tamarack

Recent GFS runs show qpf, not p-type, as becoming marginal.

I'd like it better were not the snowblower in the shed behind 3 other items. I'm way behind with winter prep, mainly due to our reno project that used the porch (where there should've been 2.5 cords stacked before Oct. 15) as the materials-prep area. Getting the wood there has taken priority in recent weeks, but rainy Saturdays have not helped.

About 3-4" atop the 2" I swept at 7 this morning, before the change to RA about noon. Snowblower still in shed, blocked by cart, mower, tiller - work to do when I get home. (Or a driveway masquerading as an iceberg by tomorrow.)

Precip switched to RA (at temp near 32) about noon, after several hours of mod-hvy snow, 3-4" atop the 2" I measured at 7A. Should be a glorious mess by the time things end.

Snow cover was more complete where I walked yesterday morning, and was as noisy as it gets. The few bare (frozen leaves) patches were quiet by comparison.

Measured 2.0" on 0.21" LE at 7, and my wife said it was still snowing almost 2 hours later when the plow came. Snow-covered roads until the Rt 225 intersection 10 miles out, though no signs of anybody having taken the ditch on Mile Hill. Snow began to mix just north of 225, went to catpaws at Belgrade Village, all rain by the Irving station 19 miles from home, and no sign of snow down by the K'bec in Augusta, where it's been RA- all morning. Yesterday's low of 15 was the season's 1st sub-20 and Sunday's 30 was the 1st sub-freezing max. (Seems likely to add 2-3 more of those this week.)

Advisory here, 3-5" forecast before the change. Then it becomes a glacier on Wednesday. It had to be this fall that snow would come early and persist. My firewood stacking was delayed because the porch where 2.5 cords should now be piled was the workspace for our reno project. About one cord to move porch-ward, another to stack and cover so I can refill in January. Don't even have the snow stake planted in the garden yet. Still white ground here - had it ben late March rather than now, Saturday's 2" wouldn't have lasted more than a few hours. Woods were explosively noisy this morning. When frozen leaves are that much "quieter" than walking on the crusty snow, every deer within half a mile probably can hear me walking.

Most of our 2" remain as mid-upper 30s and mid-Novie overcast hasn't even finished cleaning off the trees, trees still dripping - both from ongoing dz/RA and falling glob. 2 deer had crossed the road about 500' from the house and walked down the short branch made for our 2013 timber harvest. Tracks made while accum snow was mostly done, so probably 1-2 this morning. Nothing else moving, no shots heard, no squirrels seen/heard, clothes hanging near the wood stove. Trees starting to wave in the wind. Maybe the woods will be drier when I go back out around 3 PM.

2.0" here and the trees are filthy with snow/slush, so I'll probably get fairly wet when I go chase the critters in a few minutes, even though it's only light dz now. LE of 0.35" is a guess, as when I took the snow sample at 7 there had been perhaps 0.45" (of storm total 0.84") RA atop the white. Better than all rain.

Doesn't necessarily keep them off the pet, just keeps them from digging in for a meal. One October here when grandkids (and their parents of course) were visiting, they picked about 10 off our yellow Lab mix - the little horrors had ridden into the house on the outer fur.

IIRC, Rainier/Paradise's tallest pack was something like 376". Assuming that bus is 11-12' high, the wall in the pic must be in the 500" range. (Of course, some of that may be stuff thrown up as the road was cleared, but still...) And I'm surprised that it opens as early as April. When my brother and family, then stationed in Germany, tried to access one of Norway's fjord towns (Flam or Geiranger) from inland one June about 30 years ago, they were unsuccessful because the roads at 3000-4000' elevation had not yet been cleared.

Japanese Alps are in the running for snowiest place on Earth. One long LES as Siberian cold crosses the Sea of Japan then gets wrung out orographically. (Plus synoptic storms full of west Pac water.)

Saw the same for Rangeley - not quite in line with the AFD from GYX.

