The experts are saying we have a La Niña inspired winter on the way, thanks to warmer than average surface temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific. La Niña winters often mean warmer than average temperatures across the southern U.S. and cooler than average temperatures across the northern U.S. I will only add that we have a wasp nest in our yard that is TWENTY-FIVE FEET above the ground!

So as a practitioner of both scientific prediction models, I strongly recommend that you batten down the hatches and fix your broken roof rake. I share this despite the fact that we are a full week into October and Western Maine has yet to experience a hint of frost. Crazy. It has been a strange year complete with odd weather as well as uncommon celestial phenomena. I digress but for some reason we saved our eclipse glasses in the junk drawer. I really ought to take a break from the wood and mail them to Spain, but I’d have to Google “Postal Mailbox Holder” in Espanol.

Anyway, check out the article below printed in the December 31,1896, edition of the RANGELEY LAKES newspaper. It shares some interesting recollections of the local elders at the time. Interestingly, it closes with a bit of wisdom regarding the topic of climate change, Circa 1896.

Whether it’s unseasonably warm or the frost is on the pumpkin when you read this, get that wood stacked because those bees know that the snows going to be deeper than the horse pucky being spewed in this election and La Niña waits for no one, Compadre!

(The original text slightly redacted for space reasons).

The Wonderful and Extraordinary are Seldom Forgotten

By S. H. McCollister.

The aged delight to tell how it used to be when they were young. The cold of winter and the heat of summer, the snows and rains, the whirlwinds and earthquakes, the thunder and lightning, the accidents, and escapes were far more remarkable than any in modern days. The stories of our sires thrill the hearts of grandchildren as they tell how they came into the woods and settled, living in log huts and raising their corn among the stumps and carrying it to mill on horseback far off through the forests before there were any roads save the trails whose course was marked by spotted trees.

Shoveling out a country lane after a blizzard. Rangeley Lakes

Oh, the bears and wolves that used to chase them! Oh, these wild creatures frequently would render the nights hideous! And the snowstorms are not to be matched anymore! Why, the drifts were like mountains and often buried camps out of sight so that the indwellers would have to dig for days before they could get any light! The hailstorms of that old time were just terrific. The stones were often as large as hens’ eggs and would smash the glass where there was any exposed and drive all living creatures under shelter less it destroys them.

The eclipses of eighty or a hundred years ago were just surprising! These were want to render the day so dark at noon as to set the dogs howling and the cats yawling, inducing the birds to sing their vespers and the fowls to rush for their roosts. The great frosts of 1813-14 were described not long since by a veteran who said that the “cold was so intense as to freeze up everything here in the north, even the voices of men, the report of guns, and the blasts of trumpets, which did not thaw out for a long while.”

Old fashioned Maine winter. Rangeley Lakes

Sydney Smith describes the same summer as being so hot that a man in the middle of the day, just to endure the heat, was forced to take off his flesh and sit in his bones. May 17th, 1780, and June 17th, 1804, are frequently mentioned as dubious days. The darkness came on about ten o ’clock, causing the cattle to seek the barnyards. Candles were lit in the houses. Owls hooted as though it were midnight. The year of 1833 is memorable for its marvelous display of shooting stars. During its winter, several nights were tendered brilliant by meteors flying in all directions, as though the heavens were “waging fearful battles.”

Many were frightened and felt that surely the world was fast coming to an end. The red snow of the same year, occasioned by the northern lights streaming its zenith from all points of the compass, will long be remembered, and described as startling. Boys and girls did not care to be out upon the ice, or sliding down hill, while the “Lumanae Boreale” was staining the snow scarlet, as if the very elements were shedding blood.

Are not just as wonderful phenomena taking place now-a-days as ever hereto fore? Some are declaring that it is an old-fashioned winter, just like one fifty or sixty years’ ago when December was so severely cold that the ice froze two and three feet thick on the lakes and in the rivers; and when March came in like a lion, how the heavens did let fall the snow! It was piled up in the roads and streets! In many of the rural towns as it was a few weeks ago. The present winter is likely to be one that will be quoted as remarkable in the years to come.

The blizzard of 1888 is already spoken of as the most remarkable winter occurrence that has ever visited New England. It seems that a good share of our land was so deeply buried in snow that it questions if the suns of summer would give forth a sufficient heat to bare the meadows. When we have a mild winter, it is natural to infer that our climate is becoming warmer and we attempt to account for the change by the cutting off of the forests, tilling the soil, and the probable nearer approach of the Gulf Stream to our shores.

But let a winter like the present come upon us and our logic is prone to an entirely different conclusion. If the Pilgrim Fathers did nearly freeze to death the first winter they spent on Cape Cod, we are not ready to admit from any changes since, that Plymouth Rock can be a very hot place in the present season. The old people of the next generation will no doubt have wonderful stories to relate to the young people about new natural phenomena.

Have a great week and be sure to make some great Maine History of your own!