tamarack

Maybe a bit more frequent for me. For my area where winter is pretty consistent with regular snowfall, I'm defining "ratter" as <75% average snow and significantly AN temps for DJFM. That omits 02-03, which met the snow criterion but was very cold. Winters meeting those criteria are 99-00, 01-02, 05-06, 09-10, 11-12, 15-16, so 6 of 21. Worst were 05-06 and 15-16 (10-year repeat?) 09-10 had 15-20" more snow than those 2, but is in the race to the bottom due to the frustration factor - 4 EC KUs that winter, and we got 3 whiffs and #4 was the most unpleasant double-digit snowstorm I ever hope to see, Edit: I think 75" would be close to long-term climo for your site, about 20% higher than PWM.

If those are nickels and dimes, my area must be getting ha'pennies. This morning's half inch (maybe 3/4 by the time it ended) marks the 4th snow event of the new year here, and they total about 3", not 14. Keeps the surface looking fresh, at least, though the weekend may leave a bedraggled pack topped by a few IP.

The analog to the Tolland Triangle on I-84 has struck again on I-95 between Newport and BGR. About 30 vehicles in a chain reaction accident this AM, evidently due to blinding sun, with the northbound lane totally closed (may have reopened by now) and hundreds of vehicles stuck behind the mess. It's 5-10 miles north of where nearly 100 cars and trucks wrecked when hit by a sudden snowburst from an otherwise weak storm 4 years ago. At least one serious injury in today's mess, life flighted to a BGR hospital, and several lesser injuries.

Very modest "extremes" in temp the past 2 months. My mildest since Nov. 5 is 46, and except for the brief -9 on 12/21 my coldest has been -2. Since my current average minimum is 6° and 2 weeks from now will be 2°, temps have been AN and meh, especially since early December. Another little snow event yesterday, quite different from the day before. That earlier one was RA to SN, an inch of 10:1 that frosted the twigs. Yesterday it was 1.1" from 0.04" LE in dry flakes and evening feathers. Maybe 3 +/- one-inch events in 4 days with tomorrow's entry?

We hear a great horned on occasion but have yet to see one here. Barred owls, and saw-whets during the milder seasons, make up 95%+ of owl calls heard around home. On T-Day (or near it) we had a barred owl sit like Mitch's pic but in a hardwood tree for an hour or so until some blue jays mobbed it and it left.

October 1947 in Maine - 25° cooler but same situation. The CF turns winds from SW to NW, so that the fire's left flank (as one sees from in front) suddenly becomes the head. Very dangerous, and since a typical large fire has wider flanks than its head, strong wind plus wider head often means disaster. I read 500,000 animals dead, not sure how they came up with that stat but some of the videos are heartbreaking Wildlife biologists usually make estimates of animal populations. That plus burn area offers a very rough estimate of casualties.

Top ten Decembers I've measured, from a variety of places: 1. 61.5" 1976 Fort Kent 2. 47.3" 1978 Fort Kent 3. 46.2" 2007 New Sharon 4. 46.1" 1981 Fort Kent 5. 44.8" 1983 Fort Kent 6. 43.2" 1995 Gardiner 7. 39.9" 2016 New Sharon 8. 38.4" 2003 New Sharon 9. 34.6" 1977 Fort Kent 10. 32.3" 1984 Fort Kent My 9 Decembers in Fort Kent averaged 36.4" and I never had 40+ in another month there - 39.5" in Jan. 1977 is closest. #11 is either 2013 in New Sharon or 1966 in NNJ, each about 31". This year's 15.9" ranks 13th of 22 here, 26th of 47 since moving to Maine. (Add NNJ, using sites near where I lived, makes this year 31st of 73 - yay, top half!)

My average low temp dropped into single digits just after Christmas, and the last 6 days have not even gotten below 20 - will be 7 with today and may not end until Monday. For grins (and groans) I compared those 6 days to the same dates 2 years ago: 16-17: 1.8/-23.2/-10.7; 28.6° BN 19-20: 32.5/21.3/26.9; 9.0° AN Highs 31° milder, lows 44.5° milder.

Top 20 on Kevin W's table include 9 from MA, 5 from NH, 4 from VT, and 2 lonely ones from Maine - South Portland and Portland (of course!)

Ellsworth was his home, IIRC, about 10 miles NE of Blue Hill. Demand. If you can offer higher resolution, in my backyard type forecasts that's what people are going to want. And we don't have the computing power to run two versions. And running a coarse model and downscaling it to 13 km isn't really helping improve things either. Probably way too simplistic, but if those resolution numbers represent square "pixels" then 13km offers about 38 times as many bust opportunities as does 80.

70.027W here. Not sure exactly where on CC/ACK those two live. And Borderwx take the north trophy. We've had some people from Ft Kent and Eastport in the past. When I joined Eastern in March 2005 the fellow in Fort Kent was posting some impressive snow pics, with more from the post-Christmas 3-footer that year. I think he moved sometime after 05-06. Don't recall any posts from EPO. Either I missed them or they came prior to 3/05.

