tamarack

June stats at home: Avg. max: 69.4 1.8 BN Max: 82, on 6/10 Coolest max: 59, on 6/2 Avg. min: 46.9 2.3 BN Min: 34, on 6/1 Mildest min: 58, on 6/28 Month's mean: 58.1 2.0 BN Warmest day: 6/28, 77/58/57.5 (Month's only CDDs.) Coolest day: 6/1, 65/34/49.5 Precip: 5.23" 0.07" BN (June precip is 2nd only to OCT.) Wettest day: 20th, 1.85" Thunder days: 2, some rumbles on 6/22, decent storm early in obs period (9P to 9P) for 6/30. YTD precip: 25.12", 108% of avg. Feb-June: 19.63", 98% of avg June cloudiness was AN, but not to the degree of April-May. The 2.5 CDDs YTD are the lowest of 21 years here, eclipsing the 6.5 of 2009.

Spruce pollen (as in that tree) can be even worse. I've seen it 3" deep and rotting on a lee shore in N. Maine.

And the washer - even my brand new wiper blades won't scrape the pollen clean without help. The flowers on white pine are as abundant as in any year I can recall. Barring a disaster (the record thaw of Feb 1981, followed by frigid cold, killed almost all the 1st-year cones in N.Maine) those trees should be loaded by late summer next year.

June is pollen month for white pine, also for red spruce. Everything seems 7-10 days late this cool cloudy season - normally the pollen peak would be before mid-month, but around here the blossoms on WP only appeared while we were in SNJ (6/11-18) and pollen fall will probably last to the 25th or beyond.

Unless my gauge holds a couple post-7 AM droplets. Lots of garden work for tomorrow, and hoping that the wind keeps the skeeters at bay (and that the deerflies haven't appeared in great numbers - would take a Cat 3 to beat them back.)

1.87" as of 7 this morning, nearly all coming 1-8 PM yesterday - largest precip event since the 2.17" Grinch deluge last Dec. 21-22. June went from half average to 0.2" AN for the date. Have not seen a flash of lightning at home, or more than a few distant rumbles there, since last August.

Likewise about the stakes, though most of the plants remain too short to really need the support. Two weeks away from the garden so lots of work needed there.

Hit the fog wall immediately as I began to go down the SE side of Mile Hill this morning - there was none at home though hilltops were a bit obscured, none while climbing Mile Hill or on its little plateau, and by the time I'd reached Belgrade Village there was very little. It was just that one foggy mile or so. Looks like i may need to get into the garden and tie off some plants after this rain................ Would not mind about an inch, as I'm 1.5" BN for the month to date, and it's been dry since last Thursday. 2" - no thanks. (And we got out of SNJ just in time - serious flooding there from overnight downpours, including part of our usual I-295 route.)

The MNAP guidebook control methods for common buckthorn are almost the same - only difference is that Garlon is not mentioned for foliar application, though it's there for cut-stump.

Looks like glossy buckthorn - its equally invasive exotic cousin has 4-petal flowers and yours has 5. Repeated pre-seed cutting can work, if you get it all and do it for at least 3 years. (Guidebook from Maine Natural Areas Program: "...diligence is required.") If herbicides are an option, either glyphosate (Roundup - I use its off-patent knockoff "Eliminator", which I've bought at Wal-Mart) or Triclopyr (Garlon.) Foliar application of either works well, as does cut-stump application except in spring when sap is moving upward. The ester formulation of Garlon, in bark oil, can also be applied to the base of the bark in any season. (Source: Same MNAP guidebook)

