Spring Banter & General Discussion/Observations

[SouthCoastMA]

What's worse, a garden snob or a lawn snob - it's a tough call

[CoastalWx]

The pics up close looked like a little of both. Graupel is kind of heavily rimed flakes...those almost looked like chunks of ice. I wanted to side with graupel completely...but it did look hail-like.

[CoastalWx]

23 minutes ago, eekuasepinniW said:

A cold-stunted tomato will flower prematurely and will never do as well as one planted in warm soil.  The are only negatives to planting warm season crops early.  I'd like to have your son get the gardening basics down before he starts kindergarten.

Meh, I've done it before. It's in an area next to house that acts as incubator. Should be fine.

[Damage In Tolland]

A met plants tomatoes in April  in New England 

[CoastalWx]

Tamarack, any idea what gets rid of Hemlock scale? I had my trees sprayed for caterpillars and the arborist told me my Canadian Hemlock has scale. It's not bad, but I don't want the tree damaged too much either.

[IrishRob17]

1 hour ago, Ginx snewx said:

Early morning drinking is not healthy 

You can't drink all day if you don't start in the morning.

[IrishRob17]

13 minutes ago, Damage In Tolland said:

A met plants tomatoes in April  in New England 

Every knows that you plant after installation.

[CoastalWx]

Just now, IrishRob17 said:

Every knows that you plant after installation.

I've done it before. They'll be fine. Torchmouth FTW.

[HIPPYVALLEY]

5 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

I've done it before. They'll be fine. Torchmouth FTW.

Junior, with tear filled eyes, looking up at you saying "daddy what happened to our plants"?

[powderfreak]

More nice snow showers today.  Though turning more dippin dot graupel like.  Pouring snow and frozen though briefly.

[CoastalWx]

4 minutes ago, HIPPYVALLEY said:

Junior, with tear filled eyes, looking up at you saying "daddy what happened to our plants"?

Then in a Drago voice, "if they die...they die."

[CoastalWx]

4 minutes ago, powderfreak said:

More nice snow showers today.  Though turning more dippin dot graupel like.  Pouring snow and frozen though briefly.

Euro wants some turns for you early next week.

[backedgeapproaching]

23 hours ago, dendrite said:

I have a handful of rose-breasted ones every spring. A couple of the females hung around all summer. I've yet to see an evening or pine grosbeak here. The evening ones are fairly common for C/N NE, no?

I know nothing about birds-I honestly think I can only identify Cardinals, Blue Jays and Robins..ha.   There were 2 on my feeder for most of yesterday that I had to look up online.  I guess it was 2 male rose breasted grosbeaks--cool looking bird.

[dendrite]

2 minutes ago, backedgeapproaching said:

I know nothing about birds-I honestly think I can only identify Cardinals, Blue Jays and Robins..ha.   There were 2 on my feeder for most of yesterday that I had to look up online.  I guess it was 2 male rose breasted grosbeaks--cool looking bird.

Their coloring has quite a stark difference between the males and females. The indigo buntings are fairly extreme too.

[ORH_wxman]

50 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

The pics up close looked like a little of both. Graupel is kind of heavily rimed flakes...those almost looked like chunks of ice. I wanted to side with graupel completely...but it did look hail-like.

Graupel can start to look more hail-like if there's some good riming....but given how opaque/white it looks and also the classic graupel soundings, I would def point to that as the primary ptype. There could be a few small pure hailstones mixed in if there were decent updrafts in a little convective shower.

[ORH_wxman]

Self-destructing sun FTL today...got pretty cloudy and temp ticked back a couple degrees.

[CoastalWx]

17 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

Graupel can start to look more hail-like if there's some good riming....but given how opaque/white it looks and also the classic graupel soundings, I would def point to that as the primary ptype. There could be a few small pure hailstones mixed in if there were decent updrafts in a little convective shower.

Yeah it did coincide with a spike in reflectivity but near nonetheless. Today pretty  much sucks temp has been dropping. 

[Sugarloaf1989]

BDL at -1.7F for the month so far, seasons in seasons.

