“Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.”
John Ruskin, art patron, watercolorist, prominent social thinker and philanthropist of the Victorian era, wrote these words decades ago and his observation still holds true today. Anyone who has lived in the state of Maine for a full year knows that they can experience ALL the weather’s many temperaments — sometimes within a very short period.
We can agree that our summers are sublime and we know how to make the most of them. For those of us who stick it out here year-round though, to function optimally we have to be prepared. This formula includes proper cold-weather gear, Vitamin D, and creative ways to amuse ourselves when the sun hides for days. Above all, to survive the winter, we must keep our sense of humor.
But for 2019, it was the July heat and the October winds that will be remembered most.
For those of us who had them, air conditioners were powered up during those dog-days in July, a record-breaking month for warm temperatures. Then just three months later, thousands of Mainers lost their electricity for days, even for as long as a week and a half, during a cluster of rain and wind storms within two weeks’ time.
To give some overall perspective, the average temperature for the year (recorded in Portland) was 46.9 degrees, a mere 0.4 degrees above normal and the coolest annual average temperature since 2014. (The warmest years were 2010 and 2012 with 49.2-degree averages and the coldest was in 1962 with an average 43.3 degrees.) That said, 17 warm records were set or tied in Maine in 2019 vs. 7 cold records.
As far as climate change, temperatures were about 0.5 degree above average for the year locally. Globally, however, it has been the second or third warmest year ever (numbers are still being crunched at this time).
Meanwhile, weather patterns in October brought strong winds to the area, snapping utility lines and and causing widespread power outages as winds reached gusts of 62 mph on Oct. 17.
On this page below