New2Maine.com

The calendar says it has official been spring (a.k.a. “mud season” up here) for a full week now. The view from my window begs to differ. The temperature broke the 50°F mark for the first time in weeks on Wednesday, and yesterday was in the high 40s. This morning, however, we awoke to a quarter inch of snow, and it hasn’t stopped yet. According to WGME 13:

Don’t put away those shovels and snow tires. A spring storm is bringing yet another round of snow to much of Maine. Meteorologist Sarah Long says a storm that moved into the region in the early morning hours will stick around most of Friday.

By the time snow tapers off this afternoon, 4 to 8 inches is predicted for York and Cumberland counties. 3 to 6 inches are expected in portions of central and western Maine, with lesser amounts the farther north you go.

That means that Portland will likely top the 100-inch mark for the winter. So far, it’s gotten 99.4 inches.

100″!?!? That’s quite a winter!

The Sea Dogs are set to begin practice up here on Tuesday or Wednesday of next week and just recently posted on their website that they’d finally gotten Hadlock Field clear of snow. So much for that! I just hope this is the last of it so their April 11 home opener goes as planned. I’ll be in Kentucky that evening for work, but those of you with tickets better plan on bringing a hat and mittens to the ballpark. Ahhh, winter in northern New England!

CNN.com just featured an abridged video from the following local news story: WCSH6.com – Mainers Dig Out After Another Storm Unfortunately, WCSH doesn’t appear to publish embed information for their videos, so I couldn’t include the video directly on here, but the following picture should help give you an idea of what it’s like outside:

According to the report in the story linked above, Portland is up to just a hair shy of 8′ for the season, and as a southern coastal city, we don’t have it nearly as bad as others in the state. I’m thankful I don’t live out in Cornish:

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Ten-plus foot snow banks is not a happy thought. I was having trouble tossing the snow over the six footer in front of our house this weekend. Spring is officially less than three weeks away—it can’t come fast enough as far as I’m concerned.

Portland received another 7-8″ of snow yesterday, putting us close to the 7′ mark for the season. That was not, however, the big weather story of the day. Beginning in the late morning, the temperatures rose close to 40° and the precipitation turned to rain. Lots of rain. According to WGME, 2.54″ to be exact, enough to break a record set in 1900! This led to some absolutely miserable shoveling yesterday afternoon as I tried to make sure that the berms left by the snow plows did not become permanent mountains of ice overnight. I gave up after moving some 80 cubic feet of water-laden slushy material that weighed enough to bow the reinforced handle on my shovel. All I can say this morning is “oh, my aching back!”

Thanks to reader SteveG for pointing out that this site was down for almost a day. I guess that’s what I get for only checking the admin portion of the site (which was still running fine). The problem turned out to be a memory usage error in the little widget I use to display the current weather conditions in Portland. I’ve disabled it until I have time to figure out exactly what was causing the issue, and that seems to have restored the rest of the site.

Speaking of the weather in Portland, it’s been cold lately. Actually, make that Cold, with a capital C. The last several days the temperatures haven’t make it out of the teens. The highest forecast high for the upcoming week is 33°F, or just barely above freezing. The lowest overnight low is forecast at 4°F. I think She better pull out another blanket from the closet. It appears we’re going to need it.

I hate that I feel like all I write about anymore is the weather, but the drastic changes of the last week deserve to be noted. Less than one week ago, I was complaining about how bitterly cold it was up here in Portland. And then, as though Mother Nature herself is one of my (5 or so) readers, it started warming up. And then it kept warming up. And now it’s freakishly warm for January. We hit 60° F yesterday, and I think today’s high was 54° or 55°. This is January! I wasn’t expecting temperatures like this until April.

I’m not so sure I’ll go as far as to say that this proves global warming, or that humankind is causing it, but it sure does seem to prove that weather patterns are changing. From 3′ of snow in December to 60° F in the first week of 2008 is just not normal. But I sure do enjoy walking the dog when it’s this nice out…