tamarack

It was lots better where I live now than where we were then in Gardiner - Farmington co-op recorded 83" Jan-April while Gardiner co-op only 43 though we did a little better 3 miles south and 130' higher.

2005-06 was a good example here - 45.0" thru Jan 31 then 7.8" after. Less applicable farther south where the mid Feb dump hit. The 12 months Feb 06-Jan 07 brought 26.9", only 30% of average. (Then Mar 07 thru Feb 08 had 178", not quite twice the average.)

11-12? Many folks got their biggest snow from the Octobomb, and though it was kind of a bust here (12-16 verified as 4.5" of 5:1 mush) our biggest was on Nov. 23.

I've never noted trace amounts of snow on the snow table, unlike cocorahs where every trace is recorded, but some very light but measurable snow has <.005" LE.

2" in the foothills. That season had no snows greater than 3.4" thru Feb 9, then 21" with some thunder on 10-11 plus 5 more storms for another 39" thru March 12.

The town is mostly under 400' elevation, but once you get up near Rip dam at 1,000+ I think the snow will be a lot better. Same thing goes if you ride in KWW east of Baxter. At least it looks like winter out here this am with some Lt snow falling, -SN, 32°F Mood flakes all morning in Augusta, enough to whiten the brown grass exposed by the recent warmth. The 1/10" of gritty snow at home makes 11 events with measurable snow this month, though the 9 smallest total a mere 4.3" and the month's total will finish about 4" below average. January will be about 6° AN and either 3rd or 4th mildest - it's neck-and-neck with 2017 but way short of '02 and '06.

My Ranger isn't great, but with nearly 200 lb of firewood in the back it's always made it over Mile Hill - average 6% grade over that mile with a couple hundred yards of 10% about 3/4 the way up, and a sharp corner at the bottom so trying to get a run for it risks a ditch visit. Lowery day in Augusta, radar showed precip overhead (would be RA with surface at 40 unless heavy) but neither drop nor flake has appeared. In winters past, When i would be riding this area, The snow would be up to the bottom of the sign, Not this year so far, There was more snow up here this weekend then down home, But that's still not normal for the Eustis area........ Fair number of sleds on the club trail thru our woodlot yesterday - fewer than usual for a late Jan Sunday but more than I expected. Must be some sloppy going at unbridged little dips as our pack isn't deep enough to soak up all the RA, at least not where slope concentrates runoff.

That's amazing. I've had half your snowfall but twice the pack (though it may lose an inch today.) It's where upslope goes to die but is great for CAD. I wonder if some of the southerly warmth running up the CT River spills over the NH notches but can't pass the Mahoosucs. There have been several times during warm-tongue events when I've been 5-10° cooler than BML/HIE here at 390'.

Nearest Home Depot is 30 miles away, not practical for hauling a half ton of firewood a couple hundred yards, or other similar short-haul trips. Since 1994 I've driven 2 Rangers separated by a Ranger clone (Mazda) and put about 375k total on the 3 vehicles. All 3 have been 2WD and mileage runs 28+ in summer, 23-25 in winter. Unfortunately the reborn Ranger is about 1,000 lb heavier and gets 30% poorer mileage. Had a hard time finding a mid-range miles Ranger closer than PA 5 years ago - not sure what I'll choose when this one is done.

136.7" in 54 days, Jan 25-March 19, with 74" pack in mid Feb, at 20' asl. My prime pack-retention locale had 47" less at that time.

Vent on my old Jotul combi-fire (1970s technology) sucks air like a wind tunnel. If I open it halfway, even green wood burns cleanly if placed on a good bed of embers.

Lac Saint-Jean is huge - perhaps 10X Winni, and has several significant inlets. Makes me wonder if, like last week's Moosehead fatal snomo-splash, they got too close to where a river entered. Night rides on/near lakes is always a dodgey practice; several years ago there were 4 killed - party of 3 men and separately, a mother and son and only the son made it out of the water. Happened on Rangeley Lake when they got off trail and rode into open water on a snowy night.

Midpoint of the heating season (HDDs) at my place comes on Jan. 21. That's also our coldest day on average, so we're 2 days into the long climb to summer. The snowfall season lags a bit behind - on average 56% of season's snow falls Jan. 24 and later. 8.5" while I was on vacation, and another 5.5" when I got back puts me at 40.3" for the season now. Yet another Portlander with more snow than the "snowy" foothills, and I'm becoming less and less confident about this weekend changing that.

