tamarack

Better move north. CAR data: 9/29/1991 48 32 0.47" 2.4" 9/30/1991 48 32 0.04" 0.4"

For lethal weapons I'd choose rat traps. When my corn was being ravaged by non-raccoons, I set several thinking that red squirrels were the culprits - those traps were the right medicine for the reddies that invaded our back porch before I scribe-cut two pieces of plywood to block the holes I'd not noticed earlier. Caught none, then observed blue jays dive-bombing the ripening ears, and now I plant other things where the corn would've been.

Up here we had lots of nice CF during the first half of met summer, with mostly fresh CoC wx and no sustained heat. 2nd half of July and nearly all of August have been totally different and dewey. July 1-16 had temps 1.5° BN. Since then, it's been nearly 3° AN, which would be no news in Jan-Feb but is significant for the warmest part of the year. Stratus had 0.72" this morning, most coming 6-7:30 though RA began prior to 5 and ended after 9:30. (Local forecasters' 5-10 AM was amazingly precise.) That brings August precip to 3.65", which is only 7% BN. Not often does a month with more days with rain (17) than without come in BN. However, that 0.72" is the greatest calendar-day precip since the strong TS of June 14, which is lame. 6/14 had 1.14" from 2 TS, including more in 10 minutes (0.85") from #2 than in any of the 77 days since.

I agree in principle, but would the new systems actually handle 15-20" RA in 8 days? ORH does have some advantage with much of the town being on a hill rather than in a valley. I wonder what the estimated return interval would be for such a scenario - the (recently) oft-mentioned 1000-yr event? There were sites in western CT that bagged 22" in those 8 days; building systems to handle that deluge would financially be like DCA (or maybe RDU) equipping their road dept. with CAR-level snow removal equipment.

$3.99 US or CA? Also, as Jeff noted, they don't have the strict lobstering rules as much as Maine.

Nice price, though I'm guessing they were shedders, modifying the cost. That big boy must've been close to the 5" max.

I think the low-mid 60s minima from the other sites are more reasonable as well. Only when one looks at NYC can similar maxima be encountered, as Central Park recorded lows of 77/75/76 for 9/21-23/1895. The first 2 remain records but 9/23/1970 had a low of 77 - was humid, too. Farther east in Maine, Orono didn't get the heat until the 22nd (21st: 78) when it hit 97, then 93 on the 23rd, followed by cooler temps 24-on. Addressing the first frost subject, the average and median date for first 32 or below is Sept 18. Last year it came on Oct 24, which was 18 days later than any other year here and only the 2nd in which 1st frost didn't arrive in Sept. Moved avg/med a full day later.

Thanks. I thought one of us was going crazy. And that "M" makes more sense than the 78. 9/24 had a max of 78 (the other sites in my previous post were also in the 70s) and I've wondered whether the low for the 23rd wasn't observed so they plugged in the next day's high. I need to revise my data.

GYX 1895? That's a century before the WSO began reporting. Sept heatwave, 21-23, 1895: Farmington 94/100/99 Lewiston 92/92/96 Gardiner 92/95/92 Bridgton 93/93/93 (also, NYC 95/95/97) The Farmington co-op had an in-town location during the 1890s, and records make me think that summer maxima were boosted by the site. The co-op has recorded only 14 triple-digit maxima since 1893, and half of them came 1893-97. Five more came in 1911, four the well-documented blazing NNE heat of July. The other 2 came in June 1944 and Hot Saturday in 1975. There's no doubt that maxima have been reduced by the 1966 move to a location 1.5 miles north of town center. (And I think encroaching trees have further modified maxima, as the co-op hasn't exceeded 95° since 1995.)

September-specific, the Farmington co-op recorded 99/78 on 9/23/1895, for 34° AN. That day is the co-op's hottest mean temp and highest minimum for any date. However, though the day's high is supportable, I think the data from the few nearby sites (LEW, Gardiner, Bridgton) with records that far back indicate the Farmington minimum is bogus, as the other 3 sites had lows near 60 that day.

Wow! 70/55, and maybe the minimum is the more astounding. Mean of 62.5 looks to be about 36° AN.

Not New England, but NYC's 72/63 on 12/24/2015 is their greatest positive departure for any day +32.5), records back thru 1869. The 4 major SNE sites were "only" 26-29° AN that day.

96 at CAR on 5/22/1977 might be a contender, along with Christmas Day in 2020 when they were 35° AN.

Hazel produced surprisingly strong winds in NE for an Oct storm that made landfall in NC. IIRC, BTV recorded their (then) strongest wind from that 'cane. In NNJ our home was plastered with leaf salad by Hazel, a phenomenon I've seen only twice, and the other was with tender mid-June leaves (1975 at Maine's Donnell Pond), not tough old October ones.

