Weekend storm uneventful
for most of Aroostook County
By Natalie Bazinet
Staff Writer
CARIBOU — The record-setting storm that dumped over a foot of snow throughout the southern parts of the state on Saturday night seemed to fade by the time it reached Aroostook County, though it did have enough oomph left to leave a fair amount of the white stuff about the Houlton area.
Orient topped Aroostook County’s snowfall chart with 8 inches, followed by North Amity with 6.5 inches and Houlton with 6 inches. Ashland received 3 inches, Presque Isle had about 2 inches and Caribou was dusted with 1.3 inches of snow — Fort Kent only received an inch of snow by the time the storm finished making its way through The County, and the Allagash received just half of that.
As described by Observing Program Leader at the National Weather Service Office in Caribou Pete Rahe, the snow levels resulting from the storm get progressively deeper heading south of Aroostook. In southern Maine and costal New England, the Oct. 29 storm left over a million without power.
While the county’s been known to receive the brunt of Mother Nature’s wintry wrath, officials with Maine Public Service (MPS) said that they observed no power outages during the storm. According to Virginia Joles, communications director, MPS sent four line workers, one supervisor and two trucks down to Walpole, Mass. to assist with massive power-restoration efforts in that region. Workers are slated to be gone through the end of the week.
While the weekend’s storm was harsh for much of the Northeast, storm totals for Aroostook County weren’t out of the ordinary for late October. To put the totals in context, Houlton’s 6 inches of snow didn’t come close to the snowfall record of that date, set back in 1963 with 13 inches.
As Rahe explained, most all of the storm’s snow has melted away due to ground temperatures at about 40 degrees combined with air temperatures well above freezing.
Even though Aroostook wasn’t buried during the latest weather event, 2011 is still on track as being the county’s most precipitous year ever recorded.
According to Rahe, the all-time record for rainfall in Caribou was set back in 2005 with 54.24 inches. As of Tuesday afternoon, Caribou has received 50.25 inches of rain for the year.
Even October was 3.8 inches of rain above normal in the city.
In order to make climatological history this year, Caribou needs to accumulate just about four inches of precipitation — and snow counts; it looks like Caribou’s 2011 is well on its way to being a record-breaking year.
This year’s weather has generated a lot of interest in atmospheric activity, and the National Weather Service is looking to use that interest to further data sources; there are three programs through NWS that are currently seeking volunteers to help record weather events — the Spotter Program, the Cooperative Observer Program, and CoCoRaHs.
“They’re all volunteer programs, and their intent is to fill in the gaps between our automated stations,” Rahe explained.
Schools, cities or private individuals interested in helping the NWS gather regional data are encouraged to contact Rahe at 492-0182.
