tamarack

NYC's strongest Dec winds on record, and their max that day was 13. The day before, the Giants and Packers played for the NFL championship at Yankee Stadium in conditions that rivaled the famed "Ice Bowl" at Lambeau a few years later. Temps were 25F less cold at YS but the 50-60 gusts made up for that. Poor Y.A. Tittle couldn't run his vaunted passing offense at all (Giants' only score was from blocking a punt) while Jerry Kramer was only 3-of-5 for FG from inside 40 yards (and probably did well in gauging the wind to make even 3.)

Possibly the strongest winds I've ever experienced came on that date, gusts probably near 70 on a day with temps -8/5, pretty Arctic for NNJ. The wind tipped 2-ft diam. oaks out of semi-frozen ground, shattered plate glass windows, nearly ripped 10" of black ice from the nearby reservoir (lots got crumpled onto the lee shore), and created 6-ft drifts from the 2" of wet snow that fell late on 12/29. Only the 1950 Apps gale can rival it for winds I've felt, with Hazel, Doria (both in NNJ) and Bob (in Gardiner) a step down. And it was definitely a storm, but to the north. BGR had 29.5" and Old Town/Orono 40"+, with 60 mph winds and temps that cycled from below zero to near freezing and back again. NNJ was just getting the cyclonic flow behind the blizzard. "The Storm That Ate Bangor"

Only a couple inches of dust up here, but most fell at -8 to -12. I preferred 2/2/205 - 5F less cold but 7.5" with near-blizz conditions. (Coldest I've ever seen for accumulating snow - not much, only 0.5" - was -25 on 1/4/1981 in Ft. Kent.)

Better than that, we had mostly IP, less than 0.1" of ZR. But the 2002 reminder is painful, with our forecast 8-12" verifying at 1", while 10 miles south in Belgrade village they got the 8" and 20 miles SE of there Augusta had 15". Ultra sharp cutoff. That Brockton pack-vanish is amazing. I thought Farmington's drop from 40" to 8" that month was pretty special until I saw that. Of course, we got only light snow from the big blizz, and losing 30"+ pack in January is not supposed to happen in the Maine foothills. That whole winter was a mix of wow! and yuck! Easily the snowieast of our 13 winters in Gardiner (138.6", 30" more than #2 1992-93), but it pumped the brakes too much. Dec 1-22 great, rest of month meh, Jan 1-15 with 3 snowstorms, then came the 3 torch deluges. Feb 1-20 cold (8F BN) and fairly snowy, then two rainy thaws and +13 temps. March 1-11 was 11F BN with two good snowstorms, building the pack to near 2 ft, then in 12 days it was all gone. (No complaints about April, though. Its 23" snow trails only 1982 and 2007 for my April records.)

12/21-22/08 brought 15.5" of 14:1 fluff, nicely windblown. The earlier storm produced 2.1", just as was forecast for here. Even though light, it was a pretty snowfall that lasted almost 20 hours. It reminded me of the opening ceremony of the Lillehammer Olympics - nice flakes drifting by, enough to accumulate but not to make the roads slippery, as the modest rate allowed traffic to blow the powder onto the shoulders. Never can seem to escape the Grinch in the past 15 years (except maybe 2010). In 19 Decembers here, I've tracked just 4 non-Grinch holiday seasons: 2000, 2002, 2010, and 2013. We've had 12 rainy snow-eater Grinches, and 3 years (1999, 2006, 2015) in which there was no snow for the Grinch to steal (though each of the 3 had Grinch-ey wx.) . My temperature records show a distinct bump-up for the week 12/22-28, and 12/25 has had less cumulative snowfall than any other day of the month.

That 12/21-22/08 storm was one of the few here that had 3+ hours of blizz criteria. Did a round trip to Farmington to deliver our son to his (then) job with Big Apple - graveyard shift - and couldn't see much over 100'. Then it dropped to less than 50 as we were following "something" that was kicking up the pow. Got to the stoplight in town and saw that it was a loaded log truck. Trip took just under an hour and I came home to 2" on the porch steps I'd swept just before heading out. Our high temps for 21-22 were 12 and 15. Was nice to get that dump after getting fringed by the one 36 hr earlier.

