tamarack

Fraid not - there's lots of dark-colored beetles around. Even seeing a pic might not help, though that might identify insect family and potential effects of the critter. As for the dug-out nest, bee/wasp larvae are a high protein snack attractive to all sorts of animals - skunks, coons, bears, even foxes or coyotes though I'd go with one of the first three ahead of the canids.

Had 15.8" in Gardiner, 3rd biggest of my 13 winters there. #1 came 11 week earlier, 17.5" on Dec 20-21. My top 5/top 10 entries that come from my Gardiner time don't involve snow. (Other than its contribution to the 1987 flood)

Much prefer the NNE mix: Little hurricanes, little tornados, little earthquakes, big snowstorms. Edit: Add to the above the "asbestos forest".

Not just the southern (assuming that means MA and perhaps SNE) but NNE as well. Farmington co-op reached 40" depth on Jan. 13 despite whiffing on the blizz. Then 3 torch-deluges (totaled 4" RA at temps 47-53) crushed the pack down to 8", by far the co-op's greatest January loss of snowpack. Feb. snows brought the depth to 21" before late month thaws pushed it back to 7", then a cold snowy week-plus in March grew the pack to 23". Two weeks later it was gone, just traces, and the 20" of April snow lasted but a day or two. 11/23/89 4" of snow at my parents house in Bayside. I drove to my friends house in Dix Hills for Thanksgiving dinner and right into the storm. Near zero visibility and heavy snow. My car nearly went off the road. Only flurries that day south of Augusta, though I tagged a deer that morning. Much preferred the thunderblizzard two days earlier, which ushered in nearly 6 weeks of continuous BN temps with several 10-11" snowfalls.. Extremely late snowfall in May of 1996. Snow on 5/12/96 in New York State and Vermont. Co-worker living at 1200' in Frenchville had 36 hours of continuous snowfall that weekend, top depth reaching 12". 30 miles SE and almost 600' lower, CAR recorded 5.7".

While some grass was showing then, I'd guess the "green" was leftovers from autumn, not spring green-up. Probably lots of piles still around as you drove by. Farmington co-op, located along Rt 4/27 about 1.5 miles north of town center, had 7" depth on 4/17 and only a trace on the 18th, despite that day's 37/36 temp and only 0.25" RA. To me, that's far too little RA/warmth to eat 7" of snow, even ripe 2:1 stuff. At my pack-holding location, 4/17 had 15" (at my 9 PM obs time - don't know when the co-op measures) and then decreased 2-3" per day to reach "trace" on 4/23. Had 3" the evening before.

That mid-April event dropped 5" snow at my place and 5" cold rain. Hope I never see another such pair of 5s. Sugarloaf summit probably got 4-5 feet, maybe more. Brought the month up to 37.2", and the 36.1" at the Farmington co-op was 12" above its next snowiest April since 1893. My #2 April here is 15.6" in 2011, and even my Fort Kent records top out at 29" in 1982.

April and May were nice, but JFM had way BN sun, 140% of avg precip and 60% snowfall - no way to run a NNE winter. Were you around to see Olympia snow woman in Bethel? Only on TV.

Maine's #1 must be 2010, the winter eaten by the New Year's retro-bomb. #2 might be the 1998 super Nino. 2012 obliterated some daily records and featured the 3 warmest March maxima in Farmington's 125-year POR. However, 2010 "wins" because those months had almost no BN temps at all, until the 2nd week of May when all our apple blossoms got freeze-killed, along with ash, birch and some maple shoots.

There's Fixer-Upper, Homestead Rescue, Maine Cabin Masters - why not Lawn Rescue, and we know where the pilot should be filmed.

The above guess was way conservative - found 1.18" in the gauge that evening for a 2.23" total. Merely October doing its thing - month total now 6.19", a half inch above the average and maybe another inch to add. Average temp now 1.5° BN but sliding up toward normal.

Some NNJ memories triggered by 4,5,6: 4. Our scout troop (I was asst. scoutmaster) got caught at Allamuchy Scout Reservation that Sunday morning, and we had an interesting (but safe) 35 mile drive home. My '62 Beetle had no problem at all. 5. Had a high of about 4° that day with a stiff breeze. We were framing a new house, usually a well-warming exercise, but we were hard put to keep hands and feet fully operational. (Not as uncomfortable as 5 years earlier, 12/31/62, when the same 4° max was accompanied by gusts well into the 60s - speed estimated, but backed up by all the damage.) 6. 18" at low teens overnight, starting to taper off as we headed into the woods for the deer season opener. My dad dropped a nice little buck a couple hundred yards from the house while my friend and I saw nothing while slogging a mile or so thru the powder. Dad gave me a knife and showed me how to field dress a deer - came in handy 8 years later when I took my 1st deer, with no one else nearby.

Dumped 1.05" at 6:30 when I left for Orono, guessing another 1/2" after. Caught up to the heavy RA (and heavy traffic) about 10 miles south of BGR - a rain/spray white-out at times.

Not exactly a ski area here, at under 400' elevation, and Feb is easily our snowiest month. On a per-day average, Feb has 0.82", which is 28% higher than #2 Jan, 0.64".

