Last week Dave Knight and I upgraded Clary_cam2. Today we braved the cold and installed new cameras for Clary_cam1 and Clary_cam3. You can see all three on our Clary Lake Webcams page. The new cameras take beautiful 1920 x 1080 pixel pictures and represent a significant improvement over the old camera’s 1280 x 720 pixel pictures. All three cameras upload pictures to the website every 2 minutes. They cover the same general areas, but the fields of view are bigger than the old cameras: Continue reading
23 January 2021: Ice Boating on Clary Lake
Great ice! Great wind! Great cold!
Don Hogg stopped by later in the afternoon and took the ice boat for a spin:
22 January 2021: Clary_cam2 Has Been Upgraded
Dave Knight and I just finished installing the new Clary_cam2. The camera’s 1920 x 1080 image needs to be adjusted slightly, it’s a little dark. I’ll swing by this weekend and tweak it a bit. As is, it’s already a big improvement from the old camera:
Here’s the old image from earlier today. As you can see, the new camera has a wider field of view and better resolution, not to mention color rendition:
I was going to replace Clary_cam3 today but I’ve run out of gumption. I’ve got 2 more cameras on order and I’m going to hold off until I can replace both Clary_cam1 and Clary_cam3, sometime next week. Stay tuned!
20 January 2021: New Webcams On The Way!
The View Out My Window
We’re in the process of replacing our webcams. We’ve got 3 of them and 2 of them are slated for replacement just as soon as I can make it happen. Clary_cam2 has lost it’s color correction and Clary_cam3 periodically uploads corrupted images. Clary_Cam1 is still working but it’s old and will be replaced soon. Continue reading
Lake Stewards of Maine 2021 Winter Newsletter Is Out
Lake Stewards of Maine (formerly Maine Volunteer Water Monitoring Program) has mailed their Winter 2021 newsletter, The Water Column. Print copies are in the mail and should arrive any day. As usual, they’ve produced a great publication. I especially liked the articles on “Influences of Extreme Weather on Maine Lakes in 2020” (on page 16) and Late Season Algae “Flash Blooms” in Lakes” (on page 26), both by LSM Executive Director Scott Williams. Also, the article “Changes to Communication & Technology in
the Past Few Years and the Spurs of CoViD-19″ by Tristan Taber was quite interesting. Continue reading
15 January 2021: Sunrise on Clary Lake
Clary Cam2 (Spy Cams as Dave Knight likes to refer to them) may be losing color attenuation, but it’s still capable of recording some beautiful pictures.
14 January 2021: Maine Lakes Wednesday Webinars Are Back!
I received this email this morning from Maine Lakes (formerly the Maine Lakes Society) and thought I’d pass it on to our Clary Lake readers. I attended several Maine Lakes webinars last year and found them interesting and educational. I’m sure this year’s programs will be as well. I’ve already signed up for the first one, Winter Lake Monitoring. There’ll be more webinars. I’ll post notices of additional programs when I receive them.
Maine Lakes Wednesday Webinars Are Back!
In light of the continuing health concerns about COVID-19, Maine Lakes will be hosting this year’s Maine Lakes Conference speakers in another series of “Wednesday Webinars” running the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of each month, from February through June.
This year’s theme, A Deep Dive Into the Lake Book, features many interesting and relevant topics that correspond with our soon-to-be published 4th edition of “The Lake Book.” While we are currently finalizing speakers for some of the webinars, we are happy to announce that registration is open for the following presentations. Registration is free and easy. Hope to see you there!
8 January 2021: ClaryCam2 Back In Service
I’m happy to report that ClaryCam2 is back in service, thanks to David Knight’s finger which he used to press the ground fault reset button on the power supply. If we’d known it was such an easy fix we’d have taken care of it sooner. Sorry about that!
I wouldn’t normally write a website post for something as trivial as a web camera coming back online, but it turns out that the Clary Lake Web Cams page is the single most popular, most viewed page on the site 🙂
7 January 2021: It’s Ice Fishing Season Again
The 2021 Ice Fishing season has started on Clary Lake. Dave Knight stopped by the State boat launch earlier today and took the picture at left. One of the fishermen said there was 8 inches of ice. As usual, be careful especially near inlets and in the channel where moving water could affect ice thickness.