I'm about 42 miles north of Jeff and at 390' a bit higher, and 57 miles NNE of (though 300+ lower than) Lava Rock. No elevational help here and longitude can be good or bad depending on track, but topography makes the Maine foothills perhaps the CAD kings of New England.

Sadly true - I'm at approx. 44.66 N. Don't know exactly where PF's and Alex's homes are, but using 1.2 miles per (latitude) minute, I'd guess I'm 10-15 miles N of PF, maybe twice that far N of Alex. We used to have posters from Aroostook and more recently one from the BGR area. By far the biggest geographical hole in the New England sub-forum is the northern 2/3 of Maine. That's about 30% of NE's area though probably less than 3% of the population.

0.2" on the board this morning. Trees still loaded from yesterday's 7" but forecast winds later today should empty everything more than 20' from the ground.

6.5" total by noon moves Dc to 15.4", still 4" BN but no longer a disaster and may have picked up a tenth or two after that. With Novie's 8.4" the season is within 1.1" of my average thru 12/31.

GPS is great, but its use should be enhanced by another 3-letter term: M A P

7 AM temps listed on GYX's site showed LEW at 25, next coolest were PWM and FVE at 31. Lewiston: The state's new cold pole. About 10° cooler than my frost-pocket location.

Power back on as of about 30 minutes ago - yay! From my wife's description, seems like someone eastbound on Route 2 failed to negotiate a left turn in Farmington Falls. She saw the nice new pole and the CMP crew just departing.

Power went out at home sometime between 6:30 when I headed for work and 8 AM, almost certainly due to vehicle/utility pole incident(s), as there's been far to little precip for accretion to damage trees. Stuff was just beginning as I headed south, roads were getting that telltale "dull gleam" of ice for the first 10 miles, though I had no issues, then dry roads south of Belgrade Village. Glad I set out when I did; 30 minutes later might have had a different outcome.

With 5" OG, yesterday made it 19-of-22 meeting the traditional definition of white Christmas. Using Forky's preference it's 2-of-22. 84% vs. 9%.

Great link. Noted that Chimney Pond had taken the Maine depth record with 94" in Feb. 2017. Before, I'd not seen anything above Farmington's 84" in Feb. 1969. Fitting that the state record should be near Katahdin at about 3,000' instead of at 420' next to Route 27. Last evening's temp had the biggest pre-CF-mixing boost I can recall - was 26-27 at 6:30 and a windy 39 by 9, where it stayed for nearly 2 hr before starting to slide down back toward this morning's mid-upper 20s.

Hard to choose here in the foothills. Using calendar years (mostly), 2000-09 averaged 92.4" while 2010-19 had 91.6" with perhaps a bit to be added in the next 8 days, though not the 8" it would take to match 00-09. --00-09 and 10-19 each had 4 years with 100"+, though curiously the 10 seasons 99-00 thru 08-09 had only 3 while 09-10 thru 18-19 did it 6 times. Advantage 10-19. --My top 3 calendar years are 2007, 2008, and 2001 in that order. (Seasons: It's 07-08, 00-01 and 16-17 in that order.) Advantage 00-09. --My 2 largest snowfalls came 12/6-7/03 and 2/22-23/09. Of the top 10, 6 came 00-09, top 20 had 12 in 00-09. Advantage 00-09 --00-09 (actually 99-00 thru 08-09) had 2 ratters, 3 meh winters, 5 good ones including the two snowiest. 09-10 thru 18-19 had 3 ratters, one meh, and 6 good winters. Advantage 10-19. For extreme events, it's 00-09. For consistency, it's 10-19. For snowpack, 10-19 leads in days with 1" to 29" while 00-09 is ahead for 30"+ and for average of winter's deepest, 31" to 30". Call it a draw.

I think that 55 was across the river in Troy though ALB must have been similar, and Saratoga was in the same general range. Hudson and lower CT River valleys took the brunt. IMO, that storm's combo of snow, wind and cold is unmatched in records for the Northeast. Have you seen "Blizzard! The great storm of '88" by Judd Caplovich? Lots of info, maps drawn by Kocin, scads of old pics. Only Maine data I've found is for Gardiner, 6 miles south of Augusta, which recorded 8": of paste on a day with a low of 32 - they were too far east for the good stuff. ASH isn't all that far away and they got about 30".

Maine has probably the poorest access to natural gas in the lower 48, hence its use of heating oil (and firewood.) Hydropower is somewhat controversial in the state currently, due to the proposed PQ hydro corridor - lots of info flying around, but the thought of all that juice flowing thru the state with none going directly to its residents doesn't play well in the optics game. Maine burns a lot of biomass as well. Tough economics for a stand-alone biomass-gen plant, but when it's co-gen with a pulp or sawmill the finances look a lot better.

Batted .500 on the March quartet, only a trace (and wind) from#1 and nada from #4, but 36.4" total from 2&3. We take - made for my 2nd snowiest March here, though 18" behind 2001. Of course, the might-have-beens were strong; going 4-for-4 might have eclipsed Feb. '69 for snowiest month in the foothills - needed about 30" more. The 2 March hits, the best 12/25 storm of my experience and the Aroostook cold either side of NYD - all great stuff. (Less fun was 2 January days in hospital after a serious A-fib event, though things have gone okay since.)