tamarack

That's probably correct. In my experience, blight infects the wood (through wounds in bark) rather than the leaves, and kills the above-ground stem by destroying the cambium layer, thus girdling the tree.

Certainly incongruous for PWM itself, not so much for the general area. In addition to the -37 at CON, Bridgton - 30 miles NW of PWM - also had -39. Gardiner, 50 miles to the NE, had -35. However, LEW, 30 miles N from PWM, only got down to -21, and the usually colder Farmington had -28. Their all time low is also -39, in Jan. 1994 (thanks, Pinatubo) on a morning when PWM was -10.

Hyperbole. Even the year I had frost on July 31 in Ft. Kent had a 6-week growing season - actually 2 days longer than that.

Bottomed out 38 or 39 here, 8th sub-40 morning this month, tying 2004 for most in June. 40s tonight, probably not sub-50 again for a while. Month is currently 2.2° BN thanks to the past 4 days running -7 to -8, so will probably finish about -1.

By late summer that tree will probably be loaded with "bean" pods. A friend in Augusta lost a large catalpa to Gloria, and had some boards sawn from the trunk. The wood isn't particularly durable, but the light and dark golden grain with prominent darker rings was striking. leaves the size of elephant ears? This comparison led me astray. Catalpa has leaves the size of saucers - 6-7" across. Pawlonia has leaves the size of dinner plates. One is an immigrant from the South, the other from Asia. Edit: The wiki article on Paulownia (I've been misspelling it) notes that the leaves can be mistaken for catalpa, though the former are usually much larger, especially on young trees. Paulownia flowers are purple, however, not white. (I've never seen one in flower.)

Showers overnight brought 0.16", bringing the May-June total to 4.12", a little over half the average of 7.66" for 5/1-6/24. June is running about 70% of avg, but May was less than 30%. Edit: Currently (2:45) rumbling outside the Augusta office.

So I've read, though they divebomb my gray-white head just as enthusiastically as they did when my hair was still brown. They also seem to key on movement, which I discovered by accident while in the woods west of Jackman on a mega-deerfly July day. My co-worker needed a serious comfort stop and headed into the thicker growth while I waited by a bridge over Turner Brook. The watercourse as full of little trout and I decided that the deerflies would at least provide some entertainment along with torture. As I waited, ready to slap, drop, and watch the feeding frenzy, the deerflies left me completely alone. Their attention returned as we continued our walk back to the truck. I've since found that standing still causes most deerflies to lose interest - maybe they're like T-Rex as portrayed in Jurassic Park. (And scaled to their body size, their dental equipment feels like it's similar.)

Might be the exotic paulownia, though if it's within the forest that would be doubtful, as it (fortunately) does not invade like Norway maple.

Cryoscaping?

I'm not sure there are any year-round homes above 2000' in Maine - maybe in Rangeley, and if so, only marginally higher. Nobody's even close to 3500. In our almost 10 winters in Ft. Kent, we lived in 3 different spots, 2 in town at about 520' and the 3rd 4 miles to the sw at about the same elev as FVE. All 10 mornings with temps 35-47 below during those winters came at the lower spots. Those 2 sites averaged over 5 mornings/winter at -30 or colder, while the back settlement had only 1.5. WCI records depend, of course, on where observations are being taken. With the exception of MWN, those places usually are not the spots where the lowest chills have occurred. (As you infer in the above post) The state record low temp set in 2009 was at Big Black River, near the St.-Pamphile border crossing, at about 900'. However, I think that Estcourt Station, at 700', may actually get colder, but there's no official obs there. (Maine's coldest WCI is certainly atop Katahdin, 1000' lower than MWN but also 115 miles closer to the North Pole. And Governor Baxter's deeds of trust would probably be violated by having permanent wx instruments there.) C'est la vie.

