I have archived the August 2022 Water Level Chart (at left). In August we finally got a reprieve from the drought conditions that have plagued us for the last 4 months. For the first time since April we received more than the average amount of monthly rainfall. All told, we received 3.93″ of rain, 0.6″ more than average. Drought.gov now shows us to be in Moderate Drought which is less droughty than previously, suggesting that ground water supplies are improving but are still somewhat depleted. My own rainfall records show us 0.90″ ahead for this date but that doesn’t speak to groundwater supplies. Continue reading →

The Clary Lake Association’s 2022 Annual Meeting happened, last Saturday at the Clary Lake dam. We couldn’t have asked for a better day. The weather was perfect, the meeting was well attended (we even had a quorum this time!) and the food, as usual, was excellent (the baked black crappie and the blueberry pies deserve special mention). Because of the raffle drawing, we didn’t have a main program this year. After introductions, the meeting started with review and acceptance of the 2021 Annual Meeting minutes followed by the Treasurer’s Report and Proposed budget. Elections next, only one spot open this year: Maggie Muth was voted in as a Board member for 3 years, replacing outgoing Board member Kelsie French. Next came the Program and Committee reports: the Annual Loon Count presented by Mary Gingrow-Shaw; the Loon Restoration Project presented by Eleanor Goldberg; the Dam Operations, Courtesy Boat Inspection, and Lake Water Quality Program reports presented by George Fergusson; the Program and Events Committee report presented by Margaret Fergusson; and an update on the Dry Hydrant presented by Steve Cowles. Numerous questions were asked and answered. The only new business was a short statement at the end by Thomas Vigue about his plan to petition the IF&W to stock Clary Lake with  Brown Trout. You’ll find a few more meeting pictures in the Spring/Summer 2022 photo gallery. Continue reading →

2019 Annual Meeting

The 2022 Annual Meeting of the Clary Lake Association is this coming Saturday, August 27th, at 2:00PM at the Clary Lake dam on Route 218 in Whitefield. The weather is supposed to be excellent. We’d like to start on-time so if you’re planning to join or renew your membership for the upcoming 2022/2023 Membership Year at the meeting, please arrive early! We’ll have a registration table setup by 12:30PM. Dues are $25 per member which entitles you to one vote on matters brought before the Membership. You can also signup or renew your membership online using our Secure Paypal gateway (our membership year runs from Annual Meeting to Annual Meeting). We’ll also be selling raffle tickets prior to the start of the meeting at 2PM. The raffle drawing will be held at the conclusion of the  business meeting. Here’s some additional information about our Summer 2022 Raffle. Continue reading →

The drought is getting worse. We’re now in Severe Drought, and the 1/2 inch of rain we received in yesterday’s squall, though welcome, actually did little to ease the dry conditions. A month ago we were in Moderate Drought (see: 8 July 2022: Moderate Drought). It’s only gotten worse. We’re supposed to get another 1/4 to 1/2 inch in the next couple of days but as welcome as it is, it won’t do much to relieve the extreme dry conditions; we need an extended period of slow soaking rains to replenish ground water supplies and relieve the parched earth. See Drought.gov for more information.

Usually the header image/banner on the website rotates randomly. I’ve decided to highlight specific banner images for a while. I’ll pick one and leave it up for a few days. Today’s banner is from a photograph Carolyn Curtis took this very afternoon at her camp on Hornpout Lane, looking east when a rain squall passed over. Now THAT is a rainbow. Wow. Thank you Carolyn! Here it is again:

Dave Knight and friends in the flagship of the Clary Lake Association during the Clary Lake Fourth of July parade. Photo CLA member by Donna Roeckel

Sometime around midsummer I like to provide a Membership update, to let people know where we stand and to gently remind people to send in their dues if they’ve forgotten! As for where we stand, we’ve got 129 people signed up for the upcoming membership year so far which puts us 73% of the way towards meeting our 2022/2023 Membership goal of 175. I guess that’s more or less where we should be this time of year. Of that 129 members, 18 are new to the Clary Lake Association. I find it very gratifying that we’re still attracting new members!  After all, if you care about Clary Lake and appreciate having a lake full of clean water where you can swim, boat, and fish, you should support the Clary Lake Association! You’ll find plenty of reasons on our Benefits of Membership page. Continue reading →

July 2022

I have archived the July 2022 Water Level Chart (at left). Easily the most notable thing about the July chart is the steady decline in the lake level for pretty much the whole month! In fact, the lake dropped 28 of the 31 days in July, only rising slightly (or remaining unchanged) on 3 days in response to rainfall received on the 18th, 25th, and the 28th. We ended up with 3.04 inches of rainfall for the month, 1/2 an inch shy of the normal 3.54 inches. To date we’re still 0.30 inches ahead of normal, but don’t be fooled: as I’ve pointed out before, total rainfall doesn’t really give an accurate picture of ground water supplies. We’re currently in moderate drought meaning groundwater supplies are hurting. Here’s a great map of the State: https://www.drought.gov/states/maine. The government site is blocking the Maine Climate Office for some reason which is why our weather page is showing a broken drought graphic 🙁 Continue reading →

Well at least I sure hope they’re resolved! I’ve installed a new mesh wireless router system, a Netgear Orbi, and I have put Cams 1 & 3 back where they belong, and everything seems to be working fine. I now have, for the first time, excellent Wi-Fi coverage down on my dock which means the webcams which are located even closer to the house have significantly more reliable wireless connections too. I think the problems we’ve been having with Cams 1 & 3 have been due to barely sufficient (and occasionally insufficient) wireless connections. They’ve been operating just fine for the last 3 days sitting in a corner of my office right next to the router. Continue reading →

We’ve been having some issues with a couple of our Clary_cam cameras malfunctioning for no good reason. Basically, Cam1 or Cam3 (but not Cam2) will decide to stop uploading pictures to the website and not allow wireless connections. I don’t know what is causing the problem, and I can’t seem to recreate or cause the problem. I also don’t know why Cam2 is not having the problem! Cams 1 and 3 are located on my network, at my house. Cam2 is located on another network further down the lake. Clearly something is affecting the cameras at my home, on my network, and not Cam2. Most recently, Clary_cam3 (which is a brand new camera) decided to stop working. This morning I brought it into my house to run where I can keep an eye on it for a few days. Enjoy the unchanging picture of a couple of windowsill plants.

