tamarack

Thanks for the link - a fun read. According to the article, Jan. 8, 1968 had a spell with temps running -38 to -46 and winds averaging 92 mph. What's the WCI for -46/92? About -110? The comment about eyes frozen shut reminds me of what I called "walk backwards days" when I lived in N. Maine. These had temps double-digits below zero and very strong winds. When one was facing to windward, a gust would make the eyes water and the first blink froze the lids together, at which point one had to turn away and cover the eyes with (protected) hands until things thawed. There was maybe 4-5 such days in my 10 years there.

Is that definitely the MWN record? They touched -46 on 1/8/1968, and while I don't know their wind speed that day, it was quite breezy where I then lived in NNJ. Another prospect might be late Dec (30,31) of 1962. Temps "only" -41/-40 those days, but to the east the BGR area was getting 30-40" with 16-ft drifts and 60 mph gusts. Meanwhile NYC was establishing its fastest Dec wind on record.

Excellent/interesting thread. Big Black River, near the NW border with Quebec, hit a verified -50 that day to set a new state record. It was probably flat calm or nearly so when the record was set. However, I'm confident that the state has had significantly colder WCIs than that. Try looking at Caribou on 12/25/1980, 1/3,4/1981, 1/17,18/1982, and/or 1/14/1988. On that latter day, CAR was reporting WCI (old scale) of -85 with temp -20. At the Forest Service building in Portage Lake, the (non-verified) thermometer read -32 and the wind gauge (probably a good one, given the importance for fire control) was hovering either side of 30 mph. Christmas 1980 was notable for bitter cold and strong winds throughout the Northeast, and though it was less windy 10 days later, CAR temps on Jan 4 were -16/-27, so probably a bit breezy at the airport. On 1/18/1982, my unofficial thermometer read -34 in the back settlement of Fort Kent, 4 miles SW from (and 450' higher than) the center of Town. No wind gauge, but the blowing snow suggests gusts well into the 30s and sustained 25+. CAR hit -28 that morning, Fort Kent -30.

Some districts may have kids going to school in July. However, there's a lot of specialized (read: expensive) iron running around during/after a snowstorm, and roads usually are in good shape within a few hours of when accumulation ends. Two storms 15"+ in a week won't result in snowbanks as tall as one 12-incher would where I grew up in NNJ. There, all the snow was piled within 6 feet of the travel lanes. Here much of it gets winged back into the woods, as the plowing strategy is to make room for the next storm.

Cliff gets up to about 870', highest point in Fayson Lakes. If there was any elevational advantage for that storm, Cliff Trail would be the place. The moist and dense 2.5" of snow during the day yesterday settled the overall depth to 3" less than I'd seen earlier at 7 AM. 34" is still a nice pack for mid March - I think this Saturday we strap on the snowshoes and prune apple trees.

Not sure how one could get 3.2" in one tube-load, unless it was something like the 4:1 slopfest we had in Feb 2010. Of course, when taking the SWE core from the pack, multiple tube-dips are needed. I use a flat shovel to separate one tube-full from the next, and have a sizable bucket to collect it all.

Well, usually. Last March I had 10" of 7.5-to-1 snow in 5 hours, temp near 20 and no taint - probably a 3" hour during that span. Of course the wind was gusting into the 40s, which might have had an effect.

I'm not sure the Fort Kent co-op did even that, at least when I lived there 1976-85. Their obs were more consistent with having looked at total depth and recording the difference from the previous day's total. We lived a half mile east and maybe 20' higher elev than the co-op site for 4 years, and my one-a-day measurements averaged 111"/winter during that span while the co-op had 90". Made no sense. 1 NNW New Sharon 14.0 700 AM 3/14 Contains 1 24-hr ob Actually 2 measurements, as noted in my previous post.

Wow! A shout-out to my old home town - lived there 1950-71. Wonder if that reading came from the Smoke Rise section, which includes the town's highest elevations. (We lived near West Fayson Lake @ 700'.) Anyway, an excellent discussion - thanks. I've been recording my wx obs at 9 PM since 1/1/76, and continued to do so after joining cocorahs in 8/09. So my board-clearings come at those 2 times. (For the current storm it was 9.0" at 9 PM and 5.0" at 7 AM, and for this time at least, the gain in depth - 23" to 37" - was equal to the sum of the 2 measurements.)

