tamarack

This, a thousand times. Since Cool Spruce had the stroke (can it be a dozen years?) I've had more conversations here with Jeff than anyone else, and it's not close. Now he's dealing with yet another personal tragedy while in shock for what happened a few miles to his north. Stay strong, Jeff; others in your family need you.

He would have to bluff his way past the North Maine Woods or Baxter Park gates. I hope those folks were alerted to that possibility. Once in those places he'd be impossible to find as long as he could feed and shelter himself. However, winters there would be challenging and there's not dozens of nearby camps/houses to raid, as did the North Pond hermit for 27 years. Edit: Posted this before seeing Jeff's link to the Downeast article.

Don't think it reached 65 here, as except for some brief sun before 8 AM it's been all gray skies. (Of course, the average max here for today is 51, so even a mere 65 is noteworthy.)

The nonsense is a society where a machine gun is at the beck and call of every warped, troubled soul. This is false. Since the mid 1980s it has been extremely difficult to acquire a legal full-auto weapon. I'm not familiar with all the red tape but it includes a deep-dive character check and a stiff fee to ATF, among other things. That said: 1. I've no idea whether this shooter's weapon was full-auto or semi-auto. It looks like a tactical rifle (a.k.a. "assault weapon"), one on which various attachments - telescopic scope, night-vision scope, laser aim point, rangefinder, etc - can be quickly installed/removed. 2. A semi-auto with a 30-shot clip might be more deadly than a full-auto, though this trained former military man may have sufficient work with full-auto to hold the barrel down. A friend used to own, legally, a full-auto mini-14 and a 40-shot clip. I got to fire a full clip once, and on 3-shot burst I was unable to hold the muzzle down, such that shots 2,3 were off-target high. 3. My Remington Model 76 pump in .30-06 is probably far more powerful than what the killer was shooting, but my rifle's max is 5 cartridges not 30, and the small but fast .223 that's most common on his kind of weapon is plenty deadly and likely able to penetrate the Kevlar safety vest.

Many Maine deer would be transplanted to freezers if that were to verify.

Top "5" for me: 26.5", 3/14-15/1984 in Fort kent 24.5", 2/22-23/2009 in New Sharon 24.0" (5x) 3/18-19/1956 in NNJ 3/20-21/1958 in NNJ 2/3-4/1961 in NNJ (May be an underestimate, thanks to howling winds) 12/26-27/1976 in Fort Kent 12/6-7/2003 in New Sharon (Between 3/56 and 2/61 there were 3 storms of 18" and one of 20". That was by far the greatest big snow period I've seen.)

Your "top 5 snowstorm" would be my #1, by 3". I was happy with the 22" dump in mid-December, enough to survive the Grinch deluge the following week.

Do you know if you'll be able to have the table this season?

In Maine law, one of the penalty options is $3 per stump diameter inch. If the average stump was 10", that would add up to over $25k. (Triple stumpage is levied far more frequently.)

Best retention here was 07-08, also our snowiest with 142.3". Its 3,837 SDDs is easily #1. 2nd place was 18-19, though it was only 5th highest snowfall. Its 3,441 SDDs came from long duration, 11/10 thru 4/20, built on dense snow plus significantly BN temps in March and April. That winter's "retention factor" (SDDs/snowfall) was highest by far. The second snowiest winter, 2000-01, ranks only 5th for SDDs, because it had only 79 going into the new year. Tops for April, though. You must have been in NJ for this T-day event: If I had still lived in the Jersey Highlands where I grew up, probably would've seen 3-5". However, we began married life in June of that year and though we lived less than 10 miles from my parents, it was also 500' lower. Maybe we saw flakes but as my NNJ records are long lost, I can't remember.

Biggest Thanksgiving Day snowfall was 5.5" on 11/27/14, concluding the 13" event that's my only November storm with 10"+. 2nd place was 3.7" on 11/24/05, the weird event that spawned EF-0 and EF-1 tors on the midcoast. Even less common is Easter snow, with one exception. In 53 Maine Easters, none have delivered more than 0.4". However, 3/29/1970 in NNJ brought 11" of low-mid 20s pow. Even NYC got 4" from that one.

All NE winds here during that event as well, but modest velocity. After 10.7" with 2.67" LE interspersed with 1.14" of 33-35 RA, the 7" (2.7" LE) on the down-to-gravel driveway was far harder on the scoop than the 24" dump a year before, even though the earlier pow had to be pushed up and over the 4-foot-high snowbanks. (Snowblower was out of commission for both winters, but it likely wouldn't have been able to handle the 2010 mush.) First freeze this morning, 27° with a skim of ice on the washtub.