Going way back, and beyond SNE, we had conditions like that while I was home on semester break in Jan. 1965. NYC temps/precip below (Our NNJ area ran 5-10F colder than the city in winter): 1/23/65 47 24 0.64" 1.0" 0 (High @ 12:01 AM, low @ 11:59 PM. Depth taken at noon, so none yet.) 1/24/65 32 24 0.51" 2.2" 3" (Hi-lo just the opposite times as yesterday.) A major Grinch on Dec. 25-27 had stripped the lake of what had been safe ice, so I was eager to go ice fishing that Saturday morning. Temps during the rainy overnight had dropped from 40s thru the 30s, and P-type went to IP during breakfast, with moderate pellet-pelting thru the day, but the fishing was good. Overnight the temp moved back into the 20s, and soon after I set the traps, P-type switched to ZR, which continued thru the day with about 0.3" accretion. (Also made a mess of my topwater traps.) By mid afternoon I had to put on the creepers to get around safely, not unusual on the ice. However, I also needed them to walk up thru the woods to our house, and that was a first. Even a heel-stomp had no effect, other than pain in the foot. Next day the neighbor kids were skating around in their back yard. 98 Yankees were better all around than 27. Better pitching in '98; much more dominant hitting in '27. Take your pick.

Much prefer the 21" of moist powder up here, on precisely 2.10" LE - not making this up. We measured 5.5" by my 9 PM obs time on the 29th, then 15.5" after that for the 30th. One of my comments on that storm is below: "Many SN/-SN/SN stutters for 11 hr, then bombs away! 17" from 8P-3A"

I was measuring trees on permanent plots on state land 5 miles west of LFD a week after the first Oct event, and the footing was quite treacherous because falling leaves had covered the snow, the only time I've observed (and fallen because of) that phenomenon. Quite a lot of aspen branches/trees broken along the Long Falls Dam Road as well. March 2001 with 58.3" is Farmington's snowiest for any month not starting with "F" - 3 Febs have topped 60". I had 55.5", only 9.5" from the 3/5-6 event while they measured 14". The 19" storm (18" in Farmington) on 30-31 brought the depth up to 48" at both locations, tallest ever so late in the season - for Farmington, with depth records back into the 1940s, for me, even when Fort Kent is included. (46" on 3/31/1984 is next.) The Feb-Mar total that year, 96.6", misses Farmington's Feb-Mar record by just 0.4", losing to 1993 (51.0, 46.0), and snowfall records date back thru 1893. #3 is 1969 at 84.0", thanks to the 67" in Feb.

Saw more of that in Gardiner than at my foothills location, and I missed the one true blue bomb - was in SC for the 16" on 3/22-23/2001. That storm, according to friends, was a "can't stick" event for several hours before the S+ arrived near sunset and continued thru the night - nice wet branches to catch sticky snow. About 20% of the fir, the most abundant species by far on my woodlot, had their tops broken out by the snow. (Eustis recorded 34.5" from that storm, and 10 miles to its south/1000'+ higher elevation, the final load from our harvest on the Redington Public Lot headed out just as the snow got serious. Just in time - probably 40" or more up there, atop the 4-5' already OG.)

Like here, 2.18" LE, mainly IP (4.5") with some ZR/RA at the end. Messy but made the pack bulletproof. The 21" on Dec 29-30 wasn't exactly paste, but I think it was heavy enough to break limbs off the fir we transplanted in 1998. Might also have been the March blizzard, or both. That latter storm, though 3rd largest (15.5" vs 2 @ 21") was the winter's best, due to 5 hours of SN+ with gusts into the 40s. 1st blizzard-criteria conditions I'd witnessed since 12/21-22/2008 and only the 2nd (12/6-7/2003 the other) in 19 winters here. Jan 2015 also met the criteria, judging by our neighbor's pics and description, but we were in SNJ at the time.

Only 15" for Boston, but 30% of that came during the Tuck Rule game. In that 2004 icebowl game against the Titans, the footballs probably dropped to about 10 PSI (but were so stiff that it didn't matter.)

Great 2-footer that dumped nearly 18" in a 10-hr period. And though points 20-40 miles N and NW of Farmington and 500-1,000' higher reported 32-40", Farmington's 40" report came either from a snowdrift (winds were strong and snow was about 15:1) or a slant-stick, IMO. Our church is about 1.1 mile SSE of the co-op site and 100' higher, and when I got there perhaps an hour after the end of accumulating snow, the depth there looked just like the 24" I had at home. (I'd measured 6" at 9 PM and 18" more about 12 hr later. The co-op recorded 14" by midnight and 26" after - don't know how often the board was cleared.) I've always considered that co-op measurement as being a foot or so overdone. New Sharon co-op had 23", Kingfield had 25.4", Livermore Falls (2 towns S of Farmington) 22.0".

