Well at least I sure hope they’re resolved! I’ve installed a new mesh wireless router system, a Netgear Orbi, and I have put Cams 1 & 3 back where they belong, and everything seems to be working fine. I now have, for the first time, excellent Wi-Fi coverage down on my dock which means the webcams which are located even closer to the house have significantly more reliable wireless connections too. I think the problems we’ve been having with Cams 1 & 3 have been due to barely sufficient (and occasionally insufficient) wireless connections. They’ve been operating just fine for the last 3 days sitting in a corner of my office right next to the router. Continue reading →

We’ve been having some issues with a couple of our Clary_cam cameras malfunctioning for no good reason. Basically, Cam1 or Cam3 (but not Cam2) will decide to stop uploading pictures to the website and not allow wireless connections. I don’t know what is causing the problem, and I can’t seem to recreate or cause the problem. I also don’t know why Cam2 is not having the problem! Cams 1 and 3 are located on my network, at my house. Cam2 is located on another network further down the lake. Clearly something is affecting the cameras at my home, on my network, and not Cam2. Most recently, Clary_cam3 (which is a brand new camera) decided to stop working. This morning I brought it into my house to run where I can keep an eye on it for a few days. Enjoy the unchanging picture of a couple of windowsill plants.

Stay tuned. Hopefully I can figure out what’s going on and make it stop.

[UPDATE] I think it’s my router.

Usually the header image/banner on the website rotates randomly. I’ve decided to highlight specific banner images for a while. I’ll pick one and leave it up for a few days. Today’s banner is from a photograph Steve Giampetruzzi sent me, it was one of those late afternoon storm fronts moving in from the southwest. Ominous. This banner has been on the site for a while but I’d like to give it a little more attention. Here it is again:

If you’d like to see your photograph turned into a banner on the website, send it to me! It needs to be a picture of or taken on or near Clary Lake. Sunrises and sunsets are obvious subjects but I’ll consider anything. Use your imagination!

UPDATE: This canoe has returned home. It belongs to Gareth & Bevery Bowen.

David Marsh sent me this picture of a green Old Town canoe that drifted in under his dock overnight. I asked him to tie it up and I’d see if I could locate the owner. David and Fran Marsh own the former Art Enos property on Sennett Road. I thought it might be the same green canoe that got loose last week and ended up down by the boat launch, but no. This is a different green canoe. What is it about green canoes and do they want to float free?

If this is your canoe, come get it or you know who it belongs to, let the rightful owner know! Contact me for directions or if you have questions.

Usually the header image/banner on the website rotates randomly. I’ve decided to highlight specific banner images for a while. I’ll pick one and leave it up for a few days. Today’s banner is from a panorama photograph Dan Burns made while doing CBI duty at the State boat launch last weekend. He sent it to me and I quickly saw it’s potential as a site banner. Here it is again:

If you’d like to see your photograph turned into a banner on the website, send it to me! It needs to be a picture of or taken on or near Clary Lake. Sunrises and sunsets are obvious subjects but I’ll consider anything. Use your imagination!

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to any of you that Central and Southern Maine are experiencing drought conditions. According to data released a few days ago, we’re now in Moderate Drought. Rainfall in May and June was substantially below normal, and so far July is following suit. These dry conditions make it hard to maintain the lake level. Minor leaking results in some water loss of course, but by far evaporation is taking the biggest bite out of Clary Lake’s water level. There’s not much we can do about it except hope for rain. On a bright note, Clary Lake water quality tends to benefit from dry conditions due to the lack of runoff. Runoff from rainfall is the primary cause of soil erosion and sedimentation in the Clary Lake watershed and is the primary source of unwanted Phosphorus.

Clary Cams 1 & 3 Are Temporarily Off Line 🙁 My router is old and a bit flakey so earlier this week I bought and installed a new Asus WiFi6 router. What should have been a drop-in replacement turned out to take the better part of an afternoon to install and reconfigure the two Clary Cams 1 & 3 that live on my network (Clary Cam 2 lives on Dave Hodsdon’s network). They require static IP addresses and it turns out the new router just wasn’t happy with that arrangement, it kept giving the cameras new addresses, preventing remote access. It also wasn’t happy doing some of the other things I require of it so I returned the piece of junk to BestBuy today and picked up another Linksys (my preferred brand). Now I have to re-install and re-reconfigure Clary Cams 1 & 3 again. It shouldn’t take too long, it always goes faster the second time you have to do something 🙂

June 2022

I have archived the June 2022 Water Level Chart (at left). The lake level in June looks a lot like the lake level in May only about 3″ lower than in the previous month. We did receive a more rain in June than we did in May, but most of it fell in the first half of the month which was enough to largely offset the water loss leading to more or less stable water level, up until the 17th of June. Rainfall for the rest of the month was almost nonexistent and by month’s end the lake had fallen a quarter of a foot, ending the month about 3 inches lower than it started. The 3.11 inches or rain we did receive fell about 0.6 inches short of the June monthly average of 3.71 inches. Because we received so much “extra” rain in the first 4 months of 2022, we’re still 0.8 inches above normal for this date. However, as I’ve explained before, simply looking at total precipitation gives you an unrealistic picture of actual ground water conditions and like last month, almost the entire coast of Maine (including Clary Lake) is considered to be “Abnormally Dry” by the USDA Drought Monitor program. Continue reading →

The loons are finally nesting again on Clary Lake for the first time since June 2019. They didn’t use the floating nest we launched this spring, but they are nesting nearby in the same cove where the floating nest is located, over on the north shore of the lake. Mary Gingrow-Shaw has been monitoring the floating loon nest and late last week noticed nest building behavior. She finally spotted a loon sitting on the nest yesterday and today she kayaked over snapped the photograph at left. She didn’t want to get too close and all she had was a cell phone. I’ll head over later with my camera and telephoto lens and try to get some better pictures.

There are very likely already eggs in the nest. We can expect the eggs to hatch in 26 to 30 days. Keep your fingers crossed!

PLEASE give the area a WIDE BERTH!