tamarack

And didn't ask about the climate (or chose to ignore it.) Mr. Knight was in his encampment the morning that Big Black River set a new state record at -50. At my place, 9 miles NW from his camp, it was -36 that morning. Outside his shelter in the woods it was probably about 10° less cold, but that's -32 C, not -20. Knight lit no open fires but had a huge stash of 20-lb propane cylinders, though he apparently used them more for cooking than for heat as he could never steal enough to provide heat all winter. "Stranger in the Woods" is a fascinating - but strange - read.

That could work if it was like 2/2/76, when BGR temps hit 57 with RA then dropped to 1. (As the downtown parking lots flooded from water blown up the Penobscot estuary)

So is my oven. I recall some old records for that spot that featured days with temps like 126/102. (low, not TD) Cannot imagine walking out of the 75° AC at 3 AM and getting hit with 100+.

Agree. ALB is not only shiny, but has much more distinct white dots. Native longhorned beetle, aka sawyer, or powder-post.

Well, duh! Thanks again. PO there is 100 yards south of the center of town (stoplight at Main/Broadway), so now I have info to track obs sites. 0.13" in shower last night. Left windows open in car and portable Bluetooth speaker probably ruined. Had some wind there to blow water inside? None here, but added 0.15" last evening, over nearly 2 hours. Given the narrow echoes a couple hours earlier, I expected maybe 10-15 minutes at most. System total 1.05". Bright sun with temps shooting up thru the 60s, a bit stuffy but dews are supposed to settle back into the 50s.

Frost for Estcourt Station. (After a heat wave the previous week)

Too much nitrogen compared to other nutrients can favor vegetative growth over blossoms. Offhand I don't recall whether it's phosphorus or potassium (the other 2 macronutrients) that fosters flowering. Search engine should easily supply that info. Still cloudy but thin enough so there are fuzzy shadows - 71/66.

Nice hedge. And though they are the same species as what you ride by in the wintertime swamps, sometimes the selecting for special traits like columnar growth can have some unexpected effects on other plant characteristics. Maybe the nursery folks also selected for those trees that really really loved well-drained loams.

Gotta teach the aspiring mets how to deal with frustration, as they're apt to face a lot when they begin forecasting professionally. Bits of blue amid the clouds here in Augusta. 68/66 at 1 PM.

That soil partially explains (to me) why your arborvitae turned brown - I'm assuming that's what "arbor" stands for. Part of the problem may be the particular cultivar, because in the wild that species, Thuja occidentalis, is Northern white cedar which does quite well on most wet sites. Always a relatively slow grower, that growth becomes miniscule when there's no water flow thru saturated soils, such as in bogs. The tree does best in what's called a seepage forest, with saturated soils but continual slow water flow. They like a sweet soil, part of their acid-bog problem (cedar is small and ragged-looking there) while growing fairly well in droughty shale pits where pH is much higher. If you have more of those species in harm's way, a little lime or wood ashes might help, though improved drainage would do more (and both would be best.) Rain didn't get to my place until 7:30 last evening and by 9 had dropped a whole 0.01", making me think - another miss is on the way. However, by 7 this morning we'd had 0.87", never heavy though sometimes moderate, so a near-perfect drink for the garden.

Thank you thank you! for digging this out. I'll assume, w/o further info, that the obs site remained the same from 6/1/48 until the current observer took over in 1966. The move early in 1898 is telling, as all the 1890s triples occurred before then, and temps didn't again reach the mark until the 1911 inferno. The one oddity that remains is the very mild minima of August 1949. Farmington has had 38 minima 70+ in 126 years and the only months with more than 2 are 8/1896 (3) and 8/1949 (5). Raising the bar to 72 drops the total to just 12, and 8/49 notched 4 of them. No other month has had more than one. Since that hot month, there's been only one day, 7/21/1977 (74) with a low milder than 71. What does PO stand for, point of original? Center of town?

Hoping for at least 1/2" and a full inch would be better. Water table is fine thanks to 3.6" RA June20-30, but July stands at 0.05" and the upper layers, where much of my small-seeded veggies still live, are getting dry. Awakened @ 4:30 AM for the 2nd straight morning by the coyote family, maybe 100 yards from my open windows.

My dad hated cats. He also wasn't much for restaurant dinners; most such excursions involved the Essex County branch of the family and were in their neighborhood. From our home in Morris County, Bergen seemed about the same distance away as the like-named city in Norway. A little more dewey out ahead of the front that sweeps thru over the next day or so, 75/65°F. Temps at or below yesterday at this hour, but dews are sneaking in from the SW. Noon TDs: LEW: 67 AUG: 62 WVL: 58 BGR: 53

Had no clue. Search engine turned up a couple references to a now-closed CT steakhouse (the au jus?) and many more references to places in FL. I'm guessing your reference ain't for the Sunshine State. Given my residence location and those of family, I've not been very far off the interstates in CT, which generally means missing the good places.

Your local deerflies must've gone to bed already, or are a much different breed than ours, which treat DEET as salad dressing. (or au jus) Who is more childish, the one person who makes a passing comment on dews, or the 15 people who can't ignore the comment Posting science-based counter-evidence doesn't seem childish, though like anything one can take it too far.

Many of the grass species often used in the North are cool-season adapted, and will naturally become dormant in big heat/dryness then spring back to life when cooler wx returns. One can keep such grasses green throughout with abundant watering, but it's not the natural sequence for those species - more like using artificial lights to force your potted daffodils to bloom for the mid-March flower show.

