tamarack

Looks very similar to the map we saw Saturday evening. Busted high for most of the foothills and points S & E, but that map had 6"+ for N. Maine, which verified. Trend has been favorable, as last week was offering a torch-deluge, but I'm still underwhelmed by our prospects from this one.

Except when real cold arrives, liquids and produce might want to come inside quickly lest they suffer hypothermia.

The cold surely relaxed after that amazing 40 days (from 11/22 thru 12/31 [7 AM obs times] averaged -15.0 at Farmington), but at my (then) home in Gardiner the warm-up still allowed for 51.5" of Jan-Feb snow (30% above avg) and a 5" surprise at the end of March. At least it wasn't like the current event, RA at 33 with trace ZR at home and perhaps 0.15" accretion at 800' five miles to my south on Mile Hill.

Love this image. Among other things, it really shows well the Jersey pine barrens. Cloudy with a raw wind in Augusta while at 10 AM PWM was reporting light rain and 31 - lovely. Yesterday's 29/0 made it 2 zero-or-below mornings earlier than getting even one in any of my other 46 Novembers in Maine. And while I have no doubts about Island Pond's low of -11, that 39° max seems a bit high. I had full sun all day yesterday, and should not have been 10° cooler.

Stayed a couple degrees above zero here - wind was light but still moving at 10 last night, so less time after the inversion sets up. Walking in the woods yesterday was explosively noisy as the Friday "thaw" followed by an 8F low produced a solid crust, and the leaves were nice and crunchy underneath. Every deer within a half mile could probably hear me.

Almost exactly the same temps here (had 19/6), though my max-min instrument is far too small to have tenths discernable. That mean of 12.5 is 22° BN, while last year's T-Day was 11/-3 for 27° BN. Zero or a bit cooler this morning before the clouds arrived.

Storm total was 4.0" with the 0.8" of afternoon fluff. Total LE was 0.54" with my best estimate that 0.46" was frozen, the rest ZR as the temp never went above 28 during the event. Morning low at home was about 8F and with winds about 15G25 that's WCI near -10. If the winds quit and clouds delay, will make a run at zero tonight. Had a low of 2F on the 15th last year, and the -3 a week later on T-Day is my earliest at zero or below.

That anecdote makes me recall a spill during my learn-to-parallel ski week at the old Glen Ellen back in 1971. It was my final run (also after 4 PM) on Thursday, on an intermediate trail named Black Watch. My goggles had been fogging completely in the cold (single digit max) so I would ski without them, stopping halfway down to let my eyes clear. On that run, as I went into the stop an edge caught and somehow I recovered but was then going even faster. tried again, same story and probably the fastest I've ever gone on skis. 3rd time was the "charm" - really caught the edge and went airborne. The mind races at times like that, and I had time to think in mid-air "glad it's near the end of my ski week before I wreck." Landed on my head (snow was soft) and did the eggbeater thing. One ski failed to release and my knee was painful but skiable. Surprisingly, the pain was gone the next morning.

Freezing drizzle and upper 20s in Augusta at present. After 6 hours of (very) occasional mood flakes yesterday, steady S- began about 2 PM though it began to accumulate an hour later. Measured 2.7" with 0.25" LE at 9 PM, another 0.5" of rimey snow/sleet with a thin zr cap at 7 this morning, total 3.2" with 0.42" LE, perhaps 0.02" of that as non-frozen. At 6:30 saw that temps were teens up north, 20s/30s elsewhere except EPO, which was reporting 55.

Reminds me of Feb. 2017 when some guy from RI noted the 76" depth report from Andover, Maine and drove up there expecting to find giant snowbanks along the roads. He also got onto a back road (East B Hill Road) where his GPS didn't work and his gas gauge was low and he had no idea where the road would take him. He then posted about "fake news" and vilified all things Maine, not realizing that the plow operators tend to push the snow a little farther than they do in RI. (Also not realizing that an old fashioned paper map can be your friend.)

Woke up last Nov. 10 to see 2" on the ground. Did not see bare ground at the stake until April 21 - 162 consecutive days with 1"+, which is 20 days longer than any other such streak here. Not sure that whatever we get today/tonight will survive Sunday's 40s, but if the Tuesday event holds together it might be the start of another long run of white ground. (Unless it's stolen by a super-Grinch.)

After 16" on 3/22-23 and 19" eight days later, there was 48" at my stake on 3/31/2001, for the date taller even than any Fort Kent winters, by 2" over 1984. And a monster storm was progged for the next day and night - track shifted east and buried Newfoundland, big snow and gusts to 150 kph.

Wind had kicked up last evening, but the final showers didn't arrive until just before 6 this morning, nearly an hour after the lights went out. Temp dropped 3° in the 15 minutes before I headed to Augusta. As of my 6:15 obs for cocorahs we'd had 0.59" yesterday/today, doubt we got more than another tenth or so. Heavy stuff clipped N. Aroostook - Madawaska cocorahs reported 2.97" and New Sweden was next at 1.15"; no one else in Maine has reported over 1". No news on whether the home front is re-powered yet. Edit: Re-checked cocorahs and saw that Westmanland, like New Sweden a central Aroostook town, reported 1.24" and a couple 1" reports from eastern Washington County. All those sites were still raining at obs times.

Kind of like my seeing catspaws on the windshield in late August at 1,000' elevation in Fort Kent. Not all that wintry, but slushy drops during that month are noteworthy.

Thanks. And I also thank you and Will for related follow-up comments. As one who has worked as a forester since 1976 I'm always interested in things related to my vocation.

