Author Archives: George Fergusson

Total Phosphorus In Clary Lake

[November 2023] I’ve been working on this article about Total Phosphorus levels in Clary Lake for some time, another in our continuing education series, based on the premise that informed people make better Lake Stewards! The better we all understand lake science the better able we will be to protect and preserve our cherished natural resource. This article on Phosphorus in Clary Lake will be posted under Programs.

Total Phosphorus In Clary Lake

Phosphorus (P) is an element on the Periodic chart and it exists in nature in rocks and soil in various forms. P is crucial to all life forms and in small amounts it is a good thing, but as you’ve all learned by now, too much P can cause excessive algae growth resulting in harmful algal blooms. Consequently, an important part of our Water Quality Monitoring program is collecting data on the Total Phosphorus (TP) load in Clary Lake, and studying how it varies over time (TP is a measure of ALL the phosphorus found in a sample whether it is dissolved or in particulate form). We take 3 water samples for TP testing every season, and our 3rd and final TP test result for 2023 is back so this seems like good time to dig into this important topic. On September 22nd we took a 7 meter core water sample; it came back showing 0.017 mg/L of TP. I was actually expecting a higher figure in the mid to upper 20s and I’m glad I was wrong, but clearly it was high enough to fuel a moderate month-long algal bloom this fall with sightings of dead green algae collecting along the shore as early as late September and as recently as the end of October. The blessing if there is one is that it didn’t happen during the summer! Last year we had generally higher TP readings and a much more severe algal bloom that started around September 1st and didn’t burn itself out until late November. Other factors do contribute to produce algal blooms, but the presence of Phosphorus (P) in our lake is the single biggest cause. When we say algal blooms, we’re mainly talking about excessive growth of blue-green algae, more commonly known as Cyanobacteria. We’ll cover Cyanobacteria in depth at another time. Continue reading →

Live Streaming Cameras All Working Again

Live Stream Clary_cam3

A couple of our webcams were not accepting connections for live streaming for a while, but all 3 are working just fine now. Wondering what the conditions are on the lake right now? Take a look! When live streaming a camera, you can zoom in, go full screen, or take a picture and save it to your phone or computer. The picture above was taken while live streaming Clary_cam3. The webcam pictures update on the site every 20 minutes, but pictures are actually uploaded to the server every 4 minutes and they’re kept available for 3 days. You’ll find links to the archives on the Webcams page and on the individual camera pages.

Cobbossee Lake sees worst algae bloom in a decade

We had our “Worst ever” bloom last fall.

From CentralMaine.com: Cobbossee Lake recently experienced its worst algae bloom since 2013, and experts are attributing it to this summer’s heavy rainfall.

Read the article:

Cobbossee Lake sees worst algae bloom in a decade

Happy Sunrise

I posted this on Facebook and Instagram the other day with the caption “The first snow of the season is expected today. Y’all be careful out there!” and it received so much attention I decided to post it here too 🙂

October 2023 Water Level Chart Archived

I have archived the October 2023 water level chart (above, and at left). Rainfall for the month once again exceeded normal (a common refrain this year!) keeping the lake level higher than intended, at one point coming within almost an inch of the HWM with water flowing over the dam- unusual in October. By the end of the month however the lake was back down to 3/4 of a foot below the HWM which is about normal for this date. All told we received 5.36 inches of rain (normal is 4.45 inches) bringing us to 49.6 inches for the year, fully 13.6 inches above normal! Even if rainfall remains normal or below normal for the rest of the year, 2023 will still go down in the record book as an exceedingly wet year. We’ve seen greater-than-average rainfall in 7 of the first 10 months of 2023, and normally the wettest month of the year, November, is about to start. Continue reading →

Gallery Confusion

Last week I created a “Winter 2024” photo gallery and started adding pictures to it, but I’ve thought better of it. I mean winter’s coming, but it ain’t here yet so I’ve renamed the gallery “Fall 2023.” We don’t have a Fall gallery every year but this year we do. I’ll add a “Winter 2024” when the lake freezes over. Until then. it’s still fall.

In the process of shuffling files around I managed to lose the captions from the photographs. I’ll add them when I have a little spare time. The picture at left was taken at the dam, it shows dead blue-green algae flowing over the weir and out of the lake. Good riddance.

