tamarack

A frozen dead garden isn't fake. Gorgeous out there, just saw a tiny cloud, only one so far today. Mid 50s off the frosty 28.

Maybe. October is our wettest month and is fairly consistent, with only 3 of 26 years having less than 3.46". Those years' precip and the following winter snow: 2001: 1.12" 72.7" 2004: 2.30" 94.3" 2013: 1.23" 101.3" Average snow is 89.4", almost identical for the 26-winter average of 89.0". Also, our wettest October (and wettest month), 14.09" was followed by 52.8" in my only winter w/o a 6" event since 1967-68 in NNJ. It’s the driest period of we lives Too young to have experienced 1963-66.

Snow data is missing for Jan-April 2002. Looking at temp/precip, I doubt BDL reached 20".

Mid-October is oak-spotting time here. Other deciduous trees are bare, and I sometimes spot smaller oaks whose existence had been hidden (including one less than 100 feet from where I sit). One can spot oaks even while driving, impossible when all is green. Pin oak, not native here but often planted in towns, usually offers a deep scarlet. White oak will sometimes have a purplish hue. Best of the rest is reddish-brown, like the 20-foot-tall N. red sapling outside of my window. A lot of Maine sites reported 0.01-0.04". Not a drop here in Franklin County.

We had 55 last December 18, but any awakened bugs quickly drowned or got blown to Canada. 50/50 day, with fog/cloud thru noon then a quick switch to sunny and mid 60s.

Dream on - west Pac has been well BN for ACE. (So far. Atlantic basin was significantly BN until this month.)

The trend looks to be valid but the numbers are a bit hyped. So far in 2024 I've recorded 13 days with means at least +15 and 55 days at least -3. However, the increased minima are a major driver of warming. Last month's average diurnal range was 0.3° AN, breaking a run of 15 months with ranges BN, sometimes far BN.

Long term averages in the NW part are +/-40". Cape May less than half that much, though it had the state's greatest snowfall, 34" in the arctic blast of February 1898. (Tallahassee recorded 2" and -2 at that time, for more state records.) Mount Arlington in NW Jersey initially reported 35.1" in the early February storm in 2022 but quality checking knocked it back into the high 20s. A couple of NNJ sites recorded more snow in Feb 2022 than my Maine foothills had for all of 21-22. The sizable ski area in Vernon depends mainly on the snow guns, no change from when I learned to ski there in the early 1970s.

I'd add Titcomb Hill in Farmington, owned by the town and run mainly by volunteers - only 300' vertical but the T-bar is only 1300' and the hill's midsection is ~35%, steep enough for a good slalom course. there are X-C trails connected as well. Mount Blue HS trains there in both disciplines and they win more than their share of trophies in the state races.

Not native to Maine, either, but there's a planted one about 45" dbh/85 feet tall in downtown Farmington. It has some frost cracks but is otherwise vigorous. It had to have been a big tree (30" dbh?) in 1994 when Farmington set their coldest on record at -39. Produces abundant seeds, too, and the nearby 20-foot-tall tulip tree is likely the progeny of the big guy. The NNJ woods near our home had mostly oaks, maples, hickory and black birch, almost no tulip trees. The terminal moraine is about 10 miles south from where I grew up, and tulip trees become more common south from where the glaciation scraped all the soil from the hilltops and pushed it southward.

Fortunately, it underperformed here. Our 4.5" was accompanied by 4 hours w/o power. Had we gotten the forecast 12-16, it would've rivaled the 101 hours last December, only without the Generac. Fog, <1/4 mile vis, hanging in there. Forecast 72 but mid 60s more likely and a PC day after 7 sunny ones in a row.

Another Nov. 1950 would be interesting, especially if we got what hit Pittsburgh in that one.

The CLIMOD site shows PWM at 79 on both 10/20 & 21 - 1947 for the 20th and 1920 for the 21st. ???

And that's the key. Unless a plant can consistently produce viable seeds, it cannot persist. Many species can be successfully planted well north of their native range, and do well. One might be able to plant a Northern red oak at Chicoutimi and have it survive, and grow well if put in a place with sun and little wind.

