The picture above shows Steve Cowles opening the gate in the Clary Lake dam in anticipation of a lot of rain: we’re in for a big storm later tonight and on through tomorrow with heavy rain and high winds. A few days ago it looked like we’d only be grazed by it but as it got closer, it got worse. Right now the prediction is for 50+ mile per hour winds and between 3 and 5 inches of rain. The worst wind is expected downeast. Flood warnings have been issued State-wide through Tuesday. Even with the gate and weir wide open (picture at left) and with the lake down over a foot, overtopping of the dam is likely. With partially frozen and totally saturated ground, runoff is expected to be substantial and because the wind is from the South, power outages are expected. That is not a wind direction trees in Maine are used to it.

On an unrelated note, those of you who receive email notices of new posts on the website received an email earlier today of “new” post which was actually a copy of an old post. What’s more, it was generated from a staging site that I set up so I can try out new stuff and test plugins without breaking the live site and subjecting everyone to my antics. It didn’t occur to me that duplicating a post on the staging site would generate an email notice in the real world, but it did. Hehehe…