tamarack

Crazy February day - temp got only to 46 but with the mild overnight the mean was +21. Brief (10 minutes) but noisy TS arrived at 4 PM with small hail, torrential rain (0.35" with catpaws) and 2 strikes within 1/2 mile, closer than anything last summer, plus others within a mile or so. I can't recall seeing rain that dense in February before yesterday.

We watched both from afar. In Fort Kent we'd just come out of 8 straight days with subzero highs. In our present locale, 2/16/03 hit -29, our coldest February temp here. 3rd time's the charm?

18" of wind-blown powder in February and 24" of paste. My mother and 4 y.o. little brother were flying home on 3/19 and scheduled to switch airplanes at DCA for a dinner flight to EWR. Snow at DCA and fog at EWR closed both, but they were able, barely, to land at (then) Idlewild. She then had to haul 2 suitcases and an overtired and hungry kid into a taxi to Newark. We got home before dz/fog turned to snow, but not by much.

Almost the same as here. +9.0, max 37 (yesterday), min 8 (twice, including yesterday). Jan 23 thru Feb 7 is +9.4 (max +5.7, min +13.2).

Never got past 31" here. We had 26" OG on Feb 1, received 23" of 18:1 snow and had 26" on Feb 28. Not much melting that month, as there was only 3 hr above 32, on the last Sunday of the month, and the average temp was 16/-10.

That little blob in Miane between the big blues is off. My site was 7.4" AN for that period and the co-op in town was nearly +9". The Oct-Jan average is 40-45" and that map would indicate only 15-20" rather than what's in my sig.

Average 1st half of winter that went nuts in Feb-Mar, 48" pack on 3/31.

GYX' current AFD understates the mildness a bit. Yesterday here was +7, today will be +10 or 11, tomorrow should be about the same and the weekend may approach +20. .SYNOPSIS... High pressure gradually builds eastward into our region through the end of the week with dry weather and seasonable to above normal temperature

This reminds me of 18 years ago. In mid-February 2006 a fellow from Corpus Christi called the manager of Aroostook State Park, a few miles west from PQI, asking about snowmobiling. The manager said it was awful in his area but was decent up in the St. John Valley. (Seven weeks earlier PQI had a 25" dump, with 33" at CAR, their greatest on record.) Imagine what the guy from south TX thought when told that northern Maine had crummy snow conditions in Feb. Conditions here in the Maine foothills are fair to poor - snow is there but all the Dec/Jan rain still makes issues at unbridged crossings. Better in the mountains.

Thanks. How long did significantly accumulating snow continue?

We snuck in 2 slightly BN days on 1/30-31, but the average for 1/23 onward is +9.5. Pack is holding at 18" with 4-5" LE, but it will probably retreat a bit over the weekend - more settling than melting.

More atmospheric water helped, but like Feb 1969 the real key is how long it snowed - 5 days in NS?

All good points, and the long look is crucial. We've had 5 events with 3.25" or greater, including 2 with 4"+, in the period Oct 22-Dec 23, only 15 months. However, June 98 thru Sept 99, 16 months, also had 5 such events and 4 of those topped 4". Looking the other way, 2001-04 had no such events and 2018-21 had only one. (Context: From May 1998 thru the present, we've had 29 storms of 3.25"+, about 1.2 per year.) Edit: The late lamented Farmington co-op has winters 1893-94 thru 2021-22, so 'n' = 129. Their average winter is 89.6" and the bottom 10% (13th lowest) had 60.6" and the top 10% winter had 122.6".

9 of the 25 winters here would meet those 2 criteria. I'd hate to be in a class in which the teacher set the curve assuming a 36% flunk rate. Median would probably be no higher than D. Retro low has turned sunny to mostly cloudy this afternoon.

