tamarack

VV had a weird layout, as the easiest top-to-bottom trail did an S-turn with the two main intermediates crossing/re-crossing it. Grooming was sometimes less than ideal - most painful fall I ever had while skiing came on that beginner trail. Came to a series of steep-sided linear "moguls" running at right angles to the trail with skiers close at hand on both sides and happened to be on the steepest-highest part of those "waves." About halfway thru them, both heels popped simultaneously and I crashed chest-first into the upper side of a wave. Nearly ripped the chamois shirt I was wearing in half, splitting it right across the seams. 1st of several very painful rib-area injuries I've sustained, teaching me that there was 4-6 weeks of pain incoming.

Only big mountain I've skied was Glen Ellen - a ski week back in 1971 (half price in January, only $22.50 ) when I learned parallel, then a Fri-Sat visit the next year, partly because all the beautiful pics I took in '71 failed because the shutter spring had broken - didn't find out until all the black slides came back from the developer. Started on the slopes when I lived in NNJ - great Gorge/Vernon Valley, have no idea if or in what form those 2 exist today. Have not skied since my broken leg in Jan 1981 - passenger in pickup that went head-on with a log truck near the Maine-Quebec frontier, results predictable.

It's a publicity ploy, of course, and I don't blame them a bit - short term loss for future gain. I've wondered why Sugarbush never got into the game, as the summit lift on the old Glen Ellen starts at over 3,000' and those upper trails face N to NE.

Maybe a quadratic relationship - need 4X the water shed to double the peak flow? Didn't quite work for 1987 in the Kennebec drainage - both the Sandy and Carrabassett rivers were a bit over 50,000 cfs, or 21-22% of the Kennebec peak. Sandy has about 1/10 the watershed, while the steeper and lake-free Carrabassett about 1/16.

I was at the Arbor Day Center in Nebraska City for a forestry meeting in April 1994. In my spare time I wandered back of the facility to a creek bed less than 1/4 mile from the Missouri. The creek was maybe 4' wide and 4" deep, but 25' above that water was a giant tree trunk lodged horizontally into the embankment, undoubtedly marking the Missouri's flood peak of the previous summer. Impressive. (Less impressive, to me, was a report of the Mississippi's volume flowing past St. Louis at the 1993 peak. Given in gallons/minute and thus a huge number, I reduced that to CFS - can't recall the exact number but I think between 1 and 2 million CFS. That's for about a million square miles watershed. Six years earlier the (relatively) tiny Kennebec - less than 6,000 sq.mi. - reached 232,000 CFS. The relationship between watershed and river flow is far from linear, but I'd have expected the Big Muddy's record to be perhaps 50X that of the K'bec, not <10.)

Midges. Same insect family (flies & mosquitos) as the skeeters but vegetarian. Under magnification one can spot the feather-like antennae of the midge, rather than the skeeter spikes. Some got in the house and staying cozy while their family members will suffer One paper wasp showed up on an inside window this morning, but wasn't too cozy after I used the swatter. Several years ago we had a half dozen or so make it inside over several May days. First one crawled up my pant leg as I sat on the commode and nailed me as I walked into the LR. I smacked the spot (can't kill one of those hard-shell critters by hitting it while it sits on thigh muscle) and then got a much bigger dose - made the 1st sting feel like a mosquito bite.

93% in NNJ for that one. It was like twilight but with sun high in the sky. Odd, but the only reason we stopped nailing shingles was the novelty - there was plenty of light to keep working.

22" at 3 this afternoon - might lose another inch to U-40s. Pack held 8.44" LE, or 38% water. That's a bit overstated, as several crusts were 70%+, the in-betweens 35 or less. Still almost ripe and tomorrow should push it closer. Hope that 2-3" RA out in clown range goes away.

Jackman may briefly be one of the most heavily populated towns in Maine - red line looks to pass over the golf course north of town. Of course, if it's like THIS April 8, not so good. P&C has them at 7-14" with 5-9 during the day Monday. GYX/CAR have WS watch posted for the northerly parts of their CWAs. Would be a real bummer to have thick clouds for the only nearby full solar of one's lifetime. Last 2 lunar eclipses have been ruined by clouds here, but that's a thousand times less frustrating than losing a solar.

Pretty wild in northern Maine this afternoon. They got a couple inches yesterday, and the 3 PM obs at FVE is S-, 25°, winds 37G58. Got to be tipping some fir trees on the hilltops, and Rt 1 through the tater fields CAR to PQI must be a challenge.

Not an entomologist, but I'm guessing they're 2 separate species but in the same genus. I don't know if there's any crossover, such as HWA feeding on fir or vice versa. Balsam fir is a northern species, part of the boreal forest, while hemlock gets increasingly scarce as one gets into northern Maine. Spotted a few fir near I-84 in NE PA; other than those I've not seen any south of NNE. And it's only an assumption that they were balsam - the nearly identical Fraser fir is common at high elevation in the central/southern Apps. In the Allagash-Estcourt-St.-Pamphile triangle I worked during my 10 years with seven Islands, we found a few scattered hemlocks but the only hemlock stand (mixed with red spruce) is on the SE public lot in the town of Allagash. Balsam wooley adelgid was never an issue in that part of the state. Its hegemony was mainly east of the Penobscot and south of I-95, and the critter really likes the maritime fir downeast. Whether a warming climate means it will spread northward remains to be seen.