Mine was during a similar early "oughts" timeframe, at the Somerset County Extension office in Skowhegan. Can't remember who came up from GYX to present. Since joining cocorahs, I very rarely call in snowfall, as it's easily available anyway, and since severe TS avoid my area consistently I've not bothered the folks at the phones in GYX much.

Thought you might bury that overly short stake. 14.0" with SN- at 7 AM, 37" at my stake (and room for another 2 feet.) Had 9.0" at 9 last evening, 0.68" LE - that 13:1 seemed a bit high given the wind and small flakes, but the easy snowblowing supported it. The 5.0" overnight was 15:1 (0.33" LE), but that came with little/no wind. Trees appear well loaded but not bending much, thanks to the fluff factor. Some dim sun plus wind today would be a good recipe for snow rollers, but I think both sun and wind will be in short supply. With 34" and counting, this is #2 for March in 20 seasons, though 2001's 55.5" is almost certainly safe. Of those 20 Marches, 6 have had single digit snowfall, 9 in the teens, zero in the 20s, 5 with 30+. 30" is my "standard" for a snowy month during DJFM. Edit: Currently moderate snow in Augusta.

Have not reached 4" yet, snow light/moderate last hour. Unless some of that 30-35 dbz stuff moves north for a stay, I think your season total will be farther ahead of mine when the storm ends than it was before last week's storm. Would like to see some Maine peeps break 20, and midcoast-LEW-IZG seems like the place.

Visibility now down to 1/8 mile outside the Augusta office - naturally, as I'm about to set out for home. Fluffy stuff here, roads should not be a real problem as long as one can avoid the crazies.

Still S+ in Augusta though the band has shifted west - takes a while for those nice feathers to reach the ground. State offices closing at 12:30, so I'll get to drive thru the 30+ dbz stuff on the way home. Band is even brighter and wider down LEW way.

First flakes in Augusta at 9:55 - there was an office pool on the timing, and as official observer I was barred from entering. (My guess would've been a half hour too late, anyway.) Ramped up to moderate by 10:10, flakes flying almost horizontally.

Get some S+ for ACK and they would - gusts over 60 the past 2 hours.

Getting back to this - PWM got 49" in March 1993 with 39.7" from 4 storms (one a mix/mess) 5th-14th growing the pack from 9" to 34", followed by late winter sun effect. In 1996 the winter's biggest storm, 15.5" Dec. 19-21, raised depth to 25" but it was back to 11" when the Jan storms arrived. No blockbusters, but 2 10-inchers plus a 3" and a 7" kicked the depth to 31" on 1/13. Three deluges and by the 28th it was brown ground and dirty piles. 1969 peaked at 28" after the 21.5" dump on Feb. 9-10. It settled back to 7" by the time the late Feb event came, 27" at near-freezing temps that only boosted depth to 23". They also got just past 30" in Jan 1979, which topped by 1" the 61" of Feb 1969 for their snowiest month on record, but the 31" pack on 1/21 was immediately cut in half by a 2" mlow-40s downpour. I think their oceanside locale rarely gets sustained cold when they're also getting storms. Their depths may also suffer from wind; the 9" of frigid 10:1 snow on 2/2/15 landed atop a solid 16" pack but only raised it to 20".

Found 3 winters, though my records begin in 1920 (I think there are city records 40+ years older) and are missing about 10 years late 20s-early 30s. Two others showed up in the sort, but were short periods of recording depth to the tenth inch w/o the decimal. Tops is 55" in 1923, but their January depths look suspicious. They recorded 44.8" during that month's first 16 days, and depth climbed from 10" to 55". Temp never topped 32 during that time, but zero compaction? A low 40s peak would seem more defensible. Next is 1920, topping out at 49" and without as much uncompactable snowfall. Most recently, they reached 40" in Dec 1970, in their snowiest winter on record (141.5") but never got back that deep. Their record storm, 31.9" in Feb 2013, was just the opposite of the 1923 depths, with the pack never exceeding 21".

34.5" IIRC. We were in SC during that storm, which was heavy enough to wreck the struts supporting the Tonneau cover on my pickup sitting in our driveway. Friends said it was barely accumulating under 500' until late aft, when the rate picked up. Only 15" for Farmington, but they got another 18" on 3/30-31 to put the depth at 48", tallest they've measured so late in the season - also snowiest March on record with 58.3". We had a winter harvest on the Redington Public Lot, maybe 5 miles SSW from the 'Loaf. The final load of timber squeezed thru the narrow stretch where the AT was crossed just as the intensity really cranked. That whole job was at elev. 2300-2800, so I would not be surprised at 40"+ from that storm (with no one there to measure.)