October is our wettest month (5.62") on average, and we're just under 4" at present - looks like we'll be close to the mark. Had to challenge last Thursday's storm with the forest certification auditors, and tomorrow morning I need to be in Orono by about 8:20 - might keep me under the heaviest band all the way.

Here it's big fat cluster flies. We generally see a few each fall, like this year. In our first year here (1998) there were thousands - we twice put out the 2-ft long glue strips and had them fully loaded (both sides) in a day or two - not pretty. In 1999 there was maybe a hundred or so, and after that more like 10-15 per autumn. Dog and cat get excited even with the low numbers.

95-96 was the winter of whipsaw - great patterns followed by cutter sequences. 43" in Dec including 17.5" in the solstice storm (biggest snowfall of my 13 winters in Gardiner) followed by 10 days of AN temps and meh. Then 4 small-medium snows in early Jan (4" from the big blizz) bringing the pack to 28", followed by 3 cutters driving it down to just 5. Several Feb storms boosted depth to 20" followed by more cutters. March 7-8 saw a 15.8" dump, #3 for the Gardiner experience, but after mid-month the snow disappeared quickly. Next month brought 3 storms totaling 23.5", easily tops for April. Just under 140" for the winter, 30" above my 2nd snowiest there, but only 5th in SDDs. Much preferred 93-94 despite its having 50" less total snowfall. I like having significant pack (it's hereditary - my daughter once opined that the ground wasn't really snow-covered if the grass was still sticking up thru it) and 93-94 also featured more than twice the days with 10"+ as 95-96 and 3X the days with 20"+. Given recent winters, I anticipate more of the whipsaw than the consistent pack of 93-94 (or 86-87, 89-90.)

Over 20 years since I took that route, but IIRC the sign at the pass read 2,855'. With Alex to the north reporting snowline about 3k, I'm not surprised the Kanc had none.

Welcome to the board. I lurked for a year or more before joining, back in the Eastern days. Having spent Thanksgiving week in the Olympia area in both 1995 and '96, my impression for RA there was "some every day" - the November joke is that it only rains once that month, lasting 1st to 30th. However, in those 2 weeks there were only 2 all-day rains, and w/o a gauge I'd estimate neither reached 2". IIRC, Seattle averages a bit under 40"/year and Olympia probably isn't much different, with Port Angeles (closer to Olympics' rain shadow) about 10" less. Without checking stats, I'd guess your current area has big rain events - 3"/4"+ in 24 hours - more often than the communities on the inner part of Puget Sound.

Norway maple bark tends to be darker than that of sugar maple, and on larger trees bears a resemblance to the bark of white ash - shape only, as ash bark is much lighter in color. Other differences include the sap during the growing season. Break a Norway maple leaf from the stem and the sap is white; sugar maple will be clear. (I recently learned that the opaque sap is only during the warm season, and Norways can be tapped for syrup.) The winter key is bud shape, sugar maple pointed and Norway rounded. Tough to see when the nearest buds are 50' off the ground.

This storm was odd, in that winds probably never gusted to 40 near my place and leaf drop was already well over 50% before the event started, yet we lost power for 29 hours. The unusual wind direction for peak velocity may have some validity, however. Looking back 2 years, when even fewer leaves remained on the trees (because it was nearly 2 weeks later), Maine was hammered and some think it was because our strongest gusts and most frequent strong winds are from the NW, so the SE winds of 2017 broke more trees than expected. Also, many observers report that all the damage occurred in a short period, 15-30 minutes at any particular location though different times as the storm moved northward. Resembled catching the edge of an eyewall or an extraordinarily widespread downburst.

GYX discussion this morning talked of some colder CWA sites flirting with 20, but P&C for my town says 34. I'll bid at 10° below that.

The large oak 100' behind the house retains half its leaves. All others are bare or have a few tatters hanging on.

Our mostly rural town of less than 1,500 has about 75 miles of roads. Spread that over Maine's nearly 500 municipalities, and probably double the total to account for towns/cities with far greater road/powerline density, and the total at $5 million/mile would cover the entire state budget into the 22nd century. Even as the wind was blowing water up my rain jacket as I was trying to pull the dead fir off our road and go to work, I didn't think it was all that strong, maybe into the mid 30s. Later in the morning we had gusts well into the 40s at 1,600' on Bigelow Mountain's lower slopes. The roar of that later wind was many decibels beyond the earlier wind plus rain. Lots of rain, though - 1.80", significantly more than the other 2 cocorahs reports from Franklin County. Despite the non-exceptional winds at home, our power was off 4 AM yesterday thru 9:15 AM today. Only the 30 hours in December 2000 lasted longer. That one was SW gusts ahead of a CF, took down a dry pine long enough to smack the wires and break about 8' from a utility pole. Both that tree and yesterday's fell out of our on woodlot - c'est la vie.

Very good month of winter here. No storms greater than 3.4" thru Feb. 9 then 60" in 31 days with 21" and some thunder on Feb. 10-11. Two 11" storms in early March and a 12-18" forecast for 11-12; verified at 5.5" and that was it for snow except for some dustings. The Nov. 2 I remember was in 2002, 1st day of deer season like this year, and temps teens/20s with strong NW winds. Wouldn't be terrible for mid January but sure felt cold that day.

Last winter's 14 events of 3"+ was my 2nd most at my current home. 2007-08 had 21. Average is 9.8 (206 in 21 winters.)