Should calm the ticks - picked up one this morning while walking the dog.

18th. 12" at the Farmington co-op, only 2" at Ft. Kent even though it snowed all day. Sat in the woods west of Allagash Village for almost 2 hours that morning, then walked out and found that 3 deer had walked so close to my parked pickup that, had I waited there I could've bayonetted one.

Anyone in New England expecting wire-to-wire should get a job at Paradise on Rainier, where the average year sees over 50 feet of snow and only one season (14-15) came in with less than 400".

July 2-4, 1966 at NYC - 100, 103, 98. Until 2010 came in a bit hotter, met summer 1966 was both hottest and driest on record there. After the record shatteringly dry 1965 - more than 6" less than 2nd driest year - 1966 was on track to challenge for #1, only 0.72" wetter thru August. Then a 5-year drought essentially ended on a single day (5.54" on 9/21) though we didn't realize it at the time.

Excellent snowpack winter here, as latitude really did its thing in March. (And that month's 30-35" persisted nicely thanks to record cold - Farmington's coldest March in its 125 year records.)

I'm in the jack stripe, so that can't be right. 12z GFS op brings Tuesday's LP right over my head, for a torch-deluge. Track will likely wobble E-W a couple degrees longitude about every 12 hours from now thru zero hour.

60-61: 54.7" 66-67: 51.5" In the 3 big storms (12/11-12, 1/19-20, 2/3-4) EWR totaled 56.7" while NYC got 42.5". Across the river at EWR they did better: 72.6" in 60-61 and 57.3" in 66-67.

Some of those critters are nocturnal, and they all tend to hide when giants are walking about.

We lived in the Jersey Highlands in the town of Kinnelon (named for Albert Kinney, whose Sweet Caporal cigarettes made him a fortune during the latter decades of the 19th century.) Our place was at about 700' elevation, at Lat. 40.9766, Lon. 74.3702. Below are the logs of 60-61 and 66-67 for our home (based on memory) and for Oak Ridge Reservoir (co-op records), about 9 miles west and 150' higher elev. 1960-61 Home Oak Ridge 12/11-12 18.0 14.0 Temps low-mid teens, nice for NJ deer season opener. Giants-'Skins in DC trying to play on 8" powder. briefly lost fumble in snow piles. 12/17 2.0 2.0 12/20-21 2.0 3.0 12/29-30 3.0 4.0 1/1 0.0 1.0 1/16-17 6.0 5.0 0.3" ZR Sunday afternoon, 6" on top that night. Very surprised that school wasn't closed Monday. They knew something? 1/19-20 20.0 24.0 The JFK inaugural storm. 1st time I saw accumulating snow at temps below 10°. 1/24 1.0 2.0 1/27 4.0 0.0 Fringed by major storm to east. I think co-op missed reporting, as sites all around all had 2-4". 2/3-4 24.0 27.0 My 2' may be conservative, given 50 mph gusts. Co-op reported 50" pack on 2/5 and site 10 mi. NW 52", probably near 45" at home. NYC sub-32 1/19-2/3. 2/13 1.0 0.0 2/16 1.0 2.0 3/1-2 1.5 1.5 3/9 1.0 1.5 3/14 1.0 1.0 3/23 6.0 12.0 Surprised by paste bomb, most fell 8A-noon, had to walk the 5 miles from school. Co-op probably didn't measure until its 7A obs time on 3/24, #settle/melt. 4/1 1.0 1.0 4/10 2.0 2.0 4/13-14 4.0 4.0 SN+ to rain overnight. Total 104.5 101.0 With the apparent missed obs on 1/27, co-op would be about the same. 1966-67 12/14 7.0 7.0 Fluffy and moist, great for snowmen 12/21 7.0 6.0 12/24-25 15.0 13.0 Thundersnow, during SN+ mid-aft 24th. 12/29 2.0 1.0 1/6 1.0 1.0 1/28-29 1.0 2.5 2/3 1.0 1.5 2/6 4.0 3.5 SN+ 5-9A with plunging temps. Then 16-18 hours until the big dog. 2/7 15.0 11.0 Snow at 6°, would not pack under dad's 4000 lb Pontiac "boat", so we couldn't push it up the hill from driveway. Probably tallest pack of winter @ 18" +/- 2/10 1.0 1.0 2/18 1.5 1.0 2/21-22 3.0 4.0 2/23-24 5.0 5.5 2/28 1.5 0.5 3/5 3.0 3.0 3/6-7 5.0 5.0 SN to ZR, 0.2"-0.3" accretion (rained too hard to accrete.) Big snow BOS. 3/15-16 7.0 8.0 Any memory of this storm was obscured by the next 2 plus record cold. 3/17 6.0 4.5 1-3" clipper grew muscles. Temp fell from 13 to 8 during 5 hours when most snow fell. Barely got to 10° on 3/18, low of -3 (NYC 8) on 19th. 3/23 10.0 9.5 Started just after midnight, snowed thru the day. Even NYC got 9.8". 4/24 1.5 2.0 Back end of cold coastal. 4/27 3.0 0.0 I think the co-op missed this one, too, as it fell 2-7A and other nearby sites had 1-3". Total 100.5 90.5 I may have been too generous on the Christmas Eve and Feb. 7 storms, both windblown powder.

