The State of Maine has released a new map using the ArcGis mapping platform to show the state of the Browntail Moth infestation in Maine this year. Last year’s outbreak of the pest was the worst every seen in Maine, and it looks like this year will be very bad again. However, it looks to me like some of the areas that were hardest hit last year (including my property!) may experience less of a problem this year. My property on Clary Lake is surrounded by large red oak trees, and last year ALL of them were completely defoliated for the second year in a row. I feared a third year as bad as the previous two would doom many of my trees. I’m happy to report however that this year I’ve only spotted 1 caterpillar on my screen door and no evidence at all of caterpillars eating the emerging oak leaves. My fingers are crossed, it looks like we won’t suffer a repeat of the last two years this summer. Continue reading
Category Archives: News
17 April 2022: The Special Membership Meeting Happened
Happy Easter!
Yesterday’s Special Membership Meeting happened. It was, interestingly, both well attended and poorly attended. I was there along with my wife Margaret, Gareth and Beverly Bowen were there (it was after all at their house) and Board members Steven Cowles, and Mary Gingrow-Shaw attended. Also present were Greg & Karren Briggs (they have recently moved to Hodsdon Lane) and Pam and David Heath (they bought Tim & Brenda Robbin’s place on 215 last year). Also present via were nearly 100 Clary Lake Association members whose votes were to be counted.
Gareth and I perfected a great Zoom setup involving 2 laptops and a large screen TV. However, nobody attended the meeting by Zoom! I was quite surprised! This arrangement will work fine for future *indoor* meetings and may, perhaps with slight modifications, work for outdoor venues as well, assuming we can have internet access. We’ll see.
The purpose of the meeting was to count the returned proxy ballots (along with any votes cast in person) and certify the election results. The ballots, sent out in late January, included the following 3 Articles:
Article 1: To see if the Membership will approve changing the quorum as defined
in our Bylaws in Article 3, Section 6 “Quorum and Attendance” from one-third (1/3)
of the voting members to 15% of the voting members;
Article 2: To see if the Membership will approve changing Article 3, Section 6
“Quorum and Attendance” of our Bylaws from: “Anyone may attend any meeting of
the Members provided that only Members shall have a vote at such meeting.” to
“Anyone may attend any meeting of the Members either in person or virtually (if
it is an available option) provided that only Members shall have a vote at such
meeting;
Article 3: To see if the Membership will approve changing Article 3 Section 3 of our
Bylaws from “The Annual Meeting of the Members of the Corporation shall be held
on the first (1st) Saturday in August or at the call of the President.” to “The Annual
Meeting of the Members of the Corporation shall be held on a Saturday in
August to be announced, or at the call of the President.”
I’m happy to announce that all three Articles passed. I’ve updated the website with the latest Clary Lake Association Bylaws.
Respectfully,
George Fergusson, Secretary
Clary Lake Association
Special Membership Meeting Ahead!
This is a reminder that we have a Special Membership Meeting scheduled for this coming Saturday April 16th at 3:00 PM at the home of Gareth & Beverley Bowen at 739 Gardiner Road, Jefferson Maine.
Proxy ballots were mailed to all CLA members back in late January along with a cover letter and a self addressed stamped envelope to return the completed ballots. The main question on the ballot involved a change to the wording of our bylaws pertaining to the definition of a quorum; currently a quorum is 1/3 of our voting membership, a hard number to muster! We’re looking to change that to 15% of our voting members. The purpose of this meeting is to officially count the proxy ballots that were returned and any raised-hands at the meeting, and announce the results of the vote. Continue reading
29 March 2022: ICE OUT! We have a Winner!
It’s Official: the sheet of ice that extended from shore to shore down by the boat launch yesterday and which blocked access to the lake was ground up by the high wind this morning and driven into the cove at the east end of the lake. I just consulted with David Hodsdon and we agree that the official Ice Out date is today: 29 March 2022.
Vicki Grimaldi with her guess of March 25th was the closest to ice out without going over, making her the Winner of this year’s ice out contest! Congratulations Vicki! She’ll be receiving the framed loon photograph by David Hodsdon (see image below). Vicki bought Dennis Morgan’s place on Hodsdon Lane back in the summer of 2021. For runners up we have Jack Holland with his guess of March 24th, 
winner of the “What do you mean 
it’s not ice out yet?” award, and Dan Burns and Steve Relyea with their March 30th guesses are both winners of the “Missed it by >< that much” award. All 3 runners up will receive a laminated copy of the Clary Lake Depth Map (image at left).