Moderate RA here but thunder has been silenced. Noted "half-dollar" hail in the warning for the storm near Ossipee.

This just doesn't compute for me, as I've been getting stung almost annually since age 4 when I wandered into honeybees that had colonized an inside corner of the house next to my grandparent's place in NNJ. My mom said my hand swelled to the size of hers (which admittedly were not huge) and slept for 30 straight hours. A year later after we'd moved from urban East Orange to the forests of the Jersey Highlands, I came screaming out of the woods one day and when all was done, mom had 7 yellowjackets lined up on the windowsill - she never told me how many stung my neck/upper body. I've not been stung since October 2019 when a passing yellowjacket picked me out of a group of 10-11 on the shore of Flagstaff Lake, perhaps the longest no-pick period since that early honeybee excursion. If I got stung tomorrow, I'd have significant swelling around the site within a half hour (got stung left hand a couple decades back, immediately transferred wedding ring to my wallet), but if I then got stung next summer, only a dime-size welt. (And some discomfort, of course.) Not sure if that's short-term immunity or a warning sign, but the swelling one year, none the next, has been SOP for the past 40+ years. (In NNJ, I think I got stung at least once in every year.) Had a short shower here about 9:15 this morning, but no sun 70s probably means not much RA this afternoon. Edit: Not 70s, high here has been 66°. Even so, we're hearing some rumbles, and showers arrived by 3:05.

Bumblebees will sting, though it takes a great deal of provocation before they make the stick, and like wasps, they can hit multiple times. I've been stung by a bumblebee on two occasions. One was while I was feeding a wood splitter and the bees had colonized one of the stove-length pieces between chainsaw time and the splitting. The noise, vibration and tumbling of wood pieces were the trigger as I got hit on cheek and arm by the same bee. Second time was when I was cleaning out part of the shrubbery for a 90+ y.o lady from our church, and the nest was in the ground where I was pulling and cutting stuff. Took about 20 minutes of my work to enrage the insect enough to attack. In my experience, yellowjackets are 10 times more aggressive than whiteface hornets. The latter will nail you if they're disturbed and you're within a few dozen feet. I've been chased and stung by yellowjackets that chased me a hundred yards from the nest. Most recent time that occurred was during one of our peer-review forestry field trips. I got nailed twice as the group walked over roadside slash (no one else got stung), then after we'd walked another 100 yards into the woods, one of the little beasts followed and picked me out of the 29 people on the trip for a 3rd stab.

In November 2019 we bought a modest-sized heat pump to cool our living room, where we spend the vast majority of our waking hours when in the house, and the machine works nicely without adding a huge amount to our electric bill. Paid a bit under $3,700 installed, got a $1,000 rebate and a one-time $500 federal tax credit, thus recovering about 40% of the investment.

September has the greatest proportion of sunlight here - fewer total hours than the longer days of met summer, but those 3 months are dominated by partly cloudy. September is usually the pause between puffy cumulus and fall storms.

No all-nighters, but went past midnight during the 1998 ice storm. In 1976 in Fort Kent when the remnants of Belle put 2 feet of water flowing across Rt 161, we spent hours into the AM deflecting the flow as it was taking out the foundation of the next-door apartment. I also tried to keep the larger stones from turning our garden into river bottom, but the silt that covered it wrecked most of the veggies anyway. Doria (NNJ 1971) woke us up about 2 AM, enabling me to empty our cheap wedge gauge from overflowing, but we went back to sleep.

None here, though the boring wx tends to have OT posts slither into other discussions. And though we've lived in Mine since January 1973, I grew up about 40 miles NE from where you are now, so I remain interested in NNJ wx.

I pull the Stratus for the cold seasons, Novie thru mid-April. Cocorahs' snow procedures recommend taking out the inner tube and leaving the outer, which is said to tolerate some rain-then-freeze. However, sequences like below while we were in SNJ with the grandkids might disprove that, and I'd rather not have to buy a new gauge. December 2018 21 37 34 2.09" 22 49 30 0.08" 23 30 8 (Afternoon max was probably about 20 and the low likely came at my usual 9 PM obs time.) 24 30 3 The 5-gal bucket I use to catch cold-season precip had a major bulge on the bottom due to the ice cake within when we returned home. I was surprised the bottom hadn't broken, but the bucket is somewhat softer plastic (and slightly tapered) compared to the Stratus.

Here the stink is December and March during the past 4 winters. All 8 months were BN with their total a bit under 60% of average. Jan-Feb those winters were very slightly AN.

I'd guess 21-22", back-figuring the weight estimator formula of (length*girth*girth)/800

More evidence that NAO isn't well coordinated for snow this far north? Those 9 Februarys averaged 24.9" here, 2.0" AN. The December streak averaged 0.8" AN while January's run was 1.0" BN. Of course, there's evidence it does matter: March 2018 had more than twice its average snowfall.