 2/3 of Maine. That's about 30% of NE's area though probably less than 3% of the population.