And so concludes our 2022 Ice Out Contest! A month ago I wouldn’t have bet dollars to donuts that the ice would be out before the end of the first week in April, based on how thick the ice was this winter and how cold it’s been this spring, which I suppose just goes to show you what I know. If you’re forgotten your guess, you’ll find it in this post. It’s also unusual for it to take so long (9 days) to go out once open water first showed up on the north shore (like it always does). The reason it took so long I think it because it really wasn’t ready! Usually ice-out occurs much faster. Even more interesting: this year’s ice out date is the same as last year’s ice out date. I didn’t see that coming!
I’d like to thank everyone for playing and encourage you to try again next year. I’ll be picking up the framed loon photograph and delivering it to Vicki later this week. The runners up will get their prizes the next time I see them, which might be the next time they stop by my house if I don’t stop by their house first!
27 March 2022: Still Got Ice!
I went over to the boat launch today and took the picture at left. After consulting with Google Earth, I estimate there are at least 50 acres of ice left down at the east end of the lake, and 3-4 acres of ice left on the south shore in Jefferson. I think the reason the ice is going out so slowly this year is because it really wasn’t ready to melt off; we got some warm weather and a good rain storm a week ago Saturday and some open water appeared on the north shore. Then 2 days of 35+ mph winds knocked a Big Hole in the ice cover, but much of what remained was still quite solid. Unusual conditions this year, for sure.
25 March 2022: Ice Out Progress
I took these photographs late yesterday afternoon. This morning, the remaining ice is on the move with floes lazily drifting around in the morning sun. Here is a link to the full sized panorama from yesterday.
23 March 2022: Ice Out Update: Close but No Cigar!
I have never seen the ice disappear from Clary Lake as fast as it has this year! Last Friday there were people ice fishing. Rain on Saturday and with winds on Monday and Tuesday with gusts of 35-40 mph really hammered the ice into submission. As of this morning, winds have let up considerably but are still blowing 8 mph or so. There is a considerable amount of ice left on the south shore both in Whitefield and Jefferson. We’re not calling ice out yet, but it won’t be long now. Tomorrow we’re expecting rain during the day with moderate winds from the south which change to the east and pick up in intensity come night fall. It’s hard to imagine the remaining ice hanging around to the weekend.
You can keep an eye on things with our Clary_cams (which President Dave Knight insists on calling Spy_cams) and if you haven’t tried yet, livestream them!
21 March 2022: Ice Out Update
Last Friday, only 4 days ago, there were people out on Clary Lake ice fishing. Today there is a sizable portion of open water on the north side of the lake, easily visible in this picture taken this morning. You can just barely make it out on Clary_cam-1 as a thin dark line in the distance. High northwest winds forecast for today will push that open water further towards the south shore. We’re still quite a few days, away from open water.
Here are the 2022 Ice Out Contest guesses. Good Luck Contestants! Continue reading
13 March 2022: Early Spring Dam Management
We’ve begun our Spring management activities with the aim of getting Clary Lake filled up for another boating, fishing, and swimming season, about week earlier than usual because of all the snow and rain we’ve been blessed with this year. Our spring management includes adding stop logs to the weir to start raising the lake level to it’s spring high while opening the gate to increase outflows to maintain minimum flows, and also to keep the lake from rising too quickly. It’s a balancing act made more difficult with having to second guess the weather. Because of drought conditions the previous 3 years, it has been a challenge raising the lake level in the spring while at the same time maintaining outflows. We pretty much have the opposite problem this year! After the first two months of 2022 we’re 2.5 inches of precipitation above normal for this date. The picture shows Steve Cowles on March 9th cranking open the gate the other day, with Dave Knight standing by with the folding ruler. There are 4 threads to the inch on the screw, so opening the gate 12″ means turning the gate wheel 48 turns. That’s a workout. Today, we installed the last two stop logs in the weir. You can track all the action on the 2022 Dam Operation Log.
06 March 2022: Clary Lake Ice Out Contest Closed to New Entries
I have closed the 2022 Clary Lake Ice Out Contest to new entries. 36 people have made their guesses (below). Now, we wait… for ice out. I have no idea what the No U-Turn sign has to do with anything.
Good Luck Contestants!