Was forest management (especially fuel management or lack of same), considered by this study as a possible contributing factor for the massive increase in burn area? Perhaps it's not a major factor, but I hope it was part of the data that was used. (Would read the link but I'm headed home.)

However, on 9/30/91 locations from PQI and points north recorded 2-5". Ironic, because 5 years earlier (9/30/86) brought the largest convective-caused blowdown I've seen in my 46 years in Maine, 600 acres in T16R6 and T16R5, ending by tossing spruce into the NW end of Square Lake. (The Telos blowdown in October of either 1979 or 1980 was 3,000 acres of flattened spruce that from the air looked like an August oat field squashed by a thunderstorm. However, that was a synoptic system, SE gale.) sadly no older folks mentioned the desert dry of '65 Driest year on record for 6 states - DE, PA, NJ, CT, RI, MA. Skipped NY because of a drier year in the less wet western counties, but NYC's 26.09" in 1965 is nearly 7" less than their #2 driest, which was the year before. 1963 comes in at 4th driest but only a 4" RA in early November kept them from the #2 slot. And 1966 was running only 0.7" less dry than '65 thru August. ('66 remains NYC's driest met summer and is 2nd only to 2010 for hottest.) Then 9/21/66 recorded 5.54" and the drought was broken, though only the following months' being near/above norms confirmed the end. Wx trivia: Some locales in western VA got more RA in 5 hours from Camille's remnants than NYC had for all of 1965.

Had 15.8" in Gardiner, 3rd biggest of my 13 winters there. #1 came 11 week earlier, 17.5" on Dec 20-21. My top 5/top 10 entries that come from my Gardiner time don't involve snow. (Other than its contribution to the 1987 flood)

Not just the southern (assuming that means MA and perhaps SNE) but NNE as well. Farmington co-op reached 40" depth on Jan. 13 despite whiffing on the blizz. Then 3 torch-deluges (totaled 4" RA at temps 47-53) crushed the pack down to 8", by far the co-op's greatest January loss of snowpack. Feb. snows brought the depth to 21" before late month thaws pushed it back to 7", then a cold snowy week-plus in March grew the pack to 23". Two weeks later it was gone, just traces, and the 20" of April snow lasted but a day or two. 11/23/89 4" of snow at my parents house in Bayside. I drove to my friends house in Dix Hills for Thanksgiving dinner and right into the storm. Near zero visibility and heavy snow. My car nearly went off the road. Only flurries that day south of Augusta, though I tagged a deer that morning. Much preferred the thunderblizzard two days earlier, which ushered in nearly 6 weeks of continuous BN temps with several 10-11" snowfalls.. Extremely late snowfall in May of 1996. Snow on 5/12/96 in New York State and Vermont. Co-worker living at 1200' in Frenchville had 36 hours of continuous snowfall that weekend, top depth reaching 12". 30 miles SE and almost 600' lower, CAR recorded 5.7".

While some grass was showing then, I'd guess the "green" was leftovers from autumn, not spring green-up. Probably lots of piles still around as you drove by. Farmington co-op, located along Rt 4/27 about 1.5 miles north of town center, had 7" depth on 4/17 and only a trace on the 18th, despite that day's 37/36 temp and only 0.25" RA. To me, that's far too little RA/warmth to eat 7" of snow, even ripe 2:1 stuff. At my pack-holding location, 4/17 had 15" (at my 9 PM obs time - don't know when the co-op measures) and then decreased 2-3" per day to reach "trace" on 4/23. Had 3" the evening before.

That mid-April event dropped 5" snow at my place and 5" cold rain. Hope I never see another such pair of 5s. Sugarloaf summit probably got 4-5 feet, maybe more. Brought the month up to 37.2", and the 36.1" at the Farmington co-op was 12" above its next snowiest April since 1893. My #2 April here is 15.6" in 2011, and even my Fort Kent records top out at 29" in 1982.

April and May were nice, but JFM had way BN sun, 140% of avg precip and 60% snowfall - no way to run a NNE winter. Were you around to see Olympia snow woman in Bethel? Only on TV.

Maine's #1 must be 2010, the winter eaten by the New Year's retro-bomb. #2 might be the 1998 super Nino. 2012 obliterated some daily records and featured the 3 warmest March maxima in Farmington's 125-year POR. However, 2010 "wins" because those months had almost no BN temps at all, until the 2nd week of May when all our apple blossoms got freeze-killed, along with ash, birch and some maple shoots.

The above guess was way conservative - found 1.18" in the gauge that evening for a 2.23" total. Merely October doing its thing - month total now 6.19", a half inch above the average and maybe another inch to add. Average temp now 1.5° BN but sliding up toward normal.

Some NNJ memories triggered by 4,5,6: 4. Our scout troop (I was asst. scoutmaster) got caught at Allamuchy Scout Reservation that Sunday morning, and we had an interesting (but safe) 35 mile drive home. My '62 Beetle had no problem at all. 5. Had a high of about 4° that day with a stiff breeze. We were framing a new house, usually a well-warming exercise, but we were hard put to keep hands and feet fully operational. (Not as uncomfortable as 5 years earlier, 12/31/62, when the same 4° max was accompanied by gusts well into the 60s - speed estimated, but backed up by all the damage.) 6. 18" at low teens overnight, starting to taper off as we headed into the woods for the deer season opener. My dad dropped a nice little buck a couple hundred yards from the house while my friend and I saw nothing while slogging a mile or so thru the powder. Dad gave me a knife and showed me how to field dress a deer - came in handy 8 years later when I took my 1st deer, with no one else nearby.