When we lived in Fort Kent, the Lonesome Pine area had only a rope tow. As long as there were a good number of skiers on the rope, the 2,000' with 500' vertical wasn't too bad. However, in the low snow winter of 1979-80 weather played catch-up in March, and on a screechingly windy Saturday after 30" in 10 days, there were very few on the slopes. The rope had worn a deep groove in the new snow and with no one else to share the rope, it was dragging out of the groove about 3 feet from my tips - felt like the rope weighed a ton. The wind blew the doctor from St. Francis off the narrower of the 2 trails, and as I passed him, I heard his call. He'd injured his knee and though he probably could've skied down, he thought it wiser to ask for a ride. I went down and alerted ski patrol and rode the rope again. By the time I reached the bottom, the place was closed for safety reasons. The following Monday evening we foresters drove to PQI for a forestry meeting and had to detour 100' east of Rt 1 for about 1/3 mile as the massive drifts from Saturday were still being dug out. Only time I've driven thru a potato field.

The 2 most recent winters here (DJFM) ran 5° AN with all 4 months being AN in each. However, the DJFM average, including those winters, is 21° so +5 retains a margin. Sometimes that's enough, sometimes not, with 22-23 and 23-24 on the good side with 112% of average snow. (And winters like 09-10, 11-12 and 15-16 definitely going the other way.)

We moved to Maine in January of 1973 but we're still "from away". One of the worst things a "flatlander" (yet another epithet for those born in another state) can do is to pretend one is a Mainer. However, I've almost never had any such terms thrown my way - folks have been quite accepting. PWM normal 1991-2020 is 68.8". However, the most recent 5 winters have failed to reach 60, though 2017-18 had 92.4. Cape Neddick is 1/3 of the way from PWM to BOX, so perhaps 10% (?) lower snowfall.

Where are you moving to? Hope it's not south coastal Maine - might get less snow there than at your current location.

It was probably my most frustrating snow season since moving to Maine, also the only winter in geologic time that CAR had less snow than BWI. The last Dodgers-Yankees WS was 1963, and we did quite nicely in NNJ the following winter.

Not even close up here. In 1947, PWM had recorded only 2.11" from July 24 thru October 28. It was their driest August since records began in 1920 and only the 0.26" on 10/29 kept that month from having only traces.

Right. Low was in the pre-dawn before clouds began to arrive and the high was at my 9 PM obs time. Afternoon was 15-20 with very light snow which changed to ZR/DZ in the evening, 0.5" frozen/0.05" LE. High for Jan 12 was about midnight, RA to flurries 6 AM, 29 at 8 AM, 15 at 4 PM and 4 at obs time. Winds NW 25-45. Another 0.5" SN and 0.50" LE. (All this is from written observations.)

10/18/01: 57/34 11/21/13: 47/17 At least one of the readings was correct. Greatest duirnal range I've seen is 59° on Jan 11, 1980 in Fort Kent, middle day of a major see-saw: 10/-30; 38/-21; 44/4.

But none in recent years. The 1947 fires in Maine came in October, as did a 3,000-acre fire in NNJ 16 years later. That latter event lasted for more than a month as fire burned underground in rocky land. Earlier in 1963 almost 200,000 acres burned in the NJ pine barrens (a fire-type ecosystem) on a windy Saturday in April. In 1977 Baxter Park saw a 3,000-acre fire following a blowdown 3 years before - gigantic fuel loading of highly seasoned wood. Fire was able to burn downhill at night, a very rare phenomenon. Since then, Maine has not seen a fire larger than 1,000 acres.

Slight difference in vegetation and ecosystems. SoCal has millions of acres of plants that have long been regenerated by fire. The Northeast, nasomuch, outside of places like the Pine Barrens of NJ and similar types on Long Island and Cape Cod. Even the lands in Maine torched by fire in 1947 mostly regenerated to species less prone to major wildfires. Temperatures are rising and heavy precip storms are increasing, but "110°" and "exponential" don't help the discussion.

Wind off Moosehead keeping Greenville mild (though all of the north is mild). Missed the 40° range by 2 - 66/28. Maybe today, as we had a frost and the afternoon should be warmer than yesterday. Edit: At 7 AM MLT and HUL had dropped into the 30s while Greenville is still 50.