2024 Clary Watershed Survey Is Underway!

It’s official! We will be conducting a Watershed Survey this coming year, having recently received word that the Department of Environmental Protection has reserved a place for the Clary Lake Association in their 2024 Watershed Survey Program. DEP has staff and resources to handle 4 surveys per year and we were 5th on the list until someone ahead of us dropped out of the running, allowing us to move up one. We are thrilled to be moving forward with this most important project. This is not our first watershed survey, the picture at left is the actual Clary Lake watershed map developed for the 2001 watershed survey. The watershed map hasn’t changed but the 2001 survey was conducted 22 years ago and our watershed plan is outdated and obsolete, so practically speaking, the 2024 survey will be a new survey rather than simply an update of the old one. Continue reading →

Fall 2023 Clary Lake Algal Bloom

While it doesn’t appear quite as severe as last fall (at least not yet), this fall’s cyanobacteria algal bloom is gathering steam. This is not wholly unexpected: our last lake transparency reading was only 2.7 meters (8.8 feet) and there was quite a bit of green algae in suspension (see 2023 Water Quality Monitoring Season Comes to a Close) so I’m not really surprised to see this. The picture at left was sent to me yesterday afternoon by Danny Bell. Quite a shot! Apparently the aquatic growth helped keep the algae from drifting off. I went down to my shoreline and found only a thin greenish sheen of algae on the surface- nothing to compare with what Danny was seeing. The blue-green bacteria dies and floats to the surface where it’s moved around by wind and currents and in some places you’ll see quite a bit of green and in others much less or even none. Last year the bloom continued into early December. Hopefully this one will burn itself out soon. I will be sending a sample into DEP for testing.

This picture was sent to my wife this morning by Fran Marsh who was understandably concerned.

Please send me your observations and pictures!

2023 Water Quality Monitoring Season Comes to a Close

On Friday afternoon, October 13th, Kelsie French and I wrapped up another season of water quality monitoring on Clary Lake. Started by my father Stuart Fergusson and David Hodsdon back in 1975, this marks the 48th year quality data data has been collected Clary Lake one of the longest monitored lakes in Maine. It’s not summer anymore and the last day on the lake is typically cold, raw, and windy. This one was no exception as the above picture of Kelsie French (getting an air temperature reading) suggests! The weather wasn’t near as bad as we’ve experienced before, not by a long shot. We do prefer days more like the picture at left, taken back in August.

We were a little late getting started this spring thanks to a bad cable on our YSI Pro 20 Dissolved Oxygen meter which we purchased new in 2013. The new cable cost $390 and didn’t arrive until early June. Consequently, our first data collection session on the lake wasn’t until June 11th. We usually like to start in late April or early May.

It isn’t simply cold weather that brings our water quality monitoring season to a close, it’s the fact the lake has “turned over” meaning the lake water is now thoroughly mixed from top to bottom. The lake basically goes into “rest” mode for the winter and most biologic activity winds down and becomes dormant for the winter. Soon the lake will freeze over (to learn more about that process, see this page on Ice Berms & Pressure Ridges). During Friday’s data collection session we observed surface dissolved oxygen and temperature readings of 8.5 mg/liter and 16.7°C (62°F) and near the bottom at 8 meters it was little different (8.4 mg/liter of dissolved oxygen and a temperature of 16.5° C). Once turnover happens in the fall, there is little reason to continue with water quality monitoring. The season is over. We’re still waiting on the results of our last Total Phosphorus test sample taken on September 22nd. I’ll post them on the Clary Lake Water Quality Monitoring data page when it arrives; I expect it will be higher than normal due to the fall turnover.

Transparency was the lowest we’ve seen it this year at only 2.70 meters (8.85 feet) with light obscuring particles of green algae quite evident in the water column. This was not surprising considering the fall turnover and the minor cyanobacteria bloom we’ve seen this fall. Compared to last year, what we’ve seen this fall is minor in deed.