Average for 25 years here is 88.6" and for the first 20 we never had consecutive winters without a 12"+ event. Then we had 3, 18-19 thru 20-21 and only the 12.4" storm in early Feb 2022 prevented a 4th. The real end was last Dec's 22" bomb. Looks like we'll have our 9th straight cloudy/mostly cloudy day today, and probably the 1st sub-50 max of the season.

Depended on location, of course. 1981-82 and 83-84 (Fort Kent) were very snowy and 86-87 (Gardiner) had ~50" in January and a long deep pack. Then the pre-Thanksgiving blizzard that began the 6-week cold snap in 1989 included the 2nd of my 3 lifetime thundersnows. (Other 2 are 12/24/1966 in NNJ [thought the first crack was sonic boom because snow/thunder "couldn't happen"] and 2/11/2005 here.)

May threaten some daily records, but all-time? Fuggetaboutit. Most sites in the Northeast have October all-times +/-90. My short (26th year) record for the month is a mere 80° and we might get up to 70 in the coming torch. 40+ hours of near-continuous light RA added up to 1.87", month at 4.19". Oct avg is 5.65", so we'll finish BN.

In New England, below average colors are still quite pretty. The one truly bad foliage season here was 2005. the year with no reds. A week into October there was maybe 30% change, mostly to dull yellow. Then the 8-9 weekend brought nearly 6" of wind-driven RA and on Monday at least 80% of the leaves were on the ground.

Back in the day (1976 in Fort Kent) we had a 75° change in about 33 hours, -25 on 3/19 to 50 on3/20. (45 days earlier the temp plunged from 44 to -6 in 6 hours. That year had more dramatic wx than any other I've seen, from the -41 on 1/12 to 36" during the year's final week.)

Not too scared by AN temps after last winter, mildest DJFM of 25 here but with 114% of avg snowfall. Precip was ~3" AN for that period, with the 12/23 Grinch deluge (3.25") being the difference. I truly think people were just too early with the assessment. We continue to get decent orange and yellow now in the understory, even after the crowns have lost many leaves. Some sugar maples that escaped the anthracnose browning have that classic (and lovely) tricolor foliage. Sugar maples around our place all got hit by the fungi, color was weak and it's all sticks. had some nice red maple color but they're empty now as well.

First week's temp here: +10. Since then, right on the average.

Minima here have been all over the place, but maxima have been a gradual step-down, 1-4: 69-79 (That 79 [twice] is 2nd mildest Oct max here; top is 80 on 10/9/2011.) 5-7: 63-65 8-18: 52-58 Maybe today we get back up to 60?

Maybe. We're in grandkid mode and they all love the stuff. (And their SNJ area never had the ground fully white last cold season - "winter" should not be used for that one.) Maybe we all have a different opinion of what is a ratter, anything less than half of average with not even one biggie to me a ratter. What did you get in 21 Wolfie? Different for sure, as that threshold would be silly for CAR, where in 83 years they've never had a winter at 50% or lower. My place averages 89" and probably only 3 of 25 winters were true ratters, 05-06 (52.8"), 15-16 (48.2") and 2021 (52.5"). 4th lowest, 09-10, had exactly 12" more than 05-06 but had a far higher frustration factor than any of the bottom 3.

10-acre minimum in Maine as well, and legislators are always trying to fiddle with the law, thankfully unsuccessful so far. This past session's attempt was to raise the minimum to 25 acres and stipulated that the participants with 10-24 acres being kicked out of the program would be dinged for the penalty. A 24-acre landowner would've been on the hook for $10k or more.

That triggered a memory from 59 years ago in NNJ. Evening of 3/21 I'd been babysitting 5 neighbor kids whose parents said they would not be back until 1-2 next morn. NYC forecast was WSW (they had 4.9") and flakes came in occasional bunches all evening but didn't stick. Kids long abed when mom & dad returned a bit after 2 and heavy SN had arrived, 1"+ new paste on the road for an interesting drive home. Got to bed about 2:30 and slept until 10, looked out the window at blazing sun and the only evidence it had snowed was some white patches in the shadows of bigger trees. It had been a good winter - 50-55" - but that total melt while I slept was still disappointing. Actually saw the sun for a minute or two this morning, now socked in and mid 50s.

Does NH have some kind of current-use/open space tax system? We have 80 acres and 79 are in Maine's Tree Growth Tax Law status and our taxes are ~$275/year. (80th acre slightly more, ~$1,600, as our house sits on it.) TGTL requires a management plan prepared by a Maine-licensed forester, and should one later wish to withdraw and build houses, there's a significant penalty that gets costlier the longer one has been under TGTL.

April 8 in the north country is less than a sure thing for a sunny day.