Thursday, January 26, 2006, 9:00 am: Good morning from a cool, crisp and sunny northern Maine. For January it is relatively mild, with an emphasis on relative. Today we have unlimited visibility and 16 degrees Fahrenheit.

Although we did get some snow, the one to two inches predicted for yesterday really didn’t materialize. Our town’s snowplow driver is busy trying to break up the ice buildup where our road meets U. S. Route One.

Last week when I wrote in this blog about driving through a white-out, Hendricus Lulofs of the NWS in Caribou said we had a snow squall, which by his professional definition is “ . . . a very concentrated narrow and heavy patterns of snowfall, contributing greatly to white-outs.” He certainly got all of those points right on the money.

My wife has just left for Presque Isle where she is finishing her training for this year as a volunteer tax preparer for the low-income and elderly, sponsored by the IRS and the AARP. She is dedicated! When she returns we’ll have our afternoon Kaffeeklatsch [coffee, cake and conversation] and muse about the weather, friends and relatives, all of which are beyond our control.

Current values from our Vantage-Pro weather station:

Temperature: 16 degrees (F.)

Barometer: 29.86 and rising rapidly

Humidity: 72%

Winds: NW at 3 mph and variable

Visibility: Unlimited

Precipitation: None

Since Midnight

Low Temperature: 14.4 degrees (F.) at 7:47 am

High wind: N at 16 mph at 3:01 am