If you’re going fishing, know Maine’s Fishing Laws! You’ll need a fishing license of course. Here’s a link to Maine’s Daily Bag, Possession and Length Limits. Clary Lake is in the South Zone and the daily limit on Bass (large mouth or small mouth) is 2 fish, no size limit. However, only 1 may exceed 14 inches. It would be nice if you threw ALL the big breeder Bass back. There’s no limit on other fish species that you’ll find in Clary including White and Yellow Perch, Pickerel, and Black Crappie.
Let’s see some fish pictures! Send them to George Fergusson and I’ll post them on this website.
December 2020 Water Level Chart Archived
December 2020
And so we arrive at the end of another year. I have archived the December 2020 Water Level Chart (at left) and much like 2020 was a roller coaster year, December was a roller coaster month in terms of rainfall and resulting water level fluctuations! On the last day of November we received 1.75 inches of rain followed by 0.76 inches more the next day. This pushed the lake level from 0.68 feet below the HWM to 0.07 feet above the HWM almost overnight, resulting in water flowing over the top of the dam for the first time since last spring. Then on December 5th we received 2.00 inches of rain which drove the lake level even higher, to 0.18 feet above the HWM, despite our efforts to mitigate the lake level rise. From there the lake fell more or less steadily to the month low of 1.34 feet below the HWM. More rain on the 23rd and 25th of the month again pushed the lake level up to a little less than 1 foot below the HWM. It would have gone a lot higher if we hadn’t opened the gate to drain off more water in anticipation of the additional rainfall. The heavy rains, warm temperatures, and high winds on Christmas day resulted in most of the lake’s ice melting off. The lake completely froze over for the first time on December 19th. At the time of this writing, most of the lake remains ice free. Continue reading
27 December 2020: Clary Lake Opens Up
Clary Lake completely froze over on December 19th, but warm temperatures, high winds, and heavy rain on Christmas Day has melted off most of the ice. There’s still some ice in the coves, especially along the south shore. We’ll make note of this fact on our Ice-in and Ice-out page, but we won’t be changing the 2020 ice-in date. The lake is already trying to refreeze and probably will skim over again in the next couple of days as overnight temperatures for the next week are expected to be in the low to mid 20’s. The first week of the new year is looking to be much colder and if we don’t get any snow for a while we should have some good ice for skating!
Holiday Greetings from the Clary Lake Association
Dear Friends and Neighbors!
The old proverbial line, ‘where did the year go’? comes to mind. And what a year it was! As professed in an earlier post, there’s always something to be grateful for. During these challenging times, we have been called upon to embrace great patience, enlist monumental courage and muster unprecedented strength. So many are suffering and we have been forced to expose ourselves… the very best and those aspects of our species that are so in need of evolving to affect real change in our society. This takes incredible perseverance, not unlike our challenges in replenishing the health of our beloved Clary Lake. So, we know the drill! Continue reading
19 December 2020: Clary Lake Frozen Over
Clary is fully iced over as of December 19th.
After consulting with the two Davids (David Hodsdon and David Knight) we’ve concluded that Clary has finally iced over but it will likely at least partially melt off again on Christmas day as we’re expecting a storm bringing an inch or more of rain with temps in the 50’s. Time will tell! As cold as it’s been this month, I expected the lake to freeze before this but heavy rains at the end of November and beginning of December have resulted in a lot of water moving through the lake and as you know, moving water resists freezing. Also, the addition of lots of rain to the lake raises the temperature if only slightly, and this slows down freezing as well. Continue reading
Maine Lakes Fall 2020 Newsletter Is Out
The Maine Lakes Fall 2020 Newsletter is out, and it’s 20 pages are packed full of news, interesting information, and stories focused on Maine’s lakes and ponds. It’s available as a PDF or as a re-sizable webpage. You should also plan on attending some of their Maine Lakes 2021 Conference sessions by Zoom on the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of each month at 4 p.m. starting February 3rd through June 16th. I attended several webinars last summer and they were fun and informative. To be notified when registration is open, check out their website, www.lakes.me, after the new year or email info@lakes.me. I’ll also post a webinar schedule here when it becomes available. The Clary Lake Association has been a supporting member of Maine Lakes (formerly the Maine Lakes Society) for many years.
