tamarack

Lesser Antilles, next August. Good to see an active start to the year after a sort-of-Grinch for Christmas. (No rainer but some snow-settling temps and lots of meh)

0.2" on the board this morning. Trees still loaded from yesterday's 7" but forecast winds later today should empty everything more than 20' from the ground.

6.5" total by noon moves Dc to 15.4", still 4" BN but no longer a disaster and may have picked up a tenth or two after that. With Novie's 8.4" the season is within 1.1" of my average thru 12/31.

GPS is great, but its use should be enhanced by another 3-letter term: M A P

7 AM temps listed on GYX's site showed LEW at 25, next coolest were PWM and FVE at 31. Lewiston: The state's new cold pole. About 10° cooler than my frost-pocket location.

Power back on as of about 30 minutes ago - yay! From my wife's description, seems like someone eastbound on Route 2 failed to negotiate a left turn in Farmington Falls. She saw the nice new pole and the CMP crew just departing.

Power went out at home sometime between 6:30 when I headed for work and 8 AM, almost certainly due to vehicle/utility pole incident(s), as there's been far to little precip for accretion to damage trees. Stuff was just beginning as I headed south, roads were getting that telltale "dull gleam" of ice for the first 10 miles, though I had no issues, then dry roads south of Belgrade Village. Glad I set out when I did; 30 minutes later might have had a different outcome.

With 5" OG, yesterday made it 19-of-22 meeting the traditional definition of white Christmas. Using Forky's preference it's 2-of-22. 84% vs. 9%.

Great link. Noted that Chimney Pond had taken the Maine depth record with 94" in Feb. 2017. Before, I'd not seen anything above Farmington's 84" in Feb. 1969. Fitting that the state record should be near Katahdin at about 3,000' instead of at 420' next to Route 27. Last evening's temp had the biggest pre-CF-mixing boost I can recall - was 26-27 at 6:30 and a windy 39 by 9, where it stayed for nearly 2 hr before starting to slide down back toward this morning's mid-upper 20s.

Hard to choose here in the foothills. Using calendar years (mostly), 2000-09 averaged 92.4" while 2010-19 had 91.6" with perhaps a bit to be added in the next 8 days, though not the 8" it would take to match 00-09. --00-09 and 10-19 each had 4 years with 100"+, though curiously the 10 seasons 99-00 thru 08-09 had only 3 while 09-10 thru 18-19 did it 6 times. Advantage 10-19. --My top 3 calendar years are 2007, 2008, and 2001 in that order. (Seasons: It's 07-08, 00-01 and 16-17 in that order.) Advantage 00-09. --My 2 largest snowfalls came 12/6-7/03 and 2/22-23/09. Of the top 10, 6 came 00-09, top 20 had 12 in 00-09. Advantage 00-09 --00-09 (actually 99-00 thru 08-09) had 2 ratters, 3 meh winters, 5 good ones including the two snowiest. 09-10 thru 18-19 had 3 ratters, one meh, and 6 good winters. Advantage 10-19. For extreme events, it's 00-09. For consistency, it's 10-19. For snowpack, 10-19 leads in days with 1" to 29" while 00-09 is ahead for 30"+ and for average of winter's deepest, 31" to 30". Call it a draw.

I think that 55 was across the river in Troy though ALB must have been similar, and Saratoga was in the same general range. Hudson and lower CT River valleys took the brunt. IMO, that storm's combo of snow, wind and cold is unmatched in records for the Northeast. Have you seen "Blizzard! The great storm of '88" by Judd Caplovich? Lots of info, maps drawn by Kocin, scads of old pics. Only Maine data I've found is for Gardiner, 6 miles south of Augusta, which recorded 8": of paste on a day with a low of 32 - they were too far east for the good stuff. ASH isn't all that far away and they got about 30".

Maine has probably the poorest access to natural gas in the lower 48, hence its use of heating oil (and firewood.) Hydropower is somewhat controversial in the state currently, due to the proposed PQ hydro corridor - lots of info flying around, but the thought of all that juice flowing thru the state with none going directly to its residents doesn't play well in the optics game. Maine burns a lot of biomass as well. Tough economics for a stand-alone biomass-gen plant, but when it's co-gen with a pulp or sawmill the finances look a lot better.

