tamarack

1 hour ago, Torch Tiger said:

sarcasm sure...but with Spring 3 weeks away, true, it won't.

Met spring, true, but here March is 50/50 - 50% of months are transition and 50% are winter.

1 hour ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Anecdotally, that kind of reminds of that Deathstar band at the end of 12-9-2005

Or March 21, 1992.  Lived in Gardiner then and got a 2.4" overnight surprise.  11.4" at PWM and 2 feet at Goose Rocks Beach (Kennebunkport).  Several hours of 6"/hr for the 2-footer.  First time I saw the word "Norlun".

Some eentsy snow grains sailing by.

I wonder if that RI band will crush Cumberland.  

1 hour ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Yea, it's going to be a late spring this year IMO....even by our standards.

Hope it warms up in late May - last year the pollination window for our apples and quinces was 9 days of rainy 40s.  Fertilization was terrible.

12 minutes ago, dendrite said:

Pretty good cold pool with that shot

Hudson Valley horror?

17 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

There’s no chance NYC goes below 0F. Unless there is just some sort of catastrophic model failure of 3-5C at 925mb. 

Or a freaky event like Feb 8, 1963.  At 11 PM on 2/7 it was 30° and Tex Antoine forecast a low of 20.  When the temp dropped to 25 at midnight we wondered.  By 6 the next morning Central Park reported 5° and by 7 it had dropped to 2.  The low was -2 that morning with a stiff NW breeze, and some forecasters were talking 5-10 below zero for the next morning and were explaining the bust was due to a very cold blob somehow slipped from above to ground level.  (I understood none of that.)  The cold disappeared as fast as it arrived; after an afternoon high of 16 on 2/8 the temp only got down to 11 on 2/9 and by 2/10 the day's temp was 40/30, with 1.1" RA on 2/11-12.

Got down to -2 during the overnight, the 15th straight day with subzero minima.  That tops the 14 days on Jan 15-28, 2003 for the longest run here.  Checked my Fort Kent  records, thinking that place would have much longer runs, but tops (and only one longer than 14 days) was 18 from Jan 16 thru Feb 2, 1982.

38 minutes ago, Damage In Tolland said:

Beverly has 10”

Beverly 1.3 ENE cocorahs report at 8:45 was 11.7".

Light echoes overhead here, but nothing's making it thru the dry air - pretty much as was forecast.

1 hour ago, dendrite said:

OKX soundings had -25C and -26C at 925 for 2/4/23 12z and 2/14/16 12z respectively. Mins at Central Park were +3 and -1. LGA was +5 and +1.

MOS has mins of +7 with this right now.

That early February blast in 2023 packed significant wind here, and probably NYC as well.  I don't think this weekend will have as deep a WCI as back then.

42 minutes ago, dendrite said:

High temps? Most of the lower el SNE sites start pushing 40° for max temp climo around then.

Average max doesn't climb above 32 until early March, though 5° AN would be >32 next week.

2 hours ago, ORH_wxman said:

I think I’m all set with the pre-1940 winters…colder but drier. Unless it’s the 1930s….lot of huge torches mixed in that decade but it did have 1933-34.

I’ll take the 1960s again though. 

Several years back I looked up states' records for 4 major parameters, hottest/coldest days and wettest/driest years.  My data is dated - most recent record was set in 2012.  That noted, my info has the 1930s holding 52 of the 200 total bests, 33 of the 100 temp extremes:  23 hottest, 10 coldest, 2 wettest (ID, WA) and 17 driest.  2nd most is the 1950s, with 5/2/10/9, respectively.

Also noted was NNE holding 3 of the 5 hottest extremes in the 1910s.  (SC & CA the other 2.)  First 2 weeks of July 1911 were a north country furnace.

Solid winter so far, a solid B- which would be the best since 2018-19.  Sustained cold and pack plus the astronomical ratio that turned an 8-10" storm to nearly 20".  Snowfall YTD is 115% of average, but GYX's 7-day offers only a trace for Saturday and nothing beyond.  Maybe the mid-month mild-up can bring 'something' - haven't have a cutter since before Christmas.

1 minute ago, dendrite said:

I’ve been keeping an eye on your posts. You’ve had some pretty good rad nights up there too. IZG has been colder than HIE and BML on many mornings.

We have a field sloping down to one side of our relatively flat yard and thick woods on the other three, so the cold air drains into the yard readily and gets caught there.

28 minutes ago, dendrite said:

A lot of ASOS sites are pits. But the SNE radiators have been a lot more anomalously cold versus NNE in recent weeks.

And some are hilltops - FVE, CAR, AUG.  Not many in the middle.

Fake -2 for the low, subzero minima run at 13.

12th consecutive subzero morning, near -5.  Might break the string tomorrow.

Sun did good work here, temp reached 31-32 from the morning low of -2.  Bit of wind, though.

1 hour ago, SJonesWX said:

yeah, no. the ice didn't go anywhere in SNH. the weight of the snow on the ice may have pushed water up to the surface creating the slush (which happens almost every year), but there has been no ice melting. 

Agree.  No matter how thick the ice, it's always cracking, which allows water to seep up into the snow layer when that snow is sufficiently heavy.  Usually, the slush layer is only 1-2" but I've seen it change the entire snow layer when ice thickness is modest and snowfall is heavy.  Then the re-freeze leaves the upper part of ice as less-rigid gray.