[OceanStWx]

On 5/5/2017 at 3:08 PM, ORH_wxman said:

There's actually a lot of literature on bird migrations being affected by the huge increase in popularity of bird feeders...many birds that were rare in winter are now more common because they have plentiful food sources from feeders. It's an interesting topic regarding our impact on animals outside of just climate change. The moose is another one...we drove the moose pretty much completely out of southern New England over a century ago (and even out of a lot of VT/NH...esp VT) when we had clear-cut much of the forest for farms and fuel...but as the forests grew back in rapidly during the mid and late 20th century, the moose expanded back south. Now they are relatively common in chunks of Massachusetts whereas 30-40 years ago they were not. Our land use was the dominant factor.

I thought the "Cities" episode on the latest Planet Earth was fascinating.

Especially the part about NYC becoming the largest colony of nesting Peregrine Falcons. But when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. The buildings mimic the cliffs they like to nest on, and there is no shortage of food with the pigeons.

[wxeyeNH]

11 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

I thought the "Cities" episode on the latest Planet Earth was fascinating.

Especially the part about NYC becoming the largest colony of nesting Peregrine Falcons. But when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. The buildings mimic the cliffs they like to nest on, and there is no shortage of food with the pigeons.

Ocean,  from what I understand Moose are really dying off again because of exploding tick populations perhaps with warmer winters? Here is one on my road.  He looked really sick and the poor thing had thousands of ticks stuck on him.  Take a look at is rear end.  I guess mortality rates are way up...

 

[OceanStWx]

5 minutes ago, wxeyeNH said:

Ocean,  from what I understand Moose are really dying off again because of exploding tick populations perhaps with warmer winters? Here is one on my road.  He looked really sick and the poor thing had thousands of ticks stuck on him.  Take a look at is rear end.  I guess mortality rates are way up...

I can't imagine the warmer winters are helping keep the tick population down, that's for sure. 

I wonder too how a winter like this past one works as far as the bugs go. We had some below normal months, but mainly driven by daytime temps. At night it stayed near normal, so we didn't have any of the real frigid readings that could kill some of the critters.

[ORH_wxman]

2 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

I thought the "Cities" episode on the latest Planet Earth was fascinating.

Especially the part about NYC becoming the largest colony of nesting Peregrine Falcons. But when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. The buildings mimic the cliffs they like to nest on, and there is no shortage of food with the pigeons.

Same thing has been seen to a lesser extent in red tailed hawks...nesting on building ledges and other manmade structures more commonly now than years ago.

[mreaves]

 

11 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

I can't imagine the warmer winters are helping keep the tick population down, that's for sure. 

I wonder too how a winter like this past one works as far as the bugs go. We had some below normal months, but mainly driven by daytime temps. At night it stayed near normal, so we didn't have any of the real frigid readings that could kill some of the critters.

Apparently the drought last year helped with the tick issue.  https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2017/04/11/drought-was-tough-on-farmers-but-good-for-moose

[OceanStWx]

Based on what I saw yesterday and the soundings today, a mix of the two is not out of the question.

OKX had a relatively moist layer in the DGZ, so there could have been flakes in the cloud, but there was also some instability in the the layer below it for hail.

As I "warmed" up on the range yesterday, I certainly had some hail in there as a heavy shower came through.

[Sugarloaf1989]

Impressive cold for May, the summit of Mount Snow is holding on to the 3/4" of snow from yesterday and it's currently 25F.

[tamarack]

6 hours ago, Ginx snewx said:

Never ever plant Tomatoes until after the last full moon in May.  Swamp Yankee folk lore that has never failed me.

The way I heard it was not to plant within a week either side of the full moon. 

Given my penchant for numbers fun, I've tracked first and last frosts with full moons for 1973 on.  Since 15 days (full + 7 each side) is 50.8% of the lunar cycle, that's the no-skill mark.  My 13 years in Bangor (3) and Ft. Kent had those frosts come during that window 77% of the time, 92% for late spring's final.  Then 12 years in Gardiner hit only 29% of the time, and 19 years in the foothills 47%.  The total for all 4 locations is 45 of 88, or 51.1%, which is as close to the no-skill mark as possible given the years of record.