I've managed to kill the usually tough lupines in 2 places, my current locale and at our 1st house in Fort Kent. IIRC, the culprit here was plow-scalping (by the town) of the late-Feb slopfest in 2010, one more reason to hate that "winter." In Fort Kent, we planted lupines in the side yard shortly after moving in during May 1977 and got nice blossoms 3 years, just a few in 78 but lots the next 2. Then came Feb 1981, in which CAR tied its high temp for the month twice and exceeded it 7 times. The lupines failed to make an appearance that spring, so I guess the thaw went deep enough so that the subsequent sub-zero mornings on bare ground did them in. Edit: Spent the last week with family in SNJ - EF-0 just 8 miles to our NNW (Mullica Hill), closest I've been to a confirmed tor. We had little wind and not even a rumble. Looked for EAB and Gypsy moth evidence on the drive down (too much RA to see much on yesterday's return trip.) Patches of dead ash all thru CT/NY/NNJ. Also dead/sick oak, mostly S.MA and N.CT, but zero sign of current Gypsy moth feeding and even with this year's somewhat delayed phenology the defoliation should've been visible if significant. (Route thru MA/CT was 495/290/Pike/84. Nothing on I-684 nor Saw Mill River Pkwy in NY nor any of the NJ highways we traveled. either.)

Had a regular toad-strangler in Mahwah/Suffern (NNJ/SNY) around 11 AM yesterday while looking for Good Sam hospital in the latter town. High gear wipers couldn't compete, visibility 100 yards at times.

Wow - short but intense. Wife and I were watching 6 of our 7 grandkids about 8 miles SSE from there while dad/mom were on an anniversary date (with the still-nursing 7th.) Tor-warn came over cell phones and we pondered a to-cellar move while I went out for a look (3x.) Little rain, no wind, no thunder, so we stayed put.

Only a B- for me despite an A+ November and "A" grade snow in January, 2nd most SDDs (07-08 is inviolate, but 18-19 is closer to that year than to #3) and long, long pack. The "retention factor", SDDs divided by snowfall, was more than 10% higher than any previous winter here (31.5 vs. 28.0 in 13-14.) November got A+ for both temp (easily coldest, and crushed the daily high/mean marks) and snowfall, totaling 4" more than Dec and Mar combined and just 1.1" behind Feb. However, I couldn't award a seasonal A to a winter with a Dec 2018 - less than 40% avg snowfall, no storms over 3.5", and a monster Grinch rain event a few days before Christmas. Also, as noted above, nearly every snow event included RA/IP, and the only month with more than one mix-free storms was . . . April. Also, the winter lacked extreme cold and had no extended periods of far BN temps, and while I'm no big fan of super-frigid wx (no longer challenge it for ice fishing, as an example), runs like the 2-weeks Dec-Jan 17-18 add impact to any winter.

I think this can work for advection fog as well, at least over a small area. If there's a really moist E-SE flow during the cool seasons, I can expect to encounter fog on the SE-facing part of Mile Hill in Rome (Maine - I'm pretty ignorant on Italian wx.)

On vacation June 11-18, so delayed in responding. My earliest date for peak depth is Jan. 20, 2010 and latest in March 31, 2001. That's probably also the latest for Farmington, as that month was their snowiest for any month not starting with "F", and ended with 18" (19 at my place) on 30-31. However, even without looking I'm confident their earliest season peak came in 2003-04, when the Dec. 6-7 blizzard was measured at 40", a total I find suspicious because nearby sites came in near 2 feet. I got to our church (1.5 miles SE from the co-op site and about 100' higher) within 2 hours of the storm's end and the snow there looked about like to 24" I'd measured. 30" I could swallow; 40" sounds like a drift (and the wind made lots.) All that said, the co-op reported 40" depth on the 7th and never got near 30 after the Dec. 11 rain pounded down the pack. I can tolerate mosquito bites, and even after the initial pain of a horse/deer fly, but black fly bites I think I have a special reaction to. They itch like crazy. To the point I'd consider severing the limb than go on. Mosquitos and black flies can be impeded by repellents, though in June 1996 the latter were so awful that even Ben's 100 barely worked for one hour. The only ways to avoid deerflies are to stay inside or remain under water (though I've heard that flaming kerosene works.) In addition, deerflies can travel faster that I can run, faster even that I could run at age 18. Skeeters use a delicate "straw" to take their meal, black flies scratch a little hole and lick the flow, but it feels like deerflies carve off a steak and fly a way with it. The nearest I ever came to being chased out of the woods was during a hot July day in NW-most Maine - had hundreds of flies buzzing around, most being similar-size harmless critters I call sweat-lickers, but impossible to distinguish from the knife-carrying deerflies until it was too late.