June 2023: Summer lasted 2 days. 1 89 47 68 0.09 2 83 54 68.5 0.12 3 57 43 50 15 0.06 4 47 41 44 21 0.78 5 55 46 50.5 14.5 0.49 6 56 49 52.5 12.5 0.01 7 56 47 51.5 13.5 0.02 8 56 47 51.5 13.5 0.61 9 60 46 53 12 0.51 10 64 48 56 9 0.12 11 73 43 58 7 0.01 12 73 45 59 6 13 64 52 58 7 0.13 14 67 55 61 4 0.04 15 70 56 63 2 0.39 16 68 50 59 6 0.41 17 59 53 56 9 0.94 18 58 48 53 12 0.63 19 65 48 56.5 8.5 20 65 54 59.5 5.5 0.05 21 73 49 61 4 22 76 44 60 5 23 79 46 62.5 2.5 24 73 60 66.5 0.1 25 78 63 70.5 0.00005 26 68 60 64 1 0.31 27 70 58 64 1 0.77 28 68 63 65.5 0.45 29 75 62 68.5 0.84 30 73 62 67.5 0.01

Little black-and-whites are still calling chick-a-dee-dee, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear the almost-spring phee-bee this weekend. 3rd straight sunny day with a sharp breeze, thanks to the low that may still be burying some places in the Maritimes.

Twp20/Range11&12. That combo is probably the biggest township in Maine. (Not town - that's Allagash, comprised of 4 townships.) My first winter (1976) working for Seven Islands included several nights at the Woodlands Improvement camps in E. Station while maintaining boundary lines. When I want to know the coldest temp in Maine, I look up 04741. Also, that 80" was found near the center of Big Twenty, about 12 hours after the end of a big dump - 29.0" at CAR and 26.5" (greatest I've measured, also deepest pack at 65") at our Fort Kent home.

83-84 was a bit better in northern Maine - 171" and the most massive pack I've seen. Reached 80" on Big Twenty Twp (northern tip of the state) in mid-March.

What's really strange is that PVD's 7" was more than 5 times the 1.3" at BDL. I think there was a major controversy at BWI for that storm. They were clearing every hour or something like that. Same thing happened at BOS too…BOS real total was prob more like 23” instead of the “record” 27.6”. Yea, 1978 is still king...those were all total depth measurements, too. Both storms started with 3" depth at Boston. 1978 raised the pack to 29" while PDII brought it only to 19". 'Nuf said.

Neither of the PDs produced a single flake where I was living at the time - suppression city.

Even with the major suppression in 2002-03 and the horror of 2009-10 here, I totally agree. One plus for this very mild winter is that it's been active.

I'm lazy. I'd merely sort from high to low, note n (looks like 113 since 97-02 are msg) and excise the top/bottom 11 of the column. (I also like the median in accounting for outliers. Doesn't always work, Jan snow here has the median 1.6" above the mean.)

January in the Maine foothills: Avg temp: 19.8 +4.6 Avg max: 28.1 Mildest, 43 on the 10th Avg min: 11.5 Coldest, -12 on the 19th Precip: 5.47" +2.16" and 0.01" behind 2nd wettest. Greatest day, 2.18" on the 10th Snow: 29.9" +8.5" and identical to Jan 2023. Biggest day, 9.0" on the 10th (followed by 0.84" RA, making an awful mess) Depth: Max: 20" on several days Avg: 13.7" +1.7" This month was well AN for temp, precip and snow. It featured 5 significant snowfalls ranging from 3.8" to 9.0". The 1.0" squall on the 14th was one of the best since we left Fort Kent in 1985. The powerful storms on the 10th and 13th that pounded to coast did little damage here other than clogging the snowblower, as winds were modest in each.

Snowfall here averages almost exactly the same for NDJ as FMA. Thru last winter the average total is 88.6", with 44.2" thru 1/31 and 44.4" afterwards. If that pattern holds for this winter (and at your place), you'll finish very slightly BN. (This should be taken with a barrel of salt. In the 2005-06 ratter, only 15% of the total came after 1/31. The next winter, it was 80% post-January.)

In our 25 Decembers, 14 have been below the average and 9 led to BN winters. Only 9" on 12/31/2000 prevented 6-of-15 AN as that winter had 150% of the average here. While nearly 2/3 of BN Decembers have been part of BN winters here, the ones that were in AN winters are not rare.