Ours is set at 62 year-round in the main zone, but that doesn't mean much as it's less than 15' from the Jotul and in summer the furnace runs only for domestic hot water. Rear zone sometimes gets set at 65 in winter to lower the blanket load for my wife. Office has been 77-78 for the past 2 weeks, a bit stuffy at first but one adapts. Last year at this time it was 82-84 while the office across the hall was about 70 with the blower on constantly, and the staffer there put on extra clothes and still shivered. It's a century-old brick fortress and even the retro-fit of 12-14 years ago didn't solve everything. Improved my current office (in a framed 80-year-old addition) a bit - last pre-reno winter I was here (1995-96) temps at desk level ran 60-62, a bit chilly on the fingers, while at ankle height it was low 40s. Made me get up and walk more often - not a bad thing. Of course 2-3 days after a large snowfall, when hundreds of pounds of snow/ice slid off the slate roof some 25-30' higher than here and came thundering down atop the roof 6 feet above my head, I always wondered if the old framed roof would hold.

Don't think anyone was trying to claim that smoke never warrants an AQ alert, only that the initial alert that was posted here mentioned only ozone.

Warm farther east - CAR is about +4 and GYX +5 so far. I'm +1.3, but my records go back only to 1998, thus do not include the cooler 1980s that remain in the current 30-year norms. I'd guess the Farmington co-op is running about +3. However, except for last Fri-Sat, it's been the nicest AN July one could ask for.

So was I, thinking that dews must've been several ticks above 70 to allow such a warm minimum. Since I've lived in Maine (46 years) there have been two confirmed wolves killed, both 25-30 years ago. One was confirmed as a released captive animal, the other a wild critter from north of the St. Lawrence. As with the cougar reports, I await either roadkills or trailcam confirmation of anything beyond released animals or the odd migrant (like the roadkill cougar in CT.) The other potential cougar confirmation would be a large animal kill - deer or moose - with lots of its hair scratched off or fluffed up (to deter scavengers) and at least partially covered by leaves and/or duff. Until such time as that kind of evidence is presented, or of adults with young, I don't think there's breeding populations of either species in the area.

Current dews there are near 60, which in July probably doesn't fit either low or high. About the lowest dews as I can remember for an ozone alert.

Must be some cultural differences from deerflies in Maine. Sun with mid-80s or above generally drive the blackflies into the shade (June of 1996 was a horrible exception. At Deboullie Twp about 25 miles SW from Ft. Kent, I was getting pounded by blackflies while 500' from shore on Deboullie Pond while it was sunny low 90s. Two firsts there, getting bit that far out on the water, and at 90+.) Deerflies only buzz faster in the heat. I've had dozens to hundreds circling me and bouncing off my head on the summer's hottest days in the north woods. They were accompanied by as many or more "sweat lickers", similar size insects that are pesty but harmless. With buzzbombs all around, one cannot tell which ones have knives in their teeth. Another thing I've found is that deerflies home in on motion. I can be two steps from our porch and one has already found me, but if I stand still, they soon go away (mosquitos/blackflies do not, unfortunately.) Reminds me of the "Jurassic Park" version of T-Rex, and deerfly bites feel like their respective dental equipment might be similar, scaled for their size.

It's nice to have a bit of light remaining when I take the pup out for my 9 PM obs. Was especially welcomed last night, as coyotes had been singing quite near the house earlier, close enough that I could hear their paws on the leaves - probably within 20 yards though not visible due to screening undergrowth. Niot concerned about them attacking me, though I took my ironwood walking stick, but out dog is smaller than an adult coyote and there were at least two in that chorus. They were back within about 100 yards again this morning, parents and pups, as that species usually doesn't run in extended family packs like wolves. Anyway, I don't think it can actually be 105/75 here, do to the fact that by the time the atmosphere is arriving this far E it's heavily burdened with polyaromatic aerosols from continental exhausting ... Plus, being closer to sea-level, we have to heat the total column of the atmosphere...these factors mean that it takes more solar energy to get a parcel to that state than it does out near Chicago... even less so in western Kansas... In simple terms... there's an intuitive limit to the 'highest' ( I think ) . Probably correct, but August 2, 1975 must've been close with Logan registering 102/83, their highest minimum on record, by 2°. Seems like it would take a pretty tall dew to hold overnight temps that warm next to the bay.

No bears at my place, but the coyotes were close enough last evening for me to hear the pitter-patter of little feet on the leaves. With undergrowth in full leaf, visibility toward the sound was less than 30 feet and I'm guessing they were twice that far from the house. Then they sang again this morning from about 100 yards distance. But with mostly low dews, even the sunny skies hasn't been oppressive. Last 3 days were 75F, 77F, 80F---perfect. Here it was 75, 77, 77 with lows 50, 44, 49. Now 7 of 9 days this month sunny or mostly so - we'll pay in the coming weeks, but thanks for the CoC.

Got data? 80/50 here and quite nice. Today has been on the border between mostly sunny and partly cloudy, while 6 of the 1st 8 days this month have been mostly to completely sunny. Partly cloudy is the usual player for July-August - I've averaged just 4.3 days of sunny (which includes m.sunny in my data) in July and 20.5 PC days. This year's 6 is already tied for 4th most in 22 Julys. 11 is tops, in 2010, but that year (my hottest month here) had humidity. Would not mind breaking that sunny mark with some more low-dew warmth.