2022 Clary Lake Ice Out Contest! [UPDATE]

This is our third year running a Clary Lake Ice-Out contest. This year’s prize for first place is a beautiful 12″ H x 15″ W framed loon photograph taken by David Hodsdon. If you guess the correct ice-out date or come closest without going past it, you’re the winner. In the event there are two (or more) people who guessed the same winning date, the person guessing first (based on the recorded timestamp) will be the winner and the other less-lucky (but still lucky!) person (or persons!) will win a laminated 8.5″ x 11″ Clary Lake Depth Map as a runner up prize (see below). FYI, the earliest the lake has been deemed completely free of ice was on March 13, 2016; the latest the ice has gone out was on April 24, 2001. Last year’s “official” ice out date was March 29th which was correctly guessed by Bambi Jones. She won a blue “We Give A Dam” tee shirt. We also awarded second places (also tee shirts) to Kelley Doore and Alan Nicholas Decker who correctly guessed the “What Do You Mean It’s Not Ice Out Yet?” date of March 28th. Visit our Ice In and Ice Out page to see all our historical data back to 2001. Reviewing historical ice-in and ice-out data is NOT CHEATING!

[UPDATE]: I’ve posted the current guesses at the bottom of this message and I’ll update the list at least daily. We’ll close the contest some time before the ice actually goes out. And yes, you can submit more than one guess, but only your last guess will count 🙂
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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 15^th 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!

9 February 2022: How’s This For Confusing?

Everyone knows I love charts (and maps!). They’re a great way of visualizing data. Sometimes my love of maps and charts takes me to some pretty strange places. Here’s an example of one of those places (at left). Every time I look at this chart I have to stop and peer at it for a moment before it makes sense. Every time. And some days it just doesn’t make sense no matter how long I stare at it. This particular chart shows the water level of Clary Lake on February 8th, 2022 and the elevation of the water line on that date is 149.88 feet, or 1.29 feet below the HWM. What this chart is actually showing us is the distance the lake surface is below the top of the dam, at any place along the top of the dam, starting at the left (0 feet) and proceeding to the right (98 feet). Continue reading →

Lincoln County News: Clary Lake Focus of Maine Loon Restoration Project

The Clary Lake Association will be participating in Maine Lakes’ Loon Productivity Project. The last time our loons successfully raised a chick was in 2017. They hatched out 2 chicks in the summer of 2018 but neither baby survived much more than a week. The loons nested again in 2019 but never hatched any eggs and they never attempted to nest in 2020 and 2021- a troubling situation. Stay tuned for more about this exciting initiative:

Clary Lake Focus of Maine Loon Restoration Project

04 February 2022: Busted Links: I hate em!

I HATE busted links, everywhere, but especially on our own website. It’s come to my attention that a lot of links to documents & stuff that are stored on Google Drive have recently become inaccessible due to a more stringent security procedures. Security is a good thing, busted links are not. I’ve fixed quite a few already but more undoubtedly are hiding, waiting to not show you what you want to see. If you try to view something and get “You need access” instead (picture, at left) PLEASE click the “Request Access” button. This will send me an email and let me know you found a busted link. Thanks in advance!

January 2022 Water Level Chart Archived

January 2022

I have archived the January 2022 Water Level Chart (at left), starting off the new year with more snow on the ground than I can remember seeing for several years. Compared to recent winters, this condition bodes well for our ground water supply come spring the ground thaws this spring and the snow melts.

Our general dam management goal in the winter is to maintain a lake level somewhere around 18 inches below the HWM. This is low enough to prevent ice damage to the shoreline around the lake yet still high enough to maintain outflows sufficient to meet the minimum flows requirement of the Clary Lake Water Level Order. To that end, we’ve been successful: the lake level is currently around -1.41 feet and outflows are around 13 cfs (cubic feet per second), slightly higher than the current minimum flows which of 11.3 cfs. If you’re unclear about minimum flows, what they are, and why we are supposed to maintain them, see Minimum Flows Explained.

Baby It’s Cold Outside!