2022 Ice Out Guestimates
These are the guesses for ice out. The timestamp column will be used to decide on who was first in the event of a tie. Hint: you can sort on any of the columns by clicking on the header:| Timestamp | Your name: | Ice Out Guess: |
|---|---|---|
| 02/27/22 09:43 AM | Sophie Seba | 03/23/22 |
| 02/27/22 10:45 AM | Jack Holland | 03/24/22 |
| 02/27/22 11:01 AM | Vicky Grimaldi | 03/25/22 |
| 02/27/22 11:30 AM | Dan Burns | 03/30/22 |
| 02/28/22 10:13 AM | Steve Relyea | 03/30/22 |
| 02/28/22 08:35 PM | Hillary Relyea | 03/31/22 |
| 02/27/22 01:03 PM | Ronnie Spann | 04/01/22 |
| 02/27/22 03:13 PM | Linda S Gallion | 04/01/22 |
| 02/27/22 02:41 PM | Rob Rowland | 04/02/22 |
| 02/27/22 08:45 PM | Tim chase | 04/02/22 |
| 03/01/22 09:27 AM | Cathy johnson | 04/02/22 |
| 03/04/22 11:51 AM | carolyn curtis | 04/02/22 |
| 02/27/22 05:00 PM | Malcolm Burson | 04/03/22 |
| 02/27/22 09:36 AM | Karen Stutzer | 04/04/22 |
| 02/28/22 05:47 AM | Geoff McCullen | 04/04/22 |
| 02/28/22 08:06 AM | Thurlow Crummett | 04/04/22 |
| 02/27/22 01:41 PM | June m Lordi | 04/05/22 |
| 02/27/22 09:31 AM | Bill Hall | 04/06/22 |
| 03/01/22 09:26 AM | Bambi Jones | 04/06/22 |
| 03/03/22 03:55 PM | Mary Gingrow-Shaw | 04/06/22 |
| 02/27/22 12:23 PM | Gayle Knight | 04/07/22 |
| 02/27/22 06:52 PM | Steve Cowles | 04/08/22 |
| 03/03/22 03:49 PM | Amanda Knight | 04/08/22 |
| 02/27/22 12:19 PM | Kate Seba | 04/09/22 |
| 02/27/22 08:27 PM | Donald Hogg | 04/09/22 |
| 03/01/22 10:32 PM | Ben Gerdts | 04/10/22 |
| 03/02/22 09:12 AM | David Knight | 04/10/22 |
| 03/04/22 10:10 AM | Stephen Viti | 04/11/22 |
| 02/27/22 11:42 AM | Arlene Wing | 04/12/22 |
| 02/27/22 09:54 AM | Beverley Bowen | 04/13/22 |
| 02/28/22 05:24 AM | Cary McCullen | 04/15/22 |
| 02/28/22 05:26 AM | Geoff McCullen | 04/16/22 |
| 02/27/22 09:21 AM | Sara Roy | 04/17/22 |
| 03/03/22 01:11 PM | Gareth Bowen | 04/18/22 |
| 03/01/22 11:23 AM | Cheryl Smith | 04/20/22 |
| 02/27/22 08:16 PM | Thomas vigue | 04/21/22 |
2022 Ice Out Contest Guestimates
Still contemplating your 2022 Ice Out Contest Guestimate? Well, you can agonize over it for only a few more days! I’m planning on closing the contest to new guesses in two days, at the end of the day on Saturday March 5th. Below is the list of ice out guesses received so far, who guessed, and the date guessed sorted by guessed date. Not confusing at all! Here’s a link to the original post with the contest rules and prizes. I’ll keep this page updated. Good Luck!
2022 Ice Out Guestimates
These are the guesses for ice out. The timestamp column will be used to decide on who was first in the event of a tie. Hint: you can sort on any of the columns by clicking on the header:| Timestamp | Your name: | Ice Out Guess: |
|---|---|---|
| 02/27/22 09:43 AM | Sophie Seba | 03/23/22 |
| 02/27/22 10:45 AM | Jack Holland | 03/24/22 |
| 02/27/22 11:01 AM | Vicky Grimaldi | 03/25/22 |
| 02/27/22 11:30 AM | Dan Burns | 03/30/22 |
| 02/28/22 10:13 AM | Steve Relyea | 03/30/22 |
| 02/28/22 08:35 PM | Hillary Relyea | 03/31/22 |
| 02/27/22 01:03 PM | Ronnie Spann | 04/01/22 |
| 02/27/22 03:13 PM | Linda S Gallion | 04/01/22 |
| 02/27/22 02:41 PM | Rob Rowland | 04/02/22 |
| 02/27/22 08:45 PM | Tim chase | 04/02/22 |
| 03/01/22 09:27 AM | Cathy johnson | 04/02/22 |
| 03/04/22 11:51 AM | carolyn curtis | 04/02/22 |
| 02/27/22 05:00 PM | Malcolm Burson | 04/03/22 |
| 02/27/22 09:36 AM | Karen Stutzer | 04/04/22 |
| 02/28/22 05:47 AM | Geoff McCullen | 04/04/22 |
| 02/28/22 08:06 AM | Thurlow Crummett | 04/04/22 |
| 02/27/22 01:41 PM | June m Lordi | 04/05/22 |
| 02/27/22 09:31 AM | Bill Hall | 04/06/22 |
| 03/01/22 09:26 AM | Bambi Jones | 04/06/22 |
| 03/03/22 03:55 PM | Mary Gingrow-Shaw | 04/06/22 |
| 02/27/22 12:23 PM | Gayle Knight | 04/07/22 |
| 02/27/22 06:52 PM | Steve Cowles | 04/08/22 |
