tamarack

GYX forecast goes out to next Thursday and has my town at 49/29 that day, which would be more like 47/25 at my frost pocket place. Normal here for 11/16 is 42/24 so that forecast would be +3. "Torch" varies by season of course. 10+ in July would certainly fit the term and might set some daily records. In January 10° AN might mean a big snowstorm here. IMO, Met winter torch threshold should be 20+, and maybe 15+ in SNE.

Thanks. Not ideal but still useful.

20 minutes of moderate snow brought 0.2" and dropped the temp back to 30-31, but now beginning to let up. "Flakes" were not quite spherical things about 1/16 diam, but not graupel. Not much but first white ground.

Had a few flakes at 9:20 but nothing more until 10:50. Lgt snow since then, but temp is 32-33 and we're almost to solar noon, so unless it snows a lot harder, we'll not have more than a trace. Only place the flakes are surviving is on the upturned edges of the few oak leaves still on the tree. Timing is everything. Edit: Radar shows a short burst of mod snow now coming overhead, so maybe a tenth or 2 to whiten the lawn.

When I worked at Napoli's Pizza in BGR (73-75), several co-workers smoked the stuff, and they said the price of $20/oz seemed inflation-proof. In the summer of 1975, I worked as a research field assistant, intensively sampling dense stands of sapling-pole spruce-fir stands. My partner like MJ though not on the job, and one week working Downeast on St. Regis land, the manager assigned us helpers from NYC (sort of a Fresh Air Fund thing). After the last day's work there, the four ~20 y.o. guys invited us to where they were staying in East Machias and offered us weed. I said no thanks, but my chum partook. When we got back to the St. Regis field office where we'd stayed, he commented, "That was the goooood stuff!" and was thankful that I was driving as his time consciousness was messed up, such that he thought the truck would be going 100 mph and then 10 mph, back and forth. Weed cures all. We’d have a friendlier and more inclusive society if everyone puffed and chewed a little. Take care. I read some recent research pointing to heart issues when it's smoked, can't recall any such info on edibles.

Someone here might know, but I'm not that someone. Also, this was about 30 years ago.

The big oak 50 yards from the house is down to about 20% leafed. The pin oaks planted in Farmington (they're not native to Maine) still have perhaps 3/4 of their leaves. Usually, those trees have the brightest fall color of any oak, with a deep scarlet, but this year they were a mousey yellow with only a sprig here and there showing any red. Wind is backing down, but this morning it was fierce - dumped a large dead ash on our road (and fortunately it broke apart for easy removal) and not only blew around the traffic cones where some roadwork was being done in New Sharon but also tipped over some of the 4-foot-square caution signs. The 38 when I reset the max-min last evening will hold as the day's high.

Many years ago when I lived in Gardiner, I found a small (10'x20') fenced-in area while hunting in the 2,000' strip of woods between our house and the camps on Cobbossee Stream. The holes where things had been dug up confirmed the use. In late July I went back, carefully, to see the spot and there were MJ plants 7+ feet tall. I counted paces on the way back out, noting landmarks, and sent an anonymous letter with directions to the Gardiner police. I also told our stall biologist, also a good friend, and 2 days later he greeted me with, "Your patch made the cover of the Kennebec Journal!" (Pic with officer shouldering a bunch of plants.) The police called it a "nice patch", about 35 plants. We've also found the stuff growing on many of the Public Lands tracts, the biggest a field with ~1,500 plants just inside the east boundary of the large Scopan Unit, west from PQI, discovered by a Northern Region forester and forest tech. The forester, probably the last person who would ever use, started jumping up and down and shouting, "We're rich! We're rich!". Then he radioed the sheriff's department.

Had >20" pack when that blast hit, so the mice and voles were snuggling and making babies underneath. Bare ground, cold wx and lots of raptors are the best tick medicine.

I looked on G.E. to compare Black to Titcomb Hill in Farmington, but they are very different, with Black offering a bit over 1,000' vertical compared to Titcomb's 300'. Despite its modest size, Titcomb keeps the Mt. Blue HS Alpine/Nordic teams very competitive.

Ken Allen, who for decades wrote hunting and fishing columns for the Waterville and Augusta papers, recounted 2 possible mountain lion sightings. One came as he was driving south from Greenville at dusk with light rain. The animal crossed right to left in front of him, so he braked and backed up for a better look. There at the mouth of an old road was a big golden retriever. The other gave Ken a good look, with cat face and long tail visible. Two conclusions: There are valid lion sightings, and even experts can be fooled.

Never heard of an albino marten before, but most mammals produce very rare albino offspring so it's certainly possible. A long-tailed weasel is about 2/3 the size of a marten and always turns white, just like it's much smaller short-tailed weasel. I think both species are called ermine when white.

I don't know if Maine ever held elk, but it never fully extirpated lynx or marten, as peak forest-to-farm clearing was much less than elsewhere in New England. Currently the state has a large marten population and the greatest lower-48 population of lynx, by far. The much less dramatic population swings of snowshoe hare compared to those in true Boreal forests has helped. The biologists here are pondering whether they should petition to have lynx removed from its current Threatened listing. (If they do, they would be called every name but their own by preservationists.)