For my friends unfortunate enough to not be in Maine for this epic blizzard. Sound ON:

Stanley M. Whittier January 10, 1931 – January 24, 2022

Stanley Whittier

Stanley Whittier built his camp on Clary Lake back in 1955 and he has been a Clary Lake Association member since we formed back in the summer of 1960. Due to failing health, it’s been a few years since he was last a CLA member but his many years of support are not forgotten. Here is his Obituary in the Central Maine Papers:

WATERVILLE – Stanley M. Whittier, 91, formerly a long time resident of Augusta, died Monday, Jan. 24, 2022, at the Alfond Center for Health in Augusta following a long illness. He was born in Bath on Jan. 10, 1931, a son of the late Stanley A. and Frances (Martin) Whittier.

Mr. Whittier attended Augusta schools and was a communicant of St. Mary of the Assumption Catholic Church. He was a US Army veteran, serving during the Korean War.

Mr. Whittier had been self-employed barber for many years in Augusta, where he also enjoyed organizing the Chamber of Commerce Whatever Week Races and you could always spot him in the bleachers at Cony basketball games. In 1955 he built his camp on Clary Lake in Jefferson which was his favorite place to spend time with family.

He was predeceased by his wife, Irene J. (Valliere) Whittier; two brothers, Keith and Leonard Whittier and his sister, Joyce Chick.

Mr. Whittier is survived by his two daughters, Gail J. Champine of Waterville and Jane F. Roy of Biddeford; five grandchildren, Stacy Grondin, Jessica Grondin, Carly Champine, Morgan Burnette, and Dylane Farrington, nine great-grandchildren; three great-great- grandchildren; and several nieces, nephews and cousins.

Relatives and friends may visit on Tuesday, Feb. 1 from 10 – 11 a.m. at Plummer Funeral Home, 16 Pleasant St., Augusta where a funeral service will follow at 11 a.m. Burial will be in the spring in Sand Hill Cemetery, Somerville.

Condolences, stories and photos may be shared at http://www.plummerfh.com.

The family requests that donations in Stan’s memory be made to:

Travis Mills Foundation
89 Water St.
Hallowell, ME 04347

Maine Lakes’ Wednesday Webinars are back!

I’m looking forward to these webinars!

22 January 2022: Venus Rising

I woke up this morning to find Venus gracing Clary_cam2, rising in the east along with the bright star Altair, visual magnitude 0.76 visible slightly above and to the left of Venus. I love the way the bright planet reflects on the ice of Clary Lake.

Public Hearing on LD 1826: Interagency Task Force on Invasive Aquatic Plants and Nuisance Species

Sorry for the short notice! This public hearing is TOMORROW! I received this notice of pending legislation in my mailbox just now and decided to post it on our site. The Clary Lake Association is deeply concerned with protecting all Maine lakes and Clary Lake in particular from the unwanted introduction of invasive species. To that end we are 3 years into a long term Courtesy Boat Inspection program and are developing plans for an Invasive Plant Program for Clary Lake. Submitting a short comment to the Environment and Natural Resources Committee is simple and worthwhile. You can see what comments have already been left at the above link. Comments need not be long or involved. This is important. Thank you for being concerned.

The second session of the 130^th legislature is underway! While there is a lot going on during the session, there are only a few lake bills we’ll be reaching out to you about this year. The first one has a public hearing coming up soon: Monday, January 10^that 10:30 a.m. via Zoom.

LD 1826 creates a subcommittee of the existing Interagency Task Force on Invasive Aquatic Plants and Nuisance Species. The subcommittee will: Continue reading →

09 January 2022: Crazy Like a Fox!

Imagine my surprise when I looked out my upstairs office window at the lake yesterday afternoon and saw a red fox cavorting out on the ice. Then it cavorted back in the other direction, then back again. You can see it’s tracks in the snow. I tried to get logged into the webcam in time to get a video but I wasn’t able to. My neighbor was out ice fishing and he and the fox must have seen each other.

[UPDATED] December 2021 Water Level Chart Archived

December 2021

I have archived the December 2021 Water Level Chart (at left), bringing 2021 to a close. Our general goal in December is to get the lake down to about 18 inches by the time it freezes over, without overshooting the mark. We have after all only 24 inches to play with. As it turns out, the lake froze over on December 20th with the lake level down just 1 foot. Precipitation for the month was 3.44 inches, average for December, bringing us to 46.18 inches for the year, 2.12 inches more than average. It is only because of the excessive rainfall we received in July (9 inches) and September (8.5 inches) that we ended the year a bit ahead of average precipitation because for most of the rest of the year, we fell short of monthly averages. And that’s about all I’m going to say about December. It’s a New Year.