Still plenty of fir, especially in the clearcuts made during the last outbreak in the 70s-80s. Those trees are just reaching the stage where they're prime budworm food. Fortunately the forests we manage have a high spruce-to-fir ratio compared to the state as a whole, the product of ruthless cutting of fir during the past 35 years. The current outbreak is so far concentrated north of the places that got hammered 35-40 years ago. And that one hit farther north than the one in the 19-teens. Maybe the warming climate has some positive effects? However, forest managers are concerned - I was part of the budworm task force a few years back, a multi-pronged effort attempting to plan for a potential outbreak. Have not seen the results of last fall's L-2 (overwintering larvae) sampling, but the pheromone traps haven't caught all that many. Saguenay is between Lac St.-Jean and where those pics were taken. I'm guessing the pics may have been of seasonal places near the provincial park, as it doesn't look like any snow removal was being done. The balsam wooley adelgid has been around for many decades, and has been especially destructive in eastern Maine. Of course, any species near the edge of its range is vulnerable.

North of St. Lawrence was getting all snow while northern NNE had significant P-type issues, and that place is about 140 miles north of Quebec City - obviously buried, maybe 300" or more? Off topic, but I was impressed at how good those balsam fir looked. Budworm has been ravaging north of the St. L for 5-6 years but those trees look unscathed. The worst has mostly been east of there, but a hot spot occurred in the Chicoutimi/Lac St.-Jean region west of Valin.

Unlikely but not impossible in late season. Reminds me of the March 21-22 storm many (55) years ago. I was babysitting 5 neighbor kids the evening before as the anticipated late storm was just futzing around. Put the kids to bed and watched for real snow, but it didn't start accumulating until after midnight. Parents got home about 1:30, which was the plan, and had encountered problems driving up the hill to their place. I drove home in dense S+ with 1-2" down, got to bed about 3 AM. That storm dumped almost 5" at central Park and briefly was the record for 3/22. Woke up around 11, saw bright sun and already 50°, looked for snow and only a few patches in the shade revealed it had ever snowed at all. Weenie disappointment.

Lovely pics. My earlier post noted that Google Earth listed 815' as the elevation of the pond. Those pics suggest the camp is on the lee shore for NW winds, which would mean a lot of drifting once the ice has caught.

And the traffic goes a whole lot faster on 201. That gave birth to the story of a fellow from Quebec who got pulled over for driving almost 100 mph in Maine on the interstate. "But sir," he protested, "the sign says 95!" The officer politely told him that was the road number, not the speed limit. "Oh - I'm glad you didn't see me on 201 south of Jackman."

17 is a fun drive, and in my experience has no worse than average frost heaves. That said, the average on secondary roads in Maine is pretty bumpy. Looks like that camp is on Roxbury Pond, which is at 815' according to G.E. House would be a wee bit higher. Rt 17 climbs to 2,300' just north of the "height of land" turnout with its oft-photographed view of Mooselook Lake and the mountains beyond. Lands managed by our agency on Richardsontown make up much of the non-mountain forest in that view.

Can't see Northfield from here, but I'm sure folks here know that totals can vary across a short distance (both horizontal and vertical.) On March 10 my pack was 1" taller than at the Farmington co-op. On March 29 (their data for 30-31 not yet on Climod) I had 11" more. My place in the woods holds pack well, though most near the house are bare-limbed ash and maple. The Farmington site is more open, with scattered trees. Nice clean-looking snowbanks at Roxbury. Do you know the elevation there?

That could be the path to our shed (which would be about where that propane sits) and the woods are similar as well , though with fewer spruce-fir the pieces are larger and more scattered. Trivia note: researchers have found that such litterfall is up to 1/3 of what deer eat when yarded up in winter. Brief warmup early afternoon yesterday, high of 52 tops for March and tied Feb max - in both 17 and 18 March failed to reach the Feb high. 0.31" RA with a few flakes at the end. Only lost 1" of pack, now 26". Probably still close to 10" LE in that stuff; Saturday plans for a core lost out to cutting firewood.

Got any accessible white ash near the house? As the firewood poem goes, "Ash wood green or ash wood dry, a king shall warm his slippers by." Get it before the Emerald Ash Borer gets there.

Cloudy and upper 30s here - good day to make some firewood. Snow would support me 90% of the time, the other 10% letting me sink to mid-thigh. One time my boot got stuck under the lowest crust, locked in very dense snow, and I spent 5 minutes or so digging down toward the toe before I could pull my foot out. Nice pickup load of white ash, probably about 2 weeks worth with average April temps.

Whiffed at my place in Fort Kent. Of course, that was only 2 weeks after the biggest snowfall I've ever measured and we still had nearly 4 feet on the ground, down from the 65" peak. Currently 4.4° BN for the month. Having winter's coldest morning (-20 on 3/8) helped.

March 2012 had the record-crushing warmth, but overall both March and April were milder here in 2010 than in 2012. The highs/lows for March in those years can illustrate. March 2012 range was 80/-10, a 90° span that's the greatest I've recoded anywhere for any month. (2nd is 87° in Fort Kent: 40/-47 in Jan 1979.) March 2010 got only to 64, but the low was a mere 11, the only time in 21 years that March failed to record a subzero minimum - not even sub 10. Every day Feb 8 thru March 25 was AN, a 46-day run that's nearly twice the next longest such streak.

These mesoscale (sometimes even microscale) things must be a tough read. Nine years go I watched an early April wind shift (as the SW flow overcame the sea breeze) on the Fore River, and it kicked the PWM temp from 59 to 84 in 15 minutes. Be a long time before folks can forecast that kind of event, especially the timing.

Not atypical for NNE in early spring - it's where warm fronts go to die. Takes serious oomph to get real warmth here before mid-April (or later.) Not every year is like 2010 or 2012.