tamarack

AN temps, AN dews, one lightning strike closer than 2 miles and 7 of our 8 TS consisted of distant rumbles, though some had good RA. Have yet to observe a lightning bolt this year. For one like me who dislikes heat and loves noisy TS, it's a lose-lose.

GFS op had 1.4" yesterday afternoon for Mon-Tues at Augusta, 0.9" this AM and less than 0.6" for 12z. Final answer tenth to a quarter? (if that?)

Glad you got the real answer, as my guess was way off. I should've asked about the size - with no visual reference I assumed they were up to 2" long instead of being way smaller.

Less than 40 days to my median date for 1st frost. Clipped the tops off the 'maters and did final planting of greens.

Pretty much on schedule. The wetland red maples seem to turn according to the calendar, while their upland relatives (and other species) react to both photoperiod and temperature. Some 3/4-size acorns under the large (22" by 85') red oak behind the house.

Location dependent, of course. First one here was pretty good despite the ratty December - no blockbusters but long snowpack that reached 40" in March. Last winter didn't rate ratter status here, more like meh - not much happened until after the equinox.

I replied in the other thread.

Try to find out if it's a hybrid Oriental/American chestnut, perhaps from the American Chestnut Foundation, or more likely a pure Oriental chestnut. The hybrid's resistance/tolerance would depend on the breeding. I'm not aware of any ACF trees being sold - they usually donate stock so to have more widespread planting and testing. The Oriental would be blight tolerant and would produce nuts but would not get nearly as big as the American.

A station in western VA recorded 26" in 5 hours from the remains of Camille. 30-40% of that 'cane's fatalities came from VA flash floods. For stalled TS in odd places I'd note CAR getting >6.5" in 2.5 hours on 8/17/1981. That was a strange system in many ways. Co-workers at Russell Stream (upper Allagash River) reported heavy RA at 8 AM, the CAR blitz was 10-12:30, another co-worker at the US border with St.-Pamphile, PQ had RA+ 1-4 PM and in Fort Kent we got 2" from 6 to 8 PM. Next morning I drove thru Dickey (western part of the town of Allagash) and up the Hafey Mountain Road, and hit dusty going about 1/4 mile north of the St. John.

We had hundreds of the teeny things appear quite suddenly in June. Put out some ant traps and some borax-sugar mix (our recipe for carpenter ants) and we're now seeing them only rarely.

Winter moth or Bruce spanworm (they're somewhat similar in appearance and phenology, moths flying in late fall) would be my guesses.

lol. Gotta say where - ORH? BOX? Somerville?

We had 39 on 8/31/65 in NNJ. Only 7° above freezing but the kids on the swim club still had to be at the beach ready to practice by 7 AM.

1st sub-50 low since 6/18 and tomorrow I pinch off the tops of the cherry tomatoes in hopes that doing so will turn the plants' efforts to ripening the fruit already set rather than setting even more. Maybe a back-to-the-future spell early next week, but I think the warmups will be less warm and the cooldowns more cool. No true Canadian CAA in the models I see, however, and after 8/15 those air masses often bring upper 30s here.

Our place has far less elevation with which to work, but it's an ideal set-up for cold. The field to our north drains cold air across the road and into the yard but it doesn't infiltrate into the dense forest next to our lawn - only 100' elevation change from the top of the field to my recording thermometer but I'd guess my growing season is 3 weeks shorter than at the trailer a quarter mile away just north of the top of the field. Upper 40s this morning, first sub-50 since June 18. Haven't checked the records (and may not bother) but the 49-day run of minima 50+ is undoubtedly the longest here, as no July before last month had recorded fewer than 3 sub-50 minima

Our place had a Burnham, maybe 4 years old when we moved here in 1998. Seven years ago it began to leak and I thought we might need to replace the seals, maybe up to $1000. The repairman looked into it while I was at work, then asked my wife if she wanted the good news first or the bad news. "Good news." "Today is Tuesday." "Okay, the bad." "The boiler is cracked, the whole thing needs to be replaced." We had a similar unit put in, would have to go downstairs to check the brand but not a Burnham. Fortunately our little (200 cords) timber sale a few months before had earned enough to pay cash.

And they were about a mile away. Some of the later clips came from 2+ miles.

Doesn't always take large differences in elevation. On still clear Fort Kent winter mornings, my commute from the back settlement at 970' led east and then due north so I could see the cedar mill and its cone burner across the river in Clair, NB. If there was a smoke layer about 50 yards above that burner, I knew it would be 10-15F colder at our riverside office (about 540') than it had been at home.

Greater than any single conventional weapon. This event led me to look up the 1917 explosion in Halifax harbor. That was a munitions ship and the blast was evaluated as being equal to about 2,900 tons of TNT. It pretty much leveled everything within a half mile and tossed heavy pieces of metal over 3 miles. Nearly 2,000 fatalities - I hope Beirut casualties remain in the low hundreds.

We've occasionally had paper wasps in underground nests here - once did a partial striptease in my driveway (sometimes being at the end of a dead-end road is good) when those critters flew into my clothing on my 4th lawnmower pass by their hole in the ground. They have kind of a reverse yellowjacket pattern, skinny yellowish stripes on a black background.

Congrats. I'm in the queue at Maine PERS to have my benefits and options calculated. When that's ready, wife and I will meet with those folks (probably on ZOOM) with the intent to leave in December. Some possibility for contract work to aid in training my successor (or at least making sense of my tangled computer files for him/her) and with next year's full recertification audit for forest sustainability. Also have a permanent invite to future expert peer-review field trips like we had last 2 days, only as one of the experts* rather than the host/note-taker. *Ex-pert: Ex: A has-been. (s)pert: A drip under pressure.

Not like anything I've seen. The shape and (estimated-from-pic) size suggests some species of stonefly but I've never seen one anywhere near that dark. Adult stoneflies run 1.5-2"+ long.

That's almost too narrow for a kick turn. I thought that Scotch Mist (Glen Ellen's name for the upper lift line at Sugarbush North) was a pucker-power trail, but it's about twice as wide. And though it's steep, it may not be as vertical as that chute, though it has a number of very hard vertical obstacles down the middle. Back when Glen Ellen was a thing I got to where I could ski some black diamonds, but would never set a ski on that one.

As a NJ expat I can relate. However, in 47+ years in Maine only once have I had someone take issue with my being from away, and he was a politician with an axe to grind. CTS (consider the source.) I've never expected to be considered a native, however. Unlike what Skivt2 posted about born in VT vs growing up there, in Maine there's still some of the "Those kittens being born in the oven doesn't make them biscuits", or as a (humorist) Tim Sample fictional routine, "Chester Gormley was 6 months old when he and his family moved to Maine. All his adult life he could never understand why folks considered him to be from away. When he died at age 97, his tombstone was inscribed 'He was almost one of us.'"

From the west side of the pond one can probably see the higher hills (1300' in Vienna and Rome) in the Kennebec Highlands.