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:

FOR THE SAKE OF MAINE’S LAKES FALL 2021 VOLUME 51

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.

November 2021 Water Level Chart Archived

November 2021

I have archived the November 2021 Water Level Chart (at left). The lake level in November was like a roller coaster ride. Our general plan for a dam operations in November is to get the lake level down a foot or so below the HWM in preparation for the lake freezing over sometime in December. A large rain event on the last day of October however brought the lake up to +0.25 ABOVE the high water mark, the highest the lake has been all year! On the first day of November we pulled one of the three remaining stop logs and opened the gate 1.05 feet to drain off some water which resulted in the lake level dropping 1.18 feet over over the next 12 days. Over the rest of the month we had numerous rain storms including one of 1.22 inches on the 12th and a 1.10 inch storm on the 22nd. This rainfall kept the lake level up higher than we would have liked. We ended the month with the lake level down 1.13 feet. Continue reading →

Happy Thanksgiving from the Clary Lake Association!

Usually I post a more or less traditional picture with traditional Thanksgiving sentiments, perhaps a Turkey or maybe a cartoon of a Turkey or even once I posted a picture of a turkey made of hotdogs (sorry!). This year I thought this picture from Clary_cam2 of a Thanksgiving Daybreak Muskrat was an appropriate thing to post.

Happy Thanksgiving from the Clary Lake Association!

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.

01 November 2021: High Outflows at the Clary Lake Dam [VIDEO]

There is a lot of water going downstream of the Clary Lake dam this morning. Not record outflows by any means, but certainly impressive as this short (and pretty shakey!) video shows.

October 2021 Water Level Chart Archived

October 2021

I have archived the October 2021 Water Level Chart (at left). October was looking to be a very dry month with rainfall well below normal until the next to the last day of the month when a significant wind and rain storm blew through the area. I recorded 2.68 inches of rain by the time the weather cleared on the 31st, bringing our monthly total to 4.34 inches, just shy of the average for October of 4.45 inches. There was a major 3 day northeaster back on the 25th of the month that was forecast to drop 3-5 inches of rain here, but it turned out to be mostly a southern Maine rain event; here we received less than an inch of rain. I thought we’d end the month with the lake level down around 1 foot below the top of the dam, but instead, by the end of the day on the 31st the there was water running OVER the top of the dam, with the lake level the highest it’s been all year. This morning as I’m writing this, the lake level is 0.25 above the High Water Mark, and still rising. Continue reading →

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 →

A Harvest Message

Hello to all who take an interest in Clary Lake – those who live on its shores, members and non-members alike, friends and family who come to visit lakeshore owners, those who make use of the State boat launch and those of you who are catching this message by way of just checking in on the website.

Over this last Spring/Summer season we have all been delivered a bit from the intrusions and curtailments that a climate of pandemic has generated. What a blessing it was to be out in Nature and partake of the many activities in and around the lake with friends and loved ones. We were able to safely congregate for an Ice Cream Social and to hold our Annual Meeting, seemingly without detriment to anyone’s health. We hope, as we move further and further away from precaution-minded operating in the world, that we can add to these gatherings, other events on a regular basis; events you can always count on annually, such as an annual Marsh Tour, Coffee Clutch/’Dock Hopping’ events out on the lake; 4th of July CLA float; Community Cookout; Harvest Pot Luck; Winter Ice Frolic* and February Doldrums Hors d’oeuvres Party, to name a few! 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 →

2021 Courtesy Boat Inspection Season Finished

We’ve concluded our 3rd season of Courtesy Boat Inspections at the State boat launch. There is still some boating activity but it has slowed down considerably since Labor Day weekend and I think it’s safe to say that anyone trailering a boat to go fishing this time of year are both avid and conscientious fishermen and are well aware of the need to clean their boats and trailers of hitchhiking plants. Most CBI programs ended their season on Labor Day. We decided to continue through September.

The main purpose our CBI program is two-fold. First is to prevent the accidental introduction of invasive plants into Clary Lake and second, to educate the General Public about the risks posed to Maine lakes from invasive plants and to encourage them to inspect, clean, and dry their boats after use. This year we removed 4 plant fragments from incoming boats, none of which turned out to be invasive. Statewide there were a total of 2,539 plant fragments removed from boats and trailers, 19 of which turned out to be invasive plants. The Maine DEP’s 2021 CBI Dashboard shows the lakes that have CBI programs on them and where invasive plants were intercepted this year. Continue reading →

21 September 2021: Dry Fire Hydrant Installation Complete

It’s been a long time coming, but finally the dry fire hydrant installation over at the Clary Lake dam is complete. The work was started on Saturday but we encountered ledge which required a redesign of the piping and a few more elbows. Work resumed on Monday and proceeded quickly. The hydrant is actually located on land belonging to Steve and Julie Cowles, adjacent to the Clary Lake dam property. Access to the hydrant is over the Association property. Many thanks to David Boynton for donating his time and equipment and for Steve Cowles for managing this project!