| 03/03/22 03:49 PM | Amanda Knight | 04/08/22 |
| 02/27/22 12:19 PM | Kate Seba | 04/09/22 |
| 02/27/22 08:27 PM | Donald Hogg | 04/09/22 |
| 03/01/22 10:32 PM | Ben Gerdts | 04/10/22 |
| 03/02/22 09:12 AM | David Knight | 04/10/22 |
| 03/04/22 10:10 AM | Stephen Viti | 04/11/22 |
| 02/27/22 11:42 AM | Arlene Wing | 04/12/22 |
| 02/27/22 09:54 AM | Beverley Bowen | 04/13/22 |
| 02/28/22 05:24 AM | Cary McCullen | 04/15/22 |
| 02/28/22 05:26 AM | Geoff McCullen | 04/16/22 |
| 02/27/22 09:21 AM | Sara Roy | 04/17/22 |
| 03/03/22 01:11 PM | Gareth Bowen | 04/18/22 |
| 03/01/22 11:23 AM | Cheryl Smith | 04/20/22 |
| 02/27/22 08:16 PM | Thomas vigue | 04/21/22 |
Bangor Savings: Community Matters More!
Here’s a great opportunity to make a difference in your community: The Bangor Savings Bank Foundation will give more than $155,000 to 45 local nonprofit organizations in Maine and New Hampshire. In celebration of their 15th year of Community Matters More, the one nonprofit that receives the most overall votes will be awarded a $15,000 grant! You can vote for 5 nonprofits:
https://www.bangor.com/community/community-matters-more
Far be it for me to tell you how to vote because there are a number of worthy nonprofit organizations doing good work in this area that could use some financial help including the Clary Lake Association! Other notable local nonprofits doing good work are the Whitefield Library, the Jefferson Area Community Food Pantry, the Whitefield Food Pantry, and the Whitefield Historical Society.
Cast your vote today for your favorite nonprofits!
Maine Lakes’ Wednesday Webinars are back!
I’m looking forward to these webinars!
Maine Lakes Fall 2021 Newsletter Is Out
Maine Lakes (formerly the Maine Lakes Society) has posted their Fall 2021 Newsletter and as usual, they’ve done a fantastic job of highlighting Maine Lakes and the issues they face. As usual, they cover a lot of ground. I found section 3 Recovering Loon Years Lost: Maine’s New Loon Stewardship Project to be a particularly compelling read, seeing as how loons are a prominent aspect of summers on Clary Lake. Our loons haven’t successful raised a family in quite a few years; the last time they actually managed to hatch any chicks was in the summer of 2018 (see: 27 June 2018: Loon Family Pictures) and sadly, both babies unaccountably disappeared by the 4th of July (see: 04 July 2018: Loon Chicks Missing). They nested again in 2019 but failed to hatch any chicks and we have not seen our loons attempting to nest since, a situation which is both highly unusual and quite disturbing.
A preliminary screening has identified 99 Maine lakes to be included in the Loon Stewardship Project. Clary Lake is not on that list, but ultimately, ALL Maine lakes will be considered and we look forward to participating in this program in whatever ways are deemed appropriate. Stay tuned for more about this interesting and important initiative.
The CLA has a history of trying to foster loon nesting on Clary Lake. Back in the spring of 1999, the Clary Lake Association built and launched a floating loon nest. It disappeared after a while and it isn’t clear if the nest was ever actually used by anything besides turtles. The nest, which we thought was lost, turned up again a couple of summers ago (see: 03 June 2020: Floating Loon Nest Found After 21 Years).
There is loads more of interest in Maine Lake’s latest newsletter including an excellent write up about the LakeSmart program, something which should be of interest to all of Clary’s lake shore owners. I hope you take some time to read this newsletter! Here’s a link to the Fall 2021 Newsletter in HTML format:
If you prefer you can view a printable PDF version
The Clary Lake Association has been a supporter of Maine Lakes for a long, long time and continues to offer our financial support to this important organization.