[CoastalWx]

37 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

Based on what I saw yesterday and the soundings today, a mix of the two is not out of the question.

OKX had a relatively moist layer in the DGZ, so there could have been flakes in the cloud, but there was also some instability in the the layer below it for hail.

As I "warmed" up on the range yesterday, I certainly had some hail in there as a heavy shower came through.

That's what I figure. Might be both. Either way, cool!

[OceanStWx]

10 minutes ago, CoastalWx said:

That's what I figure. Might be both. Either way, cool!

The golf was better in November than it has been so far in May.

[tamarack]

5 hours ago, CoastalWx said:

Tamarack, any idea what gets rid of Hemlock scale? I had my trees sprayed for caterpillars and the arborist told me my Canadian Hemlock has scale. It's not bad, but I don't want the tree damaged too much either.

What's copy/pasted below is from the Maine Forest Service insect/disease bulletin from last July, and I'm assuming the first bug is what's on your trees.  Looks like the scale insect is fairly new to Maine, while the adelgid has been rampant in SNE and common in coastal Maine west of Penobscot Bay.  From this report and several others I read, it would seem that pruning affected branches is the only control.  Scale insects are well-armored against most pesticides.  Possibly the arborist knows of some chemical or biological method.

 

Elongate Hemlock Scale (Fiorinia externa) – Elongate hemlock scale (EHS) has recently been discovered on Frye Island.  Until now, EHS was known to be established in native forest trees only in one area of southern Kittery.  All other infested trees we have found in the state had been brought into the state in an infested condition.  We have treated these trees aggressively to try to prevent or slow spread from that tree into the surrounding forest.  Elongate hemlock scale on hemlock (photo: Maine Department of Agriculture Conservation & Forestry) Although we have so far only found EHS in one location on the island, it has quite possibly become established in other areas, since we found it on a tree which would have brushed against Fire and Rescue trucks every time they went out on a call.  This would have transported crawlers every time the trucks went out.  We will continue to look for EHS on the island.  The town of Frye Island has been very proactive in dealing with this insect and trying to contain it.  They pruned back the affected tree immediately to stop further spread and are working with the Maine Forest Service to educate the people of the town and to reduce further spread. Remember that at this time of year, tiny crawlers are present, and it is very easy to transport EHS on clothing, machinery and vehicles.

Hemlock Woolly Adelgid (Adelges tsugae) – Hemlock woolly adelgid (HWA) was recently found on Frye Island in Cumberland County, thanks to a tip from a local arborist.  HWA has probably been present on the north end of the island for several years where some hemlock trees are in very bad shape.  Trees in the southern part of the island are still generally healthy and many do not have detectable levels of HWA.  The town has been very proactive about dealing with HWA and within hours of learning about it had already started pruning hemlock trees back from parking areas around the public works depot, brush dump, and other high-risk areas.  They have been working with the MFS to educate their citizens and are doing all they can to slow down the spread of this insect.  HWA has also been found in the adjacent town of Raymond.  We will continue to survey for HWA in the towns of this area. Photo: Hemlock woolly adelgid covered in ‘wool’ and juveniles to the left (Photo: USFS) If you are harvesting hemlock you are encouraged to examine branches of felled trees for signs of HWA and elongate hemlock scale (EHS).  They are both more readily detectable from canopy samples than from the ground.  If you have any doubt whether what you are looking at is HWA (or EHS), bag a sample and put it in the mail to the lab.  Often all that is required to ship it is a standard-sized envelope and a single stamp. We are nearing the time when most crawlers will be settled on the new growth of hemlock.  August first is when we generally think of as being low risk of spreading HWA on anything but rooted trees.  Given the nature of insects, the actual date varies from year to year.  August through February is the best time to work in hemlocks from the standpoint of minimizing the risk of introducing or spreading HWA.

[DomNH]

10 minutes ago, OceanStWx said:

The golf was better in November than it has been so far in May.

I'm hoping to get out really early Saturday before it rains. As much as I'd like it to be warm and sunny, cold and cloudy definitely keeps the courses on the empty side which is nice.