Eek's right, of course, though usually the bark isn't so smooth because the moose love to chew it off. Our neighbor in Ft. Kent had a youngish hardwood lot - trees 5-8" diameter and 50' tall - and there was one mystery tree. It had YB bark, sort of, and with bare limbs looked like one of those, especially with its nice straight form. Mt. ash tends to crooks and limbs, in part because it completes best on cold high elevation sites with limited fertility. The tree had a live twig within reach, so I did a scratch'n'sniff and got the classic bitter almond of mt. ash, not the wintergreen of YB. Of note: Mt. ash is unrelated to the ash genus, but is the N. American version of rowan, thus not threatened by EAB. Deerflies love the heat - cannot get too warm for them, and they look upon deet as salad dressing. Black flies tend to disappear when temps pass 85, though June 1996 at Deboullie was a horrible exception - got pounded by them in the middle of 250-acre Deboullie Pond on a 90+ day. That week my Ben's 100 worked for just an hour at a time, so I quit using it. Only way to avoid the little monsters, other than our solar-oven tent, was in a shady hollow that had snow/ice left from the previous winter and held sub-50 temps.

Revisiting this - Clayton Lake lies in a broad valley at 1000' elev, about 400' higher than CAR. Clayton was -31 that morning, and given the full mixing, was probably at least as windy. I doubt they recorded wind speeds, but -31 at 20 mph converts to WCI of -62. Another revisit, that -85 (old scale) I mentioned in an earlier post. CAR temp was -20 at the time I heard that WCI from the radio, and that would require wind speeds in the low 40s. It was indeed very windy - the gauge on the lee shore of Portage Lake, about 20 miles west from CAR, was wiggling above/below 30 - but the low 40s had to be a gust. We spent that day in the woods another 10-12 miles west of Portage, and sustained 40+ would've had us dodging from crashing spruce trees the whole time. Mid 20s is more likely, for WCI (new scale) around -50, so not a contender.

NYC recorded sustained wind 43 mph, their top for Dec, but i can only estimate what we had. However, gusts were sufficient to shatter $10k worth of windows in a nearly finished new school a couple towns away, tipped many trees, managed to create 6-ft drifts from the 2" of (originally wet) snow that fell late on 12/29. One could track gusts by the clouds of snow flying thru the woods. My guess is that gusts topped 60, may have reached 70. Only the Apps gale of Nov 1950 can challenge for the strongest winds of my experience, with Hazel and Doria (NNJ) and Bob (Maine) clearly a step lower. The wind began howling late on 12/29 after the snow ended, increased on the 30th and still more the next day, and only began to calm a bit during the overnight 31st-1st. The 1962 winds were backside NW from the blizzard that ate BGR - 30-45" in the lower/middle Penobscot valley, temps cycling back and forth between subzero and near freezing, drifts to 16'. A 20-year retrospect in the Bangor Daily News (which was unable to publish on 12/31, for the only time in their nearly 200 year history) included a tale of snowplows out near the airport. A regular (for Maine) plow truck got stuck, so a 6-wheel-drive grader was sent. When it got stuck, a large bulldozer followed, and also got stuck, at which point the operators probably retreated to Pilot's Grill for warmth inside and out. The NFL championship, Giants-Packers, was played on 12/30 at Yankee Stadium. Temps were mid teens (compared to NYC's 13/4 on the 31st), but according to those who sat thru both, the wind and cold combo was comparable - though 25-30° less cold - to that at the famed Ice Bowl in GB 5 years later.

Had 76/41 yesterday with more sun than clouds. June diurnal range "only" 25° after May's 30, but without the cool drizzle-clouds of 4-7 my June average would be 73/45.

Balsam fir is relatively short-lived, subject to internal defect, shallow rooted, and with dense evergreen foliage. What's not for the wind to like? I agree that foliage was key - by late October on LI I'd guess leaf drop had been considerable on non-oak species, so not only did they have more sail area still rigged but lacked protection from their neighbors. In addition, oak crowns tend to be wider than those of the other species noted, and that would be particularly true on the sand-rich soils on much of the island. That wide-branching growth habit may be why oaks in NNJ took some of the worst damage in the NW gales back on 12/31/62 - seeing bare-limbed large white oaks, usually deeper rooted than reds, being tipped out of semi-frozen soil (my temps for that day were 5/-8) was surprising.