I've read (and seen on the tube) that mountain lions try to cover their kills after a meal, something that no other North American predator does often, if at all. Also, lions will rake off some of the hair from a deer, another unique practice on this continent. With probably 10s of thousand game cams out there in NNE, a significant lion population would not long be a secret. The last lion shot in Maine was just prior to WW2, near Lac Frontiere, PQ. The only* confirmed non-captive lion in Maine since then, AFAIK, was ID'ed by hair DNA in Cape Elizabeth, not the place one might expect. Obviously a released pet. *DEW wild animal sanctuary in Mt. Vernon has a couple, or did when we visited the place 3 years ago.

On July 31, 1978 in Fort Kent, we had a light frost that damaged our cucurbits and wrecked the beans next door. Last was first? (Or were the frosts on June 16 last and August 24 first?) Clouds beginning to spoil the pure blue.

My earliest "snow awareness" (qualitive only) came during the early 1950s, a 6-winter stretch in which NYC never had a 20"+ winter (longest such streak in their 154-year POR) and NNJ wasn't much better. We had a very small shrub, about 6", below the picture window, and during those winters it was fully covered just once. March 1956 was a real revelation. Bluebird morning here after a low 20s min. Might sneak in some frozen this week, though nothing serious. (Other than for drivers - Franklin County Sheriffs and towing companies were out straight in last Monday's slush.)

When I lived in northern Maine, most of my deer came through still hunting, would take an hour to go 250 yards. About half those deer were looking at me, unsure of what I was, when the trigger was pulled. Farther south where I now live, the deer are a bit spookier, the leaves more crackly (and so are my knees).

Sunday River and Sugarloaf also face in that general direction, Pleasant Mt as well. Saddleback is the outlier, looking to the northwest; probably catches beaucoup upslope. Slowly getting there on the Oak forest. Hopefully mainly all down over next 10 -14 days or so . Your oaks look similar to the 2 big ones a couple hundred feet from the house. I was sitting near those trees and also near 2 buck scrapes yesterday afternoon, hoping the wind would quit, but it continued to rustle those crispy brown things until after legal hunting time. Other species are 99.99% sticks.

Maine can allow keeping of some species of wild animals if the keeper obtains a special permit, which I suspect is not issued lightly. Two towns from my place, in Mount Vernon, one can visit DEW Animal Kingdom during the milder seasons, and can see everything from big cats, tropical birds, monkeys and domestic sheep. The owners obviously have the requisite permits and also receive some roadkill deer/moose when the carcass is unfit for human consumption but not dangerous to the carnivorous critters. (DEW stands for domestic/exotic/wild. Almost all of the animals and birds are either seized from unpermitted folks or otherwise unable to be rewilded.)

No matter how tame it looks, it's still a wild animal. Many years ago, when I was a forester in northwest Maine, the game warden posted on the border across from St.-Pamphile, PQ had obtained 2 coyote kits while their eyes had not yet opened and raised them to adulthood. When we'd stay at the nearby Seven Islands camp, we'd often hear them howling. They seemed utterly tame but were imprinted on the warden. One day the warden's wife went to feed them and one slashed her for about 20 stitches, the warden thinking that it was jealousy (the warden is mine!!). He realized that the coyotes were still wild at heart and a danger to his wife and others, so sadly, he put them down.

Dozen donuts in a culvert trap and they wouldn't even need to sedate the critter, unless they wanted to do a health check. Drive the critter into the Berks away from birdfeeders aaand away it goes.

Hit or miss around here. There are some loaded pines in the area but the ones on our woodlot, some of which are 120 feet tall, have very few. The mild January plus the frigid blast in early February may have killed some of the overwintering 1st-year conelets. (We've not had much if any of the needlecast fungus here.) Trying to outguess tree seed production can be frustrating, except for balsam fir that seems always to have a bumper crop every 2nd year. Way back in 1980 during the spruce budworm outbreak, I prescribed a shelterwood harvest on T14R13, one town east from where the Big Black joins the St. John. All the moth-eaten fir was to go and also the worst-looking spruce, with healthier spruce and all of the superstory pine retained. In July I saw a couple of those pines had been cut as part of roadbuilding, and they were stiff with 1/2" conelets, a great sign. Then came the record February thaw - CAR temps nearly 15° AN - followed by cold and a mid-month blizzard in March. Only a handful of those conelets survived and we postponed the harvest, switching to stands with little pine.

21 here, a tic above yesterday but just as frosty. 2020 and 2021 were very good Decembers from a snow standoint, but both were marred by ugly cutters ....at least 2019 did have a smaller snow event around 12/18 to give us a white Xmas. Both well below average here. Last December had the 1st AN snow since 2017, with 95% of the total coming in the mid-month dump.

20° this morning with nearly 1/2" on the washtub under the eaves. October numbers" Avg temp: 50.0 +4.7 2nd mildest here (51.1 in 2017) Avg max: 58.8 +3.3 Warmest, 79 on 3&4. Warmest Oct day here is 80. Avg min: 41.1 +6.1 Coldest, 26 on the 31st. That was the weakest for Oct coldest by 2°, and the avg min is the only 40°+. Precip" 4.74" -0.89" Wettest, 1.32" on the 22nd had some IP/SN mix on the 30th. October had 19 cloudy days, tops by 3, and the 26% of available sun is 5% less than the 2nd gloomiest.

Maybe, if one wants to split the whole pile in one day. I've split my wood with a maul since we moved into our first house in 1977, in Fort Kent. Most times I'd swing for 30 minutes then do something else for a while. After 4 sunny days to start the month, we've had none since. Can today end the CL/PC run? (I expect some Cu this afternoon, but it's been solidly blue so far.)