That was 2 days after the JFK inaugural storm, which dumped 1-2+ feet in the NYC metro and nearby. 2 subfreezing weeks after that storm a bigger windier event brought even more. Depths in NNJ were up to 52", nearly a foot more than any other NJ records I've found. (And it compares well with all but one of my Maine winters - 47 years ago today we and all our possessions were in a U-Haul heading from NNJ to BGR so I could start spring semester at U.Maine forestry school.) Another personal note: I went ice fishing that cold (-12 at our place in NNJ) and windy Saturday, handled a small but slimy pickerel while unhooking and releasing it. Had to wash off the slime in the lake water after which I ran for the fire on shore - in that 100-yard dash the water on my fingers had mostly turned to ice. (With age I've learned to stay off the ice in wx like that.)

Was there any differences in cloud cover? Last evening we had thin overcast but it was enough to make temps hang around 20 thru 10 PM when I stopped looking. When I left home at 6:45 this morning it was mostly clear and zero or a bit below.

I've read that following the BGR-region's blizzard on NYE of 1962, dynamite was needed to loosen windpack where a highway passed thru a cut with ledge on both sides - ordinary equipment couldn't hack it. In BGR itself there were drifts over 16' tall, enough to get a large bulldozer stuck.

We had the same underwhelming "welcome" when we moved from NNJ to BGR in Jan. 1973. Saw lots of snow piles from their huge Dec. '72 but did not see even one 8" snowstorm in met winter until the 11.5" on Dec. 18, 1975, two weeks before our move to Ft. Kent. We did have 8.5" in Nov.'74, 8.6" in April '74 and 12.0" in April '75. Then, despite frequent snows and good pack, FK had no storms greater than 8.2" for nearly a year, until late Dec. '76 when 24"and 12" dumps came Dec. 26-31. Of course we were in NJ for Christmas then, missing the 2-footer entirely though we got to drive the length of Maine (after dark) during the 12-incher. (Later winters there, and at my present location, have certainly made up for that.)

My average for snowfall thru Jan 21 is 39.57", so this season couldn't be any closer to average so far. We'll be about 2" BN when/if the weekend storm arrives. It was about -10 at 5 this morning but warmed a few degrees until the lights went out at 6:20 - police were headed north on Starks Road (Rt 134) so I wonder if someone hit a pole up there. This cold stretch is good though because the pond ice was not trustable. Sledder went thru the ice on Moosehead over the weekend - rode too close to the mouth of the Moose River. He was pulled out fairly soon but not soon enough - pronounced dead at Greenville Hospital. I think it's the season's 1st snowsled-in-water fatal this season.

5.3" at my place, a bit more than I'd expected. Maine bullseye was Cumberland County just inland, a number of double digit reports topped by 14.2" in Standish, south side of Sebago. (LES? The lake is almost totally ice free. )

0.9" overnight, pretty much as forecast. That makes 7 separate little snow events this month totaling all of 4.1". Will #8 exceed the first 7? Would be nice if #8 doubles the month's total and #9 redoubles it.

CAR measured 12.8" snow yesterday, and their temps are +11.6° for Jan 1-12. Now 7.6° AN at my place after +23.4 and +16.1 for the weekend.

After a snowy December and several early January snowstorms (though little from the huge MA blizzard), NNE had 3 warm rain events dump a total of about 4" in 10 days. Farmington co-op had a 40" pack drop to 8", truly freakish for what's normally the coldest stretch of winter. Some ice jam flooding along the Sandy River too.

The woods pic reminds me of when we drove thru LES on I-80 in western PA early in 2012. That was the view of the thick stand of trees on the median, though I didn't dare more than a quick peek. We could see the 4-ways on the car ahead of us but sometimes not the flashers on the next one in line. I guessed 6"-per in that one but obviously couldn't verify.

I've read and heard from more reliable sources that arson is suspected in a number of the Australian wildfires. That doesn't change the fact that abnormally hot and dry weather (at a time when climo is already hot and dry) is making those fires far more catastrophic than they would be with normal weather, and far harsher to those trying to control the fires.

Great fun reading about this event. We escaped without a flake, as there was a wide gap between lighter SN to the north and the whiteouts to the south.