Six mornings in the 30s so far. For June, only 2004 (8) had more. 50-50 on Friday morning being #7. Earlier full sun now filtered by high thin clouds.

Low 40s this morning, then another CoC day.

For those 2 species there's probably little difference - perhaps the elm might go first. Substitute aspen for either and the difference becomes stark. Aspen wood is far weaker and it's not only a tall species but one with all its foliage near the top, thus maximizing the wind's leverage. On my woodlot (and anywhere else I've looked), aspen suffers most from wind when leaves are full, balsam fir when leaves have fallen.

Same for me. Not a wind chill situation, but when I handle firewood (outdoors) barehanded at +20, it feels cold. At -20 it feels painful.

Exactly. If they had tested, say, Lombardy poplar as well as beech, they might have reached a different conclusion.

Color me VERY unimpressed. During storms, there is a critical wind speed, of around 42 m/s (90 mph), at which almost all tree trunks break – irrespective of their size or species – according to a new study done by researchers in France If this statement intends to say that winds of 90 mph will break nearly all trees, I'd have little argument (while noting that palms, which sometimes withstand stronger winds, are botanically very big grass.) However, the link seems to infer that all trees break at the same windspeed, and empirical evidence says otherwise. To explore this further, Virot and his colleagues conducted experiments on horizontal beech rods. While mechanical differences between different tree species are slight, beech was chosen as a wood with average proprieties So we can toss out all the lumber standards based on species? There's a good reason why wooden RR ties were made from dense hardwoods like oak and maple, not aspen or basswood. A test that not only works with limbless "trees" but uses wood from just one species, then applies those results as being the same for all species and to real trees in the forest has little practical validity, IMO. I'm glad the silviculturist's comments were added. A facet being used more recently for evaluating windfirmness is height-diameter ratio, that is, total height divided by diameter at 4.5' above ground, the standard for forest inventories in which only one diameter measurement per tree is taken. (Outside the US, it's 1.4m, essentially the same.) H:D ratios above 60 point toward lessening windfirmness, and those trees with 70+ have been found to be quite vulnerable. Taking into consideration that trees nearly triple in diameter for a doubling in their height Except they don't, other than perhaps as an average, and that differs widely among species - northern white cedar tapers far more rapidly than aspen or pine, and nearly all trees will have far more taper when open-grown than those in a dense stand. rant over (But thanks for the link.)

Assuming that's a serious comment, I'd find that quite interesting, though I'm still working full time (for about another year) and thus would have limited availability. An experienced arborist might do just as well, and probably better for tree damage in an urban environment. Somewhat of a non sequitor, but related to the thread topic: In 1986 straight line winds caused nearly 100% damage to about 600 acres 15 miles SE from Fort Kent. It flattened a SW-NE swath 4 miles long and up to 1/2 mile wide, tossing trees into the north end of Square Lake before dissipating. This event occurred quite late in season for strong convection up there, on Sept. 30. (Ironically, they had 3-6" snow on the same date in 1991.) The wind hit so suddenly on some acres that it snapped off large sound sugar maple 15-20 feet off the ground before the roots could be pulled out. I've always figured such damage was high end for such events, perhaps 80-100 mph, but would appreciate what folks would say who have much quantitative damage assessment experience.

Can't see the break point on the tree, so unable to know if there was defect predisposing it for defeat. However, H-V's description plus the windshield smashed by a flying limb certainly support your estimate.

Yesterday afternoon's line dropped a whopping 0.04" with one distant rumble, and I thought the forecast was a total fail. (Temp certainly was - P&C said 91, we stopped at 71.) Then the late evening Act II added 0.69" more in heavy but not torrential showers over 2+ hours. Not enough but glad for a decent watering. Though I often lament here about how severe storms detour around my particular spot, H-V's account is not one I wish ever to experience. That said, I love a good light show, especially one that includes some close hits - not on the house, please.

While the airport was reporting RA+ at 4 PM, I doubt we got 0.05" outside the office, 2 miles ESE. Another split/dodge.