Since Autumn Blaze is a hybrid between red and silver maples, its seeds would probably share characteristics of each. Red maple seeds are among the lightest of any maple while those of silver are among the heaviest, 10-15 times as heavy as red maple. As you've noted, red maple seeds have reddish wings. Silver maple wings tend toward lime green. Maybe if you mixed paint of similar colors, it would be some shade of brownish? Sugar maple is 3-4 times heaver than red, 1/3-1/4 the weight of silver. If there are any Norway maples around, they produce big seed crops of relatively large seeds which drop about the same time as those of red maple.

I'd call it midsummer, and the maples tend to drop all their seeds over a relatively short period. White ash is different - seeds mature mid-late summer but many hang on into winter. Looks to be a huge crop for them this year, maybe like 1992 when the north side gales around the December bomb covered our entire yard with ash seeds (and not a single snowflake), at least 20 per sq.ft., and next spring it was like every one germinated.

That's more than twice my total May 1 forward, and 2019 is at about 20.45". (Depending on what fell after 7 AM this morning.)

Probably 3-4 weeks after the red maple onslaught. And big seed years tend to be high-viability percentage as well.

Some red maples look half leafed-out due to all the branch space occupied by seeds, which should start flying here soon. (And some trees, brown ash in particular, still look half-leaved because - late.) Looks like lots of trees are producing big seed crops - the pine across from the house, numerous female white ash, and every apple tree in the area (assuming pollination gets it done.)

Re-calculated largest storm - actually 14.92" Median is 13.8". Avg. date of largest is Feb. 10, median 4 days later. Biggest by month NOV: once, in 11-12. DEC: 1.5 (16-17 had 21.0" storms in both D and F.) JAN: 6 FEB: 4.5 MAR: 6 APR: 2 Average peak pack: 30.1", Median 28" Average last day of continuous 1"+: April 6, Median 4/8.

Latest I've seen decent cover (more than 1") disappear here was 12/17/2000, when 2.8" RA at 40s-50s took out 5" snow. In Gardiner the massive mid-January thaw in 1995 removed the last of the 12" that had fallen on the 2nd, leading to a week-plus of bare ground. Not at all common.

Measuring snow - storm totals or pack - will always somewhat arbitrary due to the nature of the material. The difference at my stake between total and consecutive days with 1"+ is but 5", 122" vs 117", and in 10 of 21 winters the difference has ranged zero to 2 days. And it's not always related to total snowfall - 2002-03 with its 67.8" but lots of sustained cold had 1"+ for 4 days longer than 2007-08 with 142.3" snowfall. Unless there's major late-winter thaws like 2010 and 2012, the #1 key to long-duration cover is November snow followed by cold. Only in 3 of 21 winters, 02-03, 14-15 and last winter, has cover been maintained from November into the heart of winter. Other years with long-duration cover (07-08, 13-14) benefitted from snows in the first few days of December.

Using your event steps (and adding 8"-ers), here's 21 winters' worth. Amount Freq.% Avg 18-19 Max; winter 6" 95% 4.6 4 9; 07-08 8" 95% 3.1 2 6, 07-08 & 13-14 10" 76% 1.9 2 5; 13-14 12" 67% 1.3 0 4; 00-01 15" 43% 0.8 0 3; 00-01 & 16-17 18" 38% 0.4 0 2; 16-17 20" 24% 0.3 0 2; 16-17 Average for winter's largest: 14.97" Edit: Correction of previous post - only 6 winters reached 40", with 5 coming in 07-08 on.