tamarack

Given my experience with Rangers/Mazdas and rust, I wouldn't pay for 70K tires to put on a 10-yr-old 180K truck. At least not before having a trusted mechanic tell me there's absolutely none. 125K on the current Ranger and just a teeny bit of body rust, but both the 1992 Ranger and 2004 Mazda had serious rust issues once past 150K, the latter compromising the rear part of the frame.

Snowfall here is almost evenly divided by the Jan-Feb line; it's now 45.0/45.9 but has remained within an inch over the past few winters. May just be the different location, but that 9-year period noted above was marked by front/back extremes. Most front-loaded winters here were 05-06, 09-10 and 03-04. Most back-loaded were 06-07 and 04-05. Those 4 winters 03-04 thru 06-07 had front-back whiplash. Another facet is that, looking only at winters with at least 60% front or back, the front-loaded were poor - 81% of average snowfall with 5 of 6 BN (14-15 the exception), while the back-loaders averaged 118% of average and all 4 were AN. (The 11 other winters averaged 104% of average - those front-loaded ones dragged the average down.)

Less than 10K miles so the jury is still out, but doing fine so far. Ran Coopers before and hey did OK as well.

Currently running garden variety Hancook (can get the designation later if you're interested) all around on my Ranger, and will probably buy another pair of Firestone Winterforce come snow tire time - the previous pair served well over 5 winters, probably 35-40,000 miles. Snows never last as many miles as highway tires.

With 1992 the poster child for that truism. Had Andrew been named by today's date? Edit: According to wiki, Andrew was declared a named TS at 12z on the 17th.

Fractions become more important with the larger Celsius intervals. Of note, the Climod site shows daily temps with whole degrees (F) but with .5 means where appropriate, and the norms/departures are to the tenths. Last time I got data from UCC, their temps went to the tenths. However, their snow depth would sometimes get weird, as if their system abhorred whole numbers - rarely was there a 5.0" event, as it would be listed as 4.99 or 4.98, less commonly 5.01.

Maybe teach the computer about fractions? Or at least to round in the same direction for both daily readings and norms. I've seen the same for Caribou/GYX climo data. And they round up even when the daily mean is below zero.

Zero C level was only about 2,000' above the summit, so no surprise. On my first climb there, August 6, 1973, I met a family on the Knife Edge who said they'd had to walk just south of the ridge same time the year before, because the windblown sleet was so painful.

Sat/Sun had highs of 67/69, definitely September-ish. Saturday also had a fresh breeze, which blew bugs away as I hauled 2,000 lb of firewood onto the porch and attacked the awesome weed growth in the garden. August to date has been exceptionally pleasant.

Foxwood?

Maine historically does best for snow (using CAR, PWM and Farmington numbers) with weak ENSO, either side of neutral. Looks like we may be in that general vicinity this coming winter, unless there's a major change.

Could not detect it at 10 PM outside the house. Also could not look directly north (only NW or NE) due to trees and hill. Lot's of stars, however, as the moon was just setting. Had 74/42 yesterday, lovely.

One of the most abrupt reversals of pattern I can recall. Farmington co-op averaged 86/62 for Aug. 1-14 and then 70/50 the rest of the month, with 3 mornings in the upper 30s. Went from 8.4° AN to 2.5° BN.

I think that practice was a tip (pun intended) from "Crockett's Victory Garden."

All season long I cut off the side stems to keep the plants to a single stem. Over the weekend I cut off the topmost growth shoot so the plants will no longer attempt to lengthen. Will need to do more shoot pruning as the plants keep trying to extend the vine.