We use borax in the laundry (whites only), and a 50-50 mix with granular sugar has dealt with the carpenter ants that try to eat our cabin. The critters apparently can tell that the sugar is worth carting back to the nest but can't differentiate it from the borax, which wipes out the home base. I'd recommend putting whatever is used in places where pets/kids can't get them. When I placed 4-5 this summer, one was on the front porch with a board set about 1/2" above the mix (was in a margarine container lid) and we found a dead mouse lying right on the stuff a few days later. Still slightly (about 1") BN for precip on the year, despite 5.5" over the past 2 weeks. The Friday and Tuesday storms should bring us up to par.

Fastest growth for most tree species occurs at the base of the live crown (which is a moving target, as lower branches get shaded out and die.) 16" is upper end for fir, though I've seen a couple (now long dead) that were over 24". Depending on how daring you are, a rope or two tied 20' up that fir and anchored solidly to trees opposite that pole, plus a double back cut and wedging, could probably get that thing safely on the ground. It's only "probably" because potential internal defect could be an issue. Years back, I had a 75' tall white ash double-backed and wedged, but hidden defect compromised the hinge on the side away from the tree's lean and the hinge broke sideways, the tree falling 90° from my intended direction and lodging in its neighbor.

That late Feb mess in 2010, the most unpleasant 10" snowfall I ever hope to see, was 5° from a repeat of what had happened 41 years earlier on the exact same dates. Though 05-06 and 15-16 were worse by the numbers, 09-10 was by far the most frustrating. After the three total whiffs on major KUs, that slopfest while points south and west were getting buried was like being taunted by the wx. L OL out of many similar setups that have been good for you all. You and Tamarack need to hold each other and talk out your fears with a Will as a therapist. Any PTSD up here has been fostered by all the SNE glee at how wonderful 02-03 was That and 1960-61 were the two greatest winters of a very snowy 60s decade. I would take 1966-67 based on longevity- it was amazing! I also like the contrast of a very hot/dry 1966 summer followed by that kind of snowy and cold winter lol. We had over 100" in 60-61, and IMO that winter was tops in by NNJ days. 66-67 had more snowstorms, the thundersnow, the late March record cold, but no events greater than 15" and none that produced lasting snow cover. 60-61 had storms of 18", 20", and 24" (that last a conservative guess on NYC's windiest Feb day), extended pack-holding cold, the tallest pack in NJ since reliable records began (it's not even close), plus a 12" pastey surprise in late March. It's the difference between A+ and A++.