Batted .500 on the March quartet, only a trace (and wind) from#1 and nada from #4, but 36.4" total from 2&3. We take - made for my 2nd snowiest March here, though 18" behind 2001. Of course, the might-have-beens were strong; going 4-for-4 might have eclipsed Feb. '69 for snowiest month in the foothills - needed about 30" more. The 2 March hits, the best 12/25 storm of my experience and the Aroostook cold either side of NYD - all great stuff. (Less fun was 2 January days in hospital after a serious A-fib event, though things have gone okay since.)

Makes good sense, thanks.

Noted also in the Dec. thread: It appears that the efficiency numbers in your earlier post weren't energy in/energy out, thus permissible under Newtonian physics. Rather it looks like a comparison of energy expense compared to the best of the "traditional" applications.

Highest I saw for Augusta was 13. May not have escaped single digits at home. Deep winter

Storm #1 dropped 3.0" with 0.15" LE in 20 hours, noon Tues-8A Wed. #2, the trough, brought exactly the same SN and LE, but in 1/5 the time, 6-10 PM last evening with about half falling 8-9. (IMO, a 4-hr event doesn't classify as a squall, unless 6"+ comes with strong winds. Half that with little wind doesn't qualify.) The 10 snowless hours in between were mid 20s mostly cloudy. At 7 AM had 1° with moderate winds; it blew last night but nothing like reports from points S & W. Today's max was set at last evening's 18° obs; expect this afternoon tops out <15.

We'll do well to even reach 2" here, though some real snow would be nice atop the near-bulletproof 2-inch "pack" left after the weekend deluge. At least the month's precip (2.68") is still lower than the snowfall (2.9".)

Back to light rain after several hours of moderate, total now 1.46". Saw that the Presumpscot is a foot over flood. My wife was taking friends to their family Christmas party in Westbrook, so I hope they live on high ground.

Steady light rain, 0.59" (with some IP at the start} and temp 34-35. That's not going to melt much of the small glacier outside unless we get those upper 40s now showing on the coast.

Only 4 of 21 Decembers with wire-to-wire, with another 6 having 26-30 days with 1"+. Average duration is 21 days and median 24. Years with 130"+ consecutive. * means 31 in Dec. 18-19* 162 days 13-14* 142 14-15* 142 07-08 140 02-03* 137 16-17 136 17-18 132 Other end of the spectrum - years with <100 cons days 11-12 73 15-16 80 99-00 84 (zero in Dec) 05-06 95

Only 1/2" RA so far, thus still 4" of high-LE stuff at the stake this morning, likely down to 2-3" by evening depending on when the CAA gets working. Might disappear with the end of week event, probably only the 2nd time I've would've seen a pack with 2"+ LE disappear during met winter, the 1st being Jan. 1995 in Gardiner when 36 hours of 50+ temps/dews augmented by 1/2" RA ate a 14" pack.

New Year's Eve 1962, by far the coldest WCI I experienced before moving to northern Maine. NYC temp was 13/4 while my NNJ home had 5/-8, and winds that tipped large bare-limbed oaks out of semi-frozen soil, smashed windows and nearly tore the 10-12" ice from a nearby reservoir, piling about 20 ft worth of it on the lee shore. Along with the 1950 Apps gale, the strongest winds I've ever felt. It was the backside NW-ies of a monster storm for the BGR region. I was hoping Tex (whom I always watched if at all possible) would have some memorable comment on that day's wx but he'd had too much New Year's Eve cheer to be coherent.

Would be, except there's only a small arc between aiming too close to the neighbor's house (500' away, but still) and shooting my tool shed. Tiller is over 40 years old but it still works; would hate to lose it to friendly fire. Dense fog lasted less than 2 hours in Augusta, with visibility currently about 3/8 mile in moderate RA. Real warmth hasn't reached here yet, but 40° temp/dews still not nice to the pack.

Have not fired the .45 Hawken reproduction in several years, though I ought to burn some powder next fall. However, we've been putting the house back in order from the rearrangements needed to host daughter/husband/7 grandkids over Thanksgiving in a small house with one bathroom. Might still be worth a look at how the deer travel before reaching our lawn, for some future ambush.