Stay tuned. Hopefully I can figure out what’s going on and make it stop.

[UPDATE] I think it’s my router.

Usually the header image/banner on the website rotates randomly. I’ve decided to highlight specific banner images for a while. I’ll pick one and leave it up for a few days. Today’s banner is from a photograph Steve Giampetruzzi sent me, it was one of those late afternoon storm fronts moving in from the southwest. Ominous. This banner has been on the site for a while but I’d like to give it a little more attention. Here it is again:

If you’d like to see your photograph turned into a banner on the website, send it to me! It needs to be a picture of or taken on or near Clary Lake. Sunrises and sunsets are obvious subjects but I’ll consider anything. Use your imagination!

UPDATE: This canoe has returned home. It belongs to Gareth & Bevery Bowen.

David Marsh sent me this picture of a green Old Town canoe that drifted in under his dock overnight. I asked him to tie it up and I’d see if I could locate the owner. David and Fran Marsh own the former Art Enos property on Sennett Road. I thought it might be the same green canoe that got loose last week and ended up down by the boat launch, but no. This is a different green canoe. What is it about green canoes and do they want to float free?

If this is your canoe, come get it or you know who it belongs to, let the rightful owner know! Contact me for directions or if you have questions.

Usually the header image/banner on the website rotates randomly. I’ve decided to highlight specific banner images for a while. I’ll pick one and leave it up for a few days. Today’s banner is from a panorama photograph Dan Burns made while doing CBI duty at the State boat launch last weekend. He sent it to me and I quickly saw it’s potential as a site banner. Here it is again:

If you’d like to see your photograph turned into a banner on the website, send it to me! It needs to be a picture of or taken on or near Clary Lake. Sunrises and sunsets are obvious subjects but I’ll consider anything. Use your imagination!

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to any of you that Central and Southern Maine are experiencing drought conditions. According to data released a few days ago, we’re now in Moderate Drought. Rainfall in May and June was substantially below normal, and so far July is following suit. These dry conditions make it hard to maintain the lake level. Minor leaking results in some water loss of course, but by far evaporation is taking the biggest bite out of Clary Lake’s water level. There’s not much we can do about it except hope for rain. On a bright note, Clary Lake water quality tends to benefit from dry conditions due to the lack of runoff. Runoff from rainfall is the primary cause of soil erosion and sedimentation in the Clary Lake watershed and is the primary source of unwanted Phosphorus.

Clary Cams 1 & 3 Are Temporarily Off Line 🙁 My router is old and a bit flakey so earlier this week I bought and installed a new Asus WiFi6 router. What should have been a drop-in replacement turned out to take the better part of an afternoon to install and reconfigure the two Clary Cams 1 & 3 that live on my network (Clary Cam 2 lives on Dave Hodsdon’s network). They require static IP addresses and it turns out the new router just wasn’t happy with that arrangement, it kept giving the cameras new addresses, preventing remote access. It also wasn’t happy doing some of the other things I require of it so I returned the piece of junk to BestBuy today and picked up another Linksys (my preferred brand). Now I have to re-install and re-reconfigure Clary Cams 1 & 3 again. It shouldn’t take too long, it always goes faster the second time you have to do something 🙂

June 2022

I have archived the June 2022 Water Level Chart (at left). The lake level in June looks a lot like the lake level in May only about 3″ lower than in the previous month. We did receive a more rain in June than we did in May, but most of it fell in the first half of the month which was enough to largely offset the water loss leading to more or less stable water level, up until the 17th of June. Rainfall for the rest of the month was almost nonexistent and by month’s end the lake had fallen a quarter of a foot, ending the month about 3 inches lower than it started. The 3.11 inches or rain we did receive fell about 0.6 inches short of the June monthly average of 3.71 inches. Because we received so much “extra” rain in the first 4 months of 2022, we’re still 0.8 inches above normal for this date. However, as I’ve explained before, simply looking at total precipitation gives you an unrealistic picture of actual ground water conditions and like last month, almost the entire coast of Maine (including Clary Lake) is considered to be “Abnormally Dry” by the USDA Drought Monitor program. Continue reading →

The loons are finally nesting again on Clary Lake for the first time since June 2019. They didn’t use the floating nest we launched this spring, but they are nesting nearby in the same cove where the floating nest is located, over on the north shore of the lake. Mary Gingrow-Shaw has been monitoring the floating loon nest and late last week noticed nest building behavior. She finally spotted a loon sitting on the nest yesterday and today she kayaked over snapped the photograph at left. She didn’t want to get too close and all she had was a cell phone. I’ll head over later with my camera and telephoto lens and try to get some better pictures.

There are very likely already eggs in the nest. We can expect the eggs to hatch in 26 to 30 days. Keep your fingers crossed!

PLEASE give the area a WIDE BERTH!