Because Maine is a state of small towns-495 of them at last count-spread out like tiny nodes in an extensive neural landscape, we are practiced in the arts of small talk. When you run into your neighbors at the ferry, at the post office or the store, it helps to have reliable conversational gambits to while away the moments of spontaneous company. And what better topic than the weather? It’s always there, it’s usually up to something and it’s certainly less contentious than politics or religion.
So here’s a primer to guide you through some reliable conversational weather for the winter season.
We’ll start with the latest storm, being topical and all, but before we do, there are just two important things you need to know about weather in Maine. First, weather systems come from the west and are steered by the location of the jet stream in the upper atmosphere. Although the jet stream actually meanders around a good deal in northerly or southerly loops, and can suddenly jump tracks from one latitude to another, from a celestial perspective, the jet stream basically steers storms from west to east. When you want to see the weather changing, watch the western horizon.
The second thing to know is whether the “glass,” as old sailors used to call a ship’s barometer, is rising or falling-meaning are we under the influence of a high (rising barometer) or a low (falling barometer) pressure system? If you don’t have a barometer, and most of us don’t, you can take a small spruce branch and nail it to a shed and see if it bends up (a high) or dips to a low. Moody’s Diner gifts shop sells these hot items.
High thin clouds mean a low is approaching, whereas dark tumbling clouds are associated with the arrival of a high. Low-pressure cells are really large troughs of warm air that draw winds counter clockwise into their vortex, while high-pressure cells are mountains of descending colder air with winds that spin clockwise away from their centers. Thus an approaching low pressure system out in the Gulf of Maine sucks in air from the northeast and once it goes by, the winds “back” because of their counter clockwise rotation into the northwest. Northeast winds are both wet and cold-the worst of both worlds, while northwest winds are dry and cold-also a hardship. Both blow through cracks in a leaky Maine farmhouse, but northeast winds chill you to the bone. Cold as a Dog and the Winds Northeast, wrote island poet, Ruth Moore.
Incredible as it seems, the water around islands and the coast in the winter is warmer than the air. So when a punishing high pressure system moves in from the west, it will be sunny and bright, but punishingly cold because their snapping northwest winds slap you in the face. Sea smoke rises off the water when the sea gives up some of its heat that condenses in ghostly patterns. As highs pass over us, the winds drop at the center then clock all the way around to the southwest or west before the next system-usually a low- approaches.
If you can recognize or sense or simply repeat the weatherman/woman’s drone about high and lows, you don’t really need to know a lot more to understand most Maine weather. Highs bring bright weather, while lows are stormy and bring rain or snow depending on their track (which, remember, are steered by the location of the jet stream). Lows that pass to the north of the coast-say across southern Canada-suck in air and moisture off the Gulf of Maine and bring rain. Lows that travel along the coast generally bring tons of snow. But the point is lows suck while highs are bright and shiny.
This weekend’s storm was the first snorting good northeasterly gale of the year, and it was a complex storm, so we won’t Monday morning quarterback the play-by-play action. The point is that the track of the storm was across the Gulf of Maine where a giant low sucked in a great gulp of cold northeast air that met the warmer air in spinning around the low and began dumping its load of precipitation as snow, freezing rain and sleet depending on your own local temperature conditions during the early part of New Year’s weekend, canceling ferries and laying to waste the best laid plans of millions of eastern travelers-who were not helped by the addition of a terrorist threat or two. It was a corker of a northeasterly, in other words.
No matter the level in the glass, nor the compass direction of the wind, the bottom line of winter weather along the coast of Maine is that the wind will blow and blow and blow-nearly all the time. The wind will sting your face, cancel ferries and school and take your breath away-over and over again. Perhaps the only Mainers comforted by winter weather may be those generating their own electricity-pennies from heaven-turning the curse of the winter winds into light and heat.
Philip Conkling is the president of the Island Institute.