Today is the 50th anniversary of the Groundhog Day Gale in Maine, not much snow but lots of drama:

Southwest Harbor (on Penobscot Bay) recorded a gust at 115 MPH.
--BGR had one at 83 MPH
--The wind blew so much water up the Penobscot estuary that the tide at BGR rose 15 feet in 15 minutes, drowning over 200 cars in the Kenduskeag parking lots, as the temp dove from 57 to 1.
--CAR temp dropped from 49 to -7 in about 8 hours, and the 957 mb there is the station's lowest, perhaps 2nd lowest (behind the 1978 Cleveland Crusher) for non-TC storms in eastern US.
--At our place in Fort Kent, we had 1.5" RA (only 0.5" SN) with temp 46/-11.  The CF drove the temp from 44 to -6 in 5 hours. 
--Roads had horrible ice holes (especially in the woods) until late March when temps got into the 50s.

12 minutes ago, WxWatcher007 said:

What’s your lowest recorded temperature up there?

We've reached the minus 30s 6 times.

-36   Jan 16, 2009   (Big Black River in NW Maine sets a new statewide minimum with -50, eclipsing the -48 in Van Buren.)
-34   Jan 17, 2009
-31    Jan 4, 2014
-31   Dec 29, 2017
-30   Jan 22, 2005
-30   Jan 27, 2022
We've also had 4 mornings at -29, 3 in Jan and one in Feb.

Fort Kent had some impressive cold during our 10 years there.  -41 in Jan 1976 (11 days after we moved there), -39, -42 and -47 in Jan 1979, also -42 in Dec 1980.

15 hours ago, Ginx snewx said:

New England Cold wave of 1857. January 1857 was the coldest month ever recorded in New England. Average month temperatures of 16.7 °F (−8.5 °C) in New Haven, 16.8 °F (−8.4 °C) in Boston, and 19.6 °F (−6.9 °C) in New York City remain coldest months on record in those cities. The worst of the cold descended on New England on January 22 with January 23 being one of the coldest days known in the region. In Bath, Maine a temperature reading of −52 °F (−47 °C) and in Franconia, New Hampshire −51 °F (−46 °C) were recorded. In Norwich, Vermont −44 °F (−42 °C) was recorded. Boston suburbs of Malden and West Newton recorded −30 °F (−34 °C) overnight. Boston temperatures for January 23 never rose above 0 °F (−18 °C) all day and Nantucket Island was connected to the mainland by ice. In New York City, Erasmus Hall in Brooklyn reached a high of 0 °F during the day and the Hudson River froze over solidly enough for people to walk across to Hoboken.[

-51 in Franconia is impressive.  -52 at tidewater in Bath is incredible (if real) - blows away the near-impossible -39 at PWM on 2/16/1943.

Just missed a 40° diurnal span yesterday, 21/-18.  Slightly below zero for today's low, while BML and HIE reached -19.

1 hour ago, WinterWolf said:

I don’t think anybody said end winter Kev.  But pattens can flip. Doesn’t mean this does. The colder looks have won out this season. Warm ups have been muted pretty much every time…but we’ll have to see?  The -NAO can certainly help us…but we’ll see. 

As long as it's not like CAR in 1980-81 - Dec -9, Jan -5, Feb +14.  2/81 tied the February record max twice and broke it 7 times.

Temp got over 20 today, first time since Jan 22nd.  Nine straight maxima in the teens or singles - been a while since that happened.

Pure sun here today, 16/-21.   January 2026 numbers:

Avg max:   23.1    -2.6   Mildest:   42   10th
Avg min:     4.0    -0.7   Coldest:  -23   28th
Mean:        13.5    -1.7   Mildest mean:  10th, coldest mean:  -5.5   24th

Precip:   2.23"    -0.97"    Greatest day:   0.55"   25th

Snow:     30.1"    +9.9"     Greatest day:   17.0"    25th
We had 19.6" from the 25-27th storm and 12 other distinct snow events, 0.1" to 3.0" - a dozen midgets plus a monster.  

Temperature had 4 distinct periods:
1-6, all BN:          18.0/1.7   -9.7
7-16, all AN:      35.0/19.8  +11.3
17-23: AN/BN:   23.7/4.3     0.0 (Rounded up from -0.04)
24-31, all BN:    11.5/-11.6   -14.2

13 hours ago, Snowedin said:

One of our pipes is leaking in the bathroom but thankfully it’s just a few drops for now. I’m probably gonna have to go out and knock some of the ice and snow off the roof that’s contributing. Can’t wait for a little thaw next week as this cold has just been brutal and relentless! The heat needs a serious breather as well.

Check around the bathroom stack.  We had a leak from cracked tar around that pipe one snowy winter.  Shoveling the snow away from the stack was a temporary fix and when things warmed up a quart can of tar made it permanent.

Reached -21 this morning but the max will be well above yesterday's windy 9.  Maybe another 40° diurnal range today; the 28th was 17/-23.

7 minutes ago, beavis1729 said:

Ugh...that would drive me crazy, especially with cold temps.

But we only have 2" of snow cover imby, trying to hold on to every last flake...so who's to be upset about 22". 

Certainly not me.    Monday morning's 6.0" with only 0.08" LE (75:1, unbelievably) is 5" of settling all by itself, and the rest of the snow was near 20:1.  Average depth here for Jan 30 over 28 years is 15".

Depth has receded from 29" to 22" in 4 days, but no melting (warmest since last Friday is 18) and probably little sublimation.  19.6" of 25:1 SN is apt to settle a bit.  If the wind quits soon after dark, we'll have another dive thru the minus teens.

1 hour ago, 40/70 Benchmark said:

Vintage 1980s aluminum can haha

Or 1960s galvanized steel.