19 November 2021: Live Stream the Clary Cams!
You’ve always been able to live stream the Clary cams IF you were technically savvy enough to install the right plugin in your browser or conversant with a program like VLC. It certainly wasn’t easy and I suspect most people have been content to simply look at the pictures that are updated every 2 minutes rather than deal with trying to get a live feed working. I’ve recently added all 3 Clary Cams to the IP Cam Live website which takes the H.264 compressed video stream from a camera and converts it to MPEG format which most modern browsers can display without special plugins. Yay!!
The pictures that are displayed on the website are beautiful 1920 x 1080 pixel images (like the one above). The live video feed uses a HD stream with a resolution of 720p and a bit rate of 512K. Not the highest resolution and not as nice as the still pictures, but certainly pleasant to look at. One reason for choosing this live stream format is the bandwidth requirement is lower. Two of these cameras (1 & 3) feed through my internet connection and I don’t want it to bog down. You may still see “buffering” message from time to time, depending on how many people are viewing the stream.
You’ll now find “Live stream in your browser” links for each camera on the Webcam page. Here are the links:
Clary_cam1: Live Stream in your browser
Clary_cam2: Live stream in your browser
Clary_cam3: Live stream in your browser
I’m interested in your feedback! Send me an email (or use our Contact Form) and let me know what you think of the streams, and if you’re having any issues.
14 November 2021: Clary_Cam1 Replaced
Clary_Cam1 has been acting up in recent weeks and has been difficult and at times, impossible to connect to though it continued uploading pictures. It finally died quietly without a whimper last night. Fortunately I had a brand new identical spare camera on hand so I was able to replace it today without difficulty. It wasn’t quite a drop in replacement, but almost. I’ve also confirmed that the remote live connect to Cam1 and Cam3 is working, assuming your browser supports/trusts the Foscam plugin. Cam2 resides on a different network so I’ve not been able to tweak the router settings to allow remote connections. C`est la vis. I also haven’t gotten the VLC connections working again and probably won’t.
The Webcam Pages on this site are very popular! In 2020 the page was view 2691 times and so far in 2021 it has been viewed 3431 times. There are better cameras out there with more features that are easier to view live. I’m researching this.
Exploring Lake Phenomena: Langmuir Circulation
From time to time I like to highlight different lake phenomena, and today’s high winds and waves are a great opportunity to discuss Langmuir Circulation. The waves today are really stirring up the water, it’s brown and quite turbid and there are long lines of white froth on the water aligned with the wind direction. I’m sure you’ve seen this phenomena before. You can see those lines of froth in the webcam picture at left. Sitting here in my upstairs home office and looking out the window down at the lake, those lines of white froth are very evident. Continue reading
September 2021 Water Level Chart Archived
I have archived the September 2021 Water Level Chart (at left). September was on track for being an average, ho-hum kind of month with more or less normal rainfall (for a change!) and a stable unchanging water level until the 27th when we received a whopping 4.5 inches of rain in one storm. This sounds like a lot, and it was a lot, but it only brought the lake up 0.89 feet, from -1.02 feet below the HWM to just -0.13 feet below it. While this sounds like a lot, it’s actually a runoff multiplier of only 2.4X and considering how much rain we’ve had this summer, I expected the lake to have come up a lot more. By all rights we should have had water pouring over the full width of the dam but in fact we just had a wee bit dribbling over the top in a few spots. I won’t say I was disappointed, but I was surprised! The old rule of thumb is that an inch of rain should bring the lake up 4″ (a 4X multiplier) and if that rule had held true, the lake would have risen 18 inches instead of only 10 inches. For that matter, we’ve actually seen runoff multipliers considerably larger than 4X in the past. Continue reading
17 August 2021: Milfoil Returns to Cobbossee Lake
Variable Leaf Milfoil, Pleasant Pond, Litchfield Maine.
Eurasian Water-Milfoil was discovered in Cobbossee Lake in 2018 (see our post dated August 8, 2018: “Invasive Milfoil Confirmed in Cobbosseecontee Lake“). The following year Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection treated several areas of the lake with an herbicide in an attempt to kill off the invasive plant. They were optimistic that the treatment would be successful because the infestation was limited (so they thought) to roughly an acre between the north shore and Island Park. Sadly, the following year Milfoil was again discovered in several areas adjacent to the original infestation, which is where this Central Maine Papers newspaper article picks up. Please read it! It paints an ugly but accurate picture of the situation they’re facing trying to eradicate this unwanted aquatic plant: Continue reading
2nd Annual Clary Lake Boat Parade
Shanna Pease is organizing the 2nd Annual 4th of July Boat Parade on Clary Lake. This is not a Clary Lake Association sponsored event but it is nonetheless a Clary Lake event and we are happy to help promote it and participate in it! Hope to see you out there!