While we stop measuring transparency and dissolved oxygen in the fall and winter, I will continue to monitor lake conductivity (chart at left) throughout the year. Conductivity is a reasonable proxy for lake productivity and as winter sets in, I expect conductivity will drop. As you can see on the chart at left, conductivity of water collected at the outlet (the blue line) peaked in mid-March with snowmelt runoff which undoubtedly included road salt, then dropped way down with the influx of heavy rainfall around the 1st of May. Since then it’s been gradually climbing indicating increasing lake productivity. Unlike in MY case, productivity in a lake environment is a bad thing! Interestingly, conductivity of a core sample of lake water has remained relatively stable throughout the year. The implication of this is that runoff entering the lake (and there was a lot of runoff…) doesn’t mix much with the full volume of water in the lake. This is not surprising when you think about it: the temperature stratification of the lake so evident in the summer clearly isn’t disrupted by rainfall and runoff as anyone who has gone swimming this summer is well aware. Mixing only occurs in early fall when the surface temp starts to drop. This mixing is evident by the relatively sharp rise in conductivity starting in early September.

September 2023 Water Level Chart Archived

September 2023

I have archived the September 2023 water level chart (above, and at left). The rain we’ve come to expect this Summer just didn’t materialize last month with only 2.80 inches of rain falling (73% of normal) or a full inch less than the 3.84 inches we would normally receive in September. An obvious impact has been the gradual drop in water level. That said, who didn’t like the extended stretch of warm dry weather in September? Of the first 9 months of 2023, only 3 months had less than the normal amount of precipitation: September (73% of normal), March (67% or normal) and February (52% of normal). The month with the highest precipitation was July, with 8.2 inches (232% of normal) followed closely by January with 7.19 inches (225% of normal). Despite shortfalls in those three months, at the end of September we were still 12.65″ ahead of normal. To better grasp how big a differential that is consider that our average annual rainfall is 44.06 inches, and we’re already there- we’ve already received more than that. Even if we were to receive NO MORE rain or snow for the REST OF THE YEAR, we’d still end up a hair above normal annual rainfall. That is how far above normal precipitation we are this year. The overall precipitation statistics for 2023 are impressive. You’ll find all kinds of data and charts on the Precipitation sheet of our Clary Lake Dam Operation Log. Continue reading →

Blue-Green Algae Finally Makes an Appearance

The lake has gone through its Fall Turnover meaning the temperature stratification that was a summertime feature of the lake has broken down and the lake water has mixed pretty much from top to bottom. The high winds from the remnants of Hurricane Lee last a week ago Saturday certainly helped with the mixing! Kelsie French and I were out doing our biweekly water quality monitoring last Friday and the water temperature at the surface (21.5°C) was only 2.5°C warmer than the water 8m (26ft) down. Two weeks ago the temperature difference from top to bottom was 7.8°C.

That turnover resulted in Phosphorus-rich water at the bottom of the lake mixing with the upper sunlit layers, giving a shot of nutrients to the cyanobacteria living there. A week later, they’re beginning to die off and float to the surface resulting in that telltale green scum on the water surface. The picture at left was sent to me by Jack Holland. Yesterday morning the green stuff was fairly evident over much of the lake surface (featured image, above), thanks to the lack of wind. It quickly dissipated when the wind picked up.

While no algae bloom is a good thing, as blooms go this one is pretty mild and it was expected. Hopefully it won’t get much worse. Last fall you may recall we experienced a much worse bloom, way more intense and widespread that went on for 3 months, extending all the way through November. It is likely all the rain we had this summer and the resulting flushing action that kept our water quality so high for so long.

[UPDATED] Free For The Taking

This dock has found a new home.

Cheryl Willis is getting rid of her dock and a couple of ramps, free for the taking (pictured at left). The dock used to belong to Tim & Brenda Robbins, she bought their place about a year ago. For those of you who don’t know where that is, it’s two places north of the State boat launch down at the east end of the lake. If you want the dock, go get it!

Island On The Move

The little island which has been floating around Clary Lake since it broke loose from the floating bog last spring has taken up residence on the south shore. It has been sitting off the Wilson camp at the end of Duncan Road for the last couple of months, then a couple of days ago it apparently floated (or was moved?) from off the Wilson camp shoreline to a point just west of Young’s Point. From there, high winds associated with Hurricane Lee took over. The picture above, taken from Steve & Anne Giampetruzzi’s camp yesterday afternoon, shows it on the move, driven by high winds, and headed for the south shore. The picture at left, taken late yesterday afternoon shows it at it’s new home over on the south side of the lake just east of the opening in the Fergusson field where people go swimming. It’s firmly aground now in about 4 feet of water. The lake is currently down 1/2 a foot; perhaps when the lake level rises again it will float free and continue it’s exploration of Clary Lake. Last spring the loons were quite interested in it as a potential nest site and at one point we hoped to haul it over to the loon’s traditional nesting place and anchor it, over on the north shore. Getting it back over there now would not be easy.