It's rather comical at this point. Spend all this money for lawn looks, and have a field to look at. Will need to drill another well to get any real irrigation, but that's a very costly project. I don't think I've seen it look this bad I wouldn't recommend tossing $10K at a new well just for the lawn, especially since that granite block on which you sit may not yield any more for from hole #2 than from #1. Garden explosion. Cukes are sweet as heck. Basil gone wild. BGW. Only fail so far has been green beans. Made a pesto with basil, garlic, olive oil and pine nuts. Off the hook Our garden is about 180° from yours, so far. Cukes haven't even blossomed while last year we were giving them away, while the green beans are in full production. I plant them sequentially over a 5-week period because we much prefer them uncooked, but we sometimes get overwhelmed and blanch a bunch for the freezer - may happen again in the next couple weeks. Cherry tomatoes almost ready for the pick to start, and I've begun nipping off the tops so the fruit already started gets all the plants' efforts. Goal is to ripen all the fruit before frost rather than grow bigger vines and try to do the indoors ripening with hundreds of greenies rather than the couple dozen we get even with top-stopping.

August 10 is the day my average daily mean is below 65.00 for the first time since July 8. And while on average August is cooler and less dewy than July, the memory of 1988 shows that things can be different. The first 2 weeks that month were as hot/dewy as any 2-week period I've experienced since moving to Maine. During the first week PWM set a new TD mark at 77°, though I'm not sure it remains at the top.

Had an 8-week stretch that "summer" (early June-early August) with only 7 days that it didn't rain. Coolest July of 22 here, 2nd coolest June and coolest met summer despite AN August (in which sun and convective precip finally appeared.)

Probably by a factor of about 10 every 3 weeks or so. In 2-3 months a solo queen can bring the nest to a thousand or more. When I lived on the farm I torched one and then dug out the mammoth 4 foot by 3 foot nest. Insane What a giant! Fortunately, in the instance noted above, there was no dig needed, only fill as the burnout was total.

Wait for the next sub-60 morning and get them at first light. I'd use one of those long-distance wasp killer sprays, from 4-5 feet away. If none come out in response, plop a rock on the hole big enough to block it, so the chemical is trapped with the insects. The year that paper wasps colonized the rock wall along our driveway (3 stings for me and 5 for my wife), I picked a 50° morning to flip the rock under which they'd nested, and got plenty of juice on them before any became airborne - and none made it more than 2 feet from the nest. My dad used to do the gasoline method at our grandparents' summer place with it's 3/4-acre lawn that averaged 2-3 nests per mowing. He'd go out in late evening, dump the half cup and light it. On one particularly large nest (judged by swarm size when disturbed, there was a washtub-size hole in the ground the next morning.

Too small for yellowjackets. Ginx is probably correct, and there are many such species native to our region.

Most ground-nesting bees are solitary, with bumblebees an exception and I'm sure you would already know if yours were bumblebees. Another possibility is yellowjackets, especially if there are numerous critters going in and out. Those beasts are the most aggressive of the social wasps, IMO and in my (oft-stung) experience.

Measured 6.41" at my (then) Gardiner home, greatest calendar-day rain event I've recorded. Bob was also the only TC of my experience in which the backside winds were essentially the same speed as frontside, though over 90% of the precip came before the switch. PWM had a bit over 8" with several Cumberland County bridges blown out. That was their biggest one-day rain until the October 1996 hybrid storm dumped 12" on them.

More importantly (since they may have already bred by beechnut time), they make the bears fat.

I'd go with witch hazel for the left leaf. Their seeds mature in early fall and get forcefully ejected, sometimes falling 20 feet or more from mama. Witch hazel is a woody shrub that rarely gets over 20' tall. And you're correct about beech - their nuts grow in a spiky 3-panel package about 1/2" diameter, with a single triangular nut within a hard-to-remove hull. Quite tasty straight from the hull, though one might starve to death trying to free them from their covering. Kind of like celery - chewing that veggie takes more calories than it provides. Of course, if one eats beechnuts like a bear, spiky covering, hulls and all (and as fast as they can get crammed into the bear's mouth) the energy budget is more favorable. At least in Maine, bear reproduction is keyed to beechnut crops; lots in the fall, many cubs in the spring.