Snowblower breaker, and gross is the right term. I had about 60% of that in the mess of late Feb 2010 - the stuff fell like overly moist mashed potatoes, 2,68" water for 10.7" snow, then 1.14" catspaw rain on top, leaving an immovable 7" of glop. Fortunately (?) my snowblower was already broken. Pushing scoopfuls of that stuff across unfrozen ground is an experience I'd rather not repeat.

My mistake - I had assumed you were in VT at the time. I suspect your current locale got only a brush-dusting from that one. Edit: BTV 1", St. Johnsbury 1.5".

I'm surprised your area did that well, as in Maine there was a very sharp northside cutoff. My place was forecast for 8-12" and got 1", while 10 miles SE there was 8" in Belgrade, and 20 miles SSE from there, parts of Augusta got 15". At GYX they had 18", their largest in their (started 1997) records until Feb. 2013 blew it away by almost 9".

Love living in the woods, but having tall trees around the house (especially toward north) isn't helpful at these times. At best I could detect a glow from that direction, but short of driving to a hilltop location, that would be all.

Always like reading (and now seeing/hearing) about this event, even though it was a clean though windy whiff for central Maine.

We got into EZ-Pass thanks to the Garden State Parkway, which used to have the EZ-Pass lanes far right at one toll plaza then far left at the next, with the crush of waiting traffic making lane switches nearly impossible, leading to heartburn. Having the grandkids in Illinois (now in SNJ) also makes the electronic version preferable.

Npot necessarily. The Dec. 6-7, 2003 storm was one of the windiest I've seen in our somewhat protected (by forest) location, with gusts well into the 30s and much drifting, and it dumped 24" on 1.63" LE, ratio of 14.7.

First big January snowstorm in years, and I'm visiting family in S. NJ - expecting 12-16" down here, had about 1" from today's clipper. We were planning to drive home tomorrow - guess that's not a wise idea, but the Forester ought to make it on Wednesday. I'd be satisfied with the current GYX forecast of 8-12" for S. Franklin; would be nice to be able to get into the driveway Wednesday evening.

Off topic ('cause it's NNE), but in the C.Maine New Year's Eve blizzard of 1962, a BGR plowtruck got paunched out near the old Pilot's Grill restaurant, then the 6-WD grader sent to rescue it got stuck, so they sent their large Cat dozer, and stuck that, too.

That event, like 5/9/77, 10/10/79, and the NNJ snows of late April '83/'86, showed how climo-capricious the very early/very late snows can be. Nary a flake in my Maine foothills BY, but as we headed to IL (granddaughter #3 arrival) on the 19th we saw snow OG at both ends of I-84, shady shoulders in N.CT and the hills east of Scranton, PA. Then, 2nd day after the snowfall, we saw considerable snow in the woods along I-80 in W.PA, along with some trees broken by leaf-on accum. Edit: Wonderful pics of 12/08; wish I some like it for 1/98 in Gardiner/AUG. THAT event was the most impactful wx of any kind I've experienced, and #2 just might be the NNJ ice storm exactly 45 years earlier. At least that 1953 storm is partly responsible for my lifelong interest in wx and trees. 12/08: I'm still not quite sure how/why MBY had the same rain (2", albeit after 4" snow) at the same 2m temps as ORH, yet escaped with 0.2" ice accretion and lots of cold puddles, but your dewpoint comment offers another clue - perhaps higher over MBY. I already think we had a thinner, if equally cold, sub-32 surface layer, so that the raindrops splashed in at less cool temps than down your way.

Lived in Ft. Kent then, and our March storm came on 14-15 after 10 days of mid-Jan cold. 26.5" (CAR had 29.0", their record until the 12/25-27/05 stall-out) with 65" OG - 80" up in the woods, each the most I've measured - IMBY/anywhere, respectively. (The 28-29 event never got to N.Maine.) We had 16" LE in Nov-Dec, and probably more than half of it was still on the ground on 12/31, with more piling up each week, except for the last half of Feb, when our 59" snowpack settled to 35" - not much melted. After the big March storm my snowpack held 16" LE, and I'm guessing the much deeper and equally solid snow NW of Allagash might've had 20". Unlike 2008, no April rain = no flooding that spring.

Weird, indeed. Midcoast Maine had two tornados (EF1 and EF0) on Thanksgiving, 2005, during a rather modest storm, 2-5" most places with some mixing along tidewater.