November 2020 Water Level Chart Archived
November 2020
I have archived the November 2020 Water Level Chart (at left). We were a little worried that the fall drought conditions were going to continue into November so we’ve been operating the dam so as to maintain a decent store of water going into Winter, releasing only the required minimum flows. For the first 3 weeks the dearth of rain did continue and the lake level had fallen to 1 foot below the HWM. Then on the 23rd of the month we received over 2 inches of rain and it began to look like we’d end up with well above the normal amount of precipitation for the month. On the last day of the month we received an additional 1.75 inches of rain (glad it weren’t snow!) bringing us to 6.19 inches for the month bringing us to 40.2 inches for the year to date, still 0.42 inches below normal. It’s now Tuesday morning December 1st and it’s still raining and that 0.42 inch deficit is already history, pushing us above average rainfall for the year to date. You’ll find the 2020 Precipitation chart on the Clary Dam Flow Statistics page (along with some other cool graphs). It would appear that the 2020 drought is about over. Continue reading
29 November 2020: Repairs Underway On The Red House
Some much needed repairs are underway over at the Clary Lake dam:
Here are a couple more pictures:
Happy Thanksgiving 2020 from the Clary Lake Association
Everyday should be and is an opportunity to give thanks. During these difficult and unprecedented times, we can easily lose our footing in gratitude and only focus on what we don’t have, what we can’t do, and sadly for some of us, what we have lost. And so, we must remain steadfast in our work of living in the moment, taking nothing for granted and performing little acts of kindness. No earthly power can prevent us from living in this way.
May all of us, near and far, take a moment and remember what is truly important and know that it is found within. Happy Thanksgiving… now and always. Be kind and stay safe!
Margaret Fergusson
October 2020 Water Level Chart Archived
October 2020
I have archived the October 2020 Water Level Chart (at left). October water levels were right about where we want them this time of year- down about a foot, more or less. Substantial rainfall around the middle of the month both signaled the end of severe drought conditions and pushed the lake level to a high of -0.77 feet below the HWM and it’s been falling gradually ever since. We started the month -1.14 feet below the HWM and ended the month higher at -0.89 feet. If you’ll recall, rainfall in September was almost nonexistent until the very end of the month. October started off with minor rain events until the 13th of the month when we received 2.44 inches in one storm. We ended up with 5.48 inches of rain for the month, 1.03 inches more than October average of 4.58 inches. Nonetheless, ground water supplies are still below normal as those of you with dug wells are well aware. As of the end of the month, our part of Maine remains in severe drought. We’re 2.01 inches below the yearly average for this date. Continue reading
20 October 2020: No Appeal, Transfer Order Stands
Yesterday was the end of the 21 day grace period for Aquafortis Associates LLC to appeal the recent Lincoln County Superior Court ruling on the DEP transfer order. As of this morning, no appeal has been filed. This comes as no surprise. The DEP Transfer Order stands. And that, as they say, is that.
17 October 2020: Clary Lake On Old Postcards
Earlier this year someone sent me a couple of old postcards featuring pictures of Pleasant Pond (now Clary Lake). I’m just now getting around to posting them in our Historical Photos gallery. It can be hard to figure out where some of these old pictures were taken, I’m relying on my understanding of the topography around present day Clary Lake. The one at left I believe was taken from near the Metcalf property looking southeast toward where the boat launch is today. The date is unknown but likely around the turn of the last century.
This one I think is looking north towards the outlet channel and was likely taken from near the old Ward Sisters home, now the Relyea property. Again the date is uncertain but probably around 1900. I’m very interested in old vintage photographs of Clary Lake (formerly Pleasant Pond). If you run across any please send them my way!