One big difference between 2020 and 2021 turned out to be the flushing rates and retention times. In 2020 we had a flushing rate of about 2.3x with a retention time of 140 days. In 2021 the flushing rate was 1.8x (the same as the published rate for Clary Lake) with a retention time of 240 days. This is in effect a measure of the amount of water that passed through Clary Lake: in 2020, a total of 16,632 acre feet of water passed through the lake, in 2021 that figure was significantly less, only 13,274 acre feet. The lower flushing rate in 2021 very likely had a beneficial effect on water quality.

[UPDATE]: I was so intrigued with the difference in flushing rate and retention time for 2020 and 2021 that I decided to graph them to make the differences more evident. Here’s the result:

I’ll add data for 2022 as it becomes available.

I can’t end 2021 without highlighting an interesting but ultimately useless bit of data analysis I wasted time on this year. Everyone knows that I love charts. If you don’t know that by now, then you simply haven’t been paying attention! I’d like to show you two fascinating but useless charts I made this year. First a bit of explanation. I have long thought it would be cool if I could somehow correlate the flows from Clary Lake with the flows in the Sheepscot River as measured at the Sheepscot River Gaging Station which is located at the foot of Grand Army Hill. It turns out you really can’t correlate the two flows in any reasonable fashion for two primary reasons. First, because the hydrological characteristics of the Clary Lake watershed (9.9 square miles) and that of the larger Sheepscot River watershed (142 square miles) are quite different. Clary should contribute 6.9% of the water measured at the gaging station but that figure actually varied from a low of around 1% to a high of 60% with an average of around 12.4%. Sheesh. Second, nobody actually controls the flows on the river, but we do in fact do control the outflows from Clary Lake so it is largely our own management activities that make correlating the two flows almost impossible. It would be nice if Clary outflows were always 6.9% of Sheepscot River flows, but I guess that would be too easy! Anyways, here are two charts I made while investigating whether a correlation between lake and river flows exists. One shows Clary Flows as a percentage of the Sheepscot River flows. The average turned out to be 12.43%. The other is a simple visual comparison of the two flow amounts which I did to see if anything jumped out at me. Nothing did:

Here’s the 2021 Water Level Chart gallery:

[Show slideshow]

Happy New Year everyone 🙂

A Year-End Message from Avian Haven

A nice year-end message from our friends at Avian Haven. I highly recommend looking at their Year End 2021 message!

Happy Endings VR Banner

Dear Friends of Avian Haven,
Anyone looking back on 2021 can see effects of the pandemic almost everywhere in the human realm. But faith in the endurance of the natural world helped us and many of you to hold hope. Our combined efforts in 2021 made happy endings possible for the stories of many birds. Images of some of them can be found here (3.5 MB).

All of us here send huge thanks for your role in sending these birds and many others back to their natural roles in the wild. May these images help to buoy hopes for 2022!

Merry 2021 Christmas from the Clary Lake Association!

We’ve had quite a year together and perhaps more than ever have come to realize that it ‘takes a village’. It takes all of us working together in common cause to realize our community dreams and aspirations. It takes a village to keep going when times are difficult and with many different ways of thinking and operating at play. This time of year our social customs lead us to a place of gathering in our own unique and traditional ways. We hope and trust that your holidays can be filled with what you love most and that you and all that you hold dear remain safe, healthy and ready to take on a new year of friendship, kindness and compassion.

Merry Christmas…Happy Holidays…Happy New Year!

20 December 2021: She’s Froze!

Clary Lake has been trying to freeze over for about 3 weeks now, first at one end, then at the other. Each time it’s melted off. A good section out in front of my place has been ice free all along thanks to the ducks that come to our bird feeding station, they splash around and keep the ice from forming. Clary has just been waiting for a good cold night to freeze over, and last night was it. This morning the temperature was a paltry 9.9° F and from all appearances, the lake is now solidly frozen over. There is no sign of ducks today! Historically, A review of our Ice In and Ice Out Dates page shows that 12/20 is on the late side for the lake to freeze over. With the exception of the freak year in 2016 when the lake actually didn’t freeze over completely until January 15th, this is the latest ice-in date since the lake froze over on December 30, 2006. Continue reading →

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.