New boater safety and education requirement effective January 1, 2024

This January, Maine will join 44 other states in requiring some level of boater education for those operating a boat on Maine’s waters. The boater education law was recently passed by the legislature, and goes into effect in 2024.

Beginning January 1, 2024, a person born on or after January 1, 1999, may not operate a motorboat of twenty-five (25) horsepower or greater for recreational boating purposes on inland waters of this State or territorial waters, unless that person is 12 years of age or older and has completed a boater safety and education course. There are a few exemptions, such as for registered Maine guides (hunting, fishing, and recreational guides only), the commercial fishing industry, daily boat renters, and merchant mariners.

The course teaches participants how to safely operate and maintain a boat, Maine boating laws, how to prepare for boating emergencies, environmental concerns including how to prevent the spread of aquatic invasive species, and more. The course may be taken in-person or online.

Purple Loosestrife Eradication Project Update

There are a lot of things we don’t want growing in and around Clary Lake, and Purple Loosestrife is on that list. So far we’ve managed to keep on top of it but a small patch in a blueberry field adjacent to Clary Lake managed to get established and is going to take some effort to get rid of. Early last week Malcolm burson (pictured at left) attempted to dig them up by the roots but that proved way to difficult. Alan Clark stepped in and cut the plants down and bagged them up and tossed them onto my burn pile. This will at least keep them from going to seed and making the infestation worse. Next year we’ll round up a team of young vigorous helpers, arm them with shovels and spading forks, and dig them out of the ground properly.

Here are a few more pictures:

[Show slideshow]

August 2023 Water Level Chart Archived

August 2023

I have archived the August 2023 water level chart (above, and at left). The rain we’ve come to expect this summer did not disappoint! We received a total of 6.79 inches in a month when normal is more like 3.33 inches. For the month of August we’re at 204% of normal; we recorded some amount of rain on 18 of the 31 days of the month. All this rain puts us at 41.44 inches for the year, fully 13.69 inches more than normal for this date. We normally receive around 44 inches of rain in a whole year. Quite impressive! Not surprisingly, the lake level bebopped along merrily in a narrow range between the top of the dam and the High Water Mark. The average water level for the month was -0.17 feet below the HWM; it briefly dropped below the top of the dam for 5 days and rose above the HWM for a couple. For most of the month we kept the gate open half a foot to keep the lake from rising too high. We’ve never had that concern in August! Continue reading →

2023 Annual Meeting Reminder!

The 2023 Clary Lake Association Annual Meeting is being held this coming Saturday, September 2nd at 2:00 PM at the Clary Lake dam. That’s less than 1 week away! As in past years, we will setup some awning tents to provide shade and seating will be provided as well but as usual, it never hurts to bring a folding chair or two if you have them. At this time while it’s still a ways off, the weather forecast for next weekend is looking good. That said, the rain date will be the next day, Sunday September 3rd, same time, same place. We will have our traditional potluck supper after the Meeting so bring your favorite salad, entree, casserole, side dish, or what have you and of course, bring an appetite! Since previous pot luck suppers have been heavy on the salads, this year (like last year) we’re going to set up a grill and turn out some hot dogs, hamburgers, and veggie burgers too. Continue reading →

Annual Meeting Ahead!

Purple Loosestrife Eradication Project Update

Have you seen this plant growing around Clary Lake? Purple Loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) is a common invasive plant in Maine. The plant propagates by seed and invades many types of wetlands where it crowds out native plants and degrades wetland habitat. We certainly don’t want it getting a foothold around Clary Lake! For the past 5-6 years we’ve been removing purple loosestrife plants but in many cases, enough root remains for the plants to regrow so it’s an ongoing battle to stop this plant from going crazy. It’s blooming NOW. If you see this plant growing in or around Clary Lake, send and email with picture and description of the location to ipp@clarylake.org. You’ll find a map showing where we’ve found the plant growing on our Purple Loosestrife Eradication Project page.