Yeah, I'm pretty anal about that stuff, have no problem spotting damage from the 1998 ice storm in central Maine, though it's getting harder to do when the leaves are full. And there was an "event" for the April, 1988 trip, though the above is right on target, of course. We were leaving early on 4/16, and the evening before, Altitude Lou was calling for perhaps 2-4 inches "but only sticking on grassy surfaces." As we headed out, on highway tires (our studded snows would've been illegal by then in VA/DC) there was 4-5" OG with SN+ that we did not escape until south of PWM, and those "grassy surfaces" included I-295, though many vehicles were actually out on the grass. We hit 8 different states on the way to a friend's place in NJ near the Delaware Water Gap, and saw falling snow in 7, all but the short stretch of NH. One more bit of April fun involving NJ - we visited this same friend in 1983, just in time for the 11" on 4/19. Three years later, she had moved to the place near the Gap, and we had 13" of NW-wind deformation band paste on 4/23. We began to wonder if we'd ever be allowed back into NJ during April.

We took a trip south in April 1988 to visit family in VA, and the tree damage along I-84 at the higher elevations of Duchess County was catastrophic. IMO, it was worse, though less widespread, than the breakage along I-84/90 in CT/MA from the 2011 Octobomb (which also presaged a crummy winter for snow.)

NYC's strongest Dec winds on record, and their max that day was 13. The day before, the Giants and Packers played for the NFL championship at Yankee Stadium in conditions that rivaled the famed "Ice Bowl" at Lambeau a few years later. Temps were 25F less cold at YS but the 50-60 gusts made up for that. Poor Y.A. Tittle couldn't run his vaunted passing offense at all (Giants' only score was from blocking a punt) while Jerry Kramer was only 3-of-5 for FG from inside 40 yards (and probably did well in gauging the wind to make even 3.)

Possibly the strongest winds I've ever experienced came on that date, gusts probably near 70 on a day with temps -8/5, pretty Arctic for NNJ. The wind tipped 2-ft diam. oaks out of semi-frozen ground, shattered plate glass windows, nearly ripped 10" of black ice from the nearby reservoir (lots got crumpled onto the lee shore), and created 6-ft drifts from the 2" of wet snow that fell late on 12/29. Only the 1950 Apps gale can rival it for winds I've felt, with Hazel, Doria (both in NNJ) and Bob (in Gardiner) a step down. And it was definitely a storm, but to the north. BGR had 29.5" and Old Town/Orono 40"+, with 60 mph winds and temps that cycled from below zero to near freezing and back again. NNJ was just getting the cyclonic flow behind the blizzard. "The Storm That Ate Bangor"

Only a couple inches of dust up here, but most fell at -8 to -12. I preferred 2/2/205 - 5F less cold but 7.5" with near-blizz conditions. (Coldest I've ever seen for accumulating snow - not much, only 0.5" - was -25 on 1/4/1981 in Ft. Kent.)

Better than that, we had mostly IP, less than 0.1" of ZR. But the 2002 reminder is painful, with our forecast 8-12" verifying at 1", while 10 miles south in Belgrade village they got the 8" and 20 miles SE of there Augusta had 15". Ultra sharp cutoff. That Brockton pack-vanish is amazing. I thought Farmington's drop from 40" to 8" that month was pretty special until I saw that. Of course, we got only light snow from the big blizz, and losing 30"+ pack in January is not supposed to happen in the Maine foothills. That whole winter was a mix of wow! and yuck! Easily the snowieast of our 13 winters in Gardiner (138.6", 30" more than #2 1992-93), but it pumped the brakes too much. Dec 1-22 great, rest of month meh, Jan 1-15 with 3 snowstorms, then came the 3 torch deluges. Feb 1-20 cold (8F BN) and fairly snowy, then two rainy thaws and +13 temps. March 1-11 was 11F BN with two good snowstorms, building the pack to near 2 ft, then in 12 days it was all gone. (No complaints about April, though. Its 23" snow trails only 1982 and 2007 for my April records.)