The Clary Lake Association provided the funding for this project and has plans to install another dry fire hydrant in Jefferson near the intersection of Routes 215 and 126 perhaps as soon as next year. Here are more pictures of this installation:

[Show slideshow]

16 September 2021: Website Done For Now!

After three days of more or less non-stop work on the website (and a couple of sleepless nights!) I’m fairly happy with where it stands. On Monday I announced I was going to install a new responsive website theme, on Tuesday I did that, on Wednesday I completely redesigned the menus (after first accidentally deleting the old ones!) and today, four days later, after making some final tweaks to the menus, I’m proclaiming the site redesign done. More or less. Sorta. One thing I’ve learned over the past fourteen years running a website for the Clary Lake Association is that they’re never done, they’re always a work in progress. Continue reading →

15 September 2021: Ain’t Life Grand?

I had a minor malfunction here in website land this morning. A simple and truly functional menu layout is the secret to a good website and I haven’t been particularly happy with the old menus since switching to a new responsive website theme. In the process of “fixing” them I managed to break them instead. Badly. I should have had that second cup of coffee before sitting down to work! Fortunately I make regular backups and I’ve restored the system. Work continues, and I appreciate your patience.

14 September 2021: Responsive Website Theme Installed

I’ve updated the Clary Lake Association website with a new fully responsive mobile-ready and mobile-friendly theme. You might recall that I threatened to do this just yesterday! In fact I had no idea that I’d be cutting over to a new site so soon but I found a more or less suitable theme that required only minor changes and those took less time than I had anticipated. Continue reading →

We’re Contemplating Some Site Changes

I’ve grown quite fond of the look and feel of the twenty-ten “theme” in use on this website. It’s clean, simple and fast, but it’s NOT what they call in the website industry “responsive” i.e., it presents the same pages rendered for a desktop computer to all visitors whether they’re viewing the site with a desktop computer, a tablet, or a phone. This can make accessing and using this site hard for people using devices with small screens because they’ve got to continually zoom-in and zoom-out to get pages and menus sized appropriately. Those of you who have been accessing this site on your smart phones know exactly what I’m talking about. Modern themes can dynamically adjust the site’s pages to fit whichever device a visitor is using. It’s long past time when we should have moved on to a responsive website theme.

To that end I’ve begun looking for a suitable replacement. My primary goal is to implement a responsive theme while keeping our current functionality and basic layout, and without breaking the site too badly. Stay tuned and if you show up and the site looks a mess, know that I’m working on it!

2021/2022 Election of Officers and Directors Concluded

Y’all will be happy to know that we’ve finalized the election of Officers and Directors for the 2021/2022 year at a brief Special Membership Meeting held yesterday afternoon at the home of Gareth & Beverly Bowen. Five Board members showed up for the meeting (by golly, a Board quorum!) and two (count `em!) CLA members were in attendance as well (we did not encourage people to attend this meeting). The final tally of in-person and proxy ballot votes was 91 in favor of electing the slate of officers, 0 opposed. The outcome was not in question and the meeting was over almost before it started. Continue reading →

September 2021 Water Quality Update

Total Phosphorus Chart

The Total Phosphorus test results from our 8/6/2021 core water sample came back the other day at 0.035 mg/liter, the highest TP value we’ve ever recorded. This is ominous. The next highest value we recorded was 0.034 mg/liter in July 2007 (see chart at left). I don’t remember the particular circumstances surrounding that reading, but there was another high TP reading of 0.032 mg/l more recently, in July 2015 that I do remember. It coincided with a secchi disk reading of only 1.95 meters indicating an algae bloom was in progress (secchi disk readings of 2 meters and below indicate a bloom in progress). You can see this 1.95 meter data point on the chart showing Clary transparency below. In this particular case, extreme low water conditions were a major contributing factor to poor water quality!! I expected a high TP value this time because of the 9″ of rain received in July. Rain means runoff and runoff means soil erosion and sedimentation which is the primary source of Phosphorus in lakes, but still, I was surprised to see such a high number. High phosphorus levels are not good for water quality! We really need to update our Watershed Survey!

Despite the high phosphorus level, we haven’t seen a significant algae bloom yet this summer and we may not, though I did notice a few wisps of dead cyanobacteria along the shoreline back in August, and water transparency is currently holding up nicely: at our last the water monitoring session on Sunday September 5th, Kelsie French and I had secchi disk readings of 3.55 and 3.45 meters respectively which is about average, and better than expected considering the level of phosphorus in the water. Transparency could deteriorate quickly however and we’re going to keep a close eye on it; we will take our 3rd and final water sample for Phosphorus testing during our next water quality monitoring session in a couple of weeks. Continue reading →

August 2021 Water Level Chart Archived

August 2021

I have archived the August 2021 Water Level Chart (at left). The 3.08 inches of rain we received in August fell slightly short of the 3.33 inch average for the month, so we’re a little further behind (-1.58 inches) for the year than we were at the end of July. We’ve received 26.17 inches of rain to date, the average for the end of August is 27.75 inches. We also anticipated a good soaking as the remnants of Hurricane Fred and Hurricane Henri passed by within a few days of each other and on August 19th and we opened the dam’s gate a foot to release some water and create some headspace for what potentially could have been a lot of storm water runoff. The storms were a disappointment however, dropping only a combined total of 0.84 inches of rain with virtually no additional runoff and we ended up closing the gate 5 days after opening it, having lowered the lake a grand total of only 3.4 inches. Now it looks like Hurricane Ida which will be passing to our south later this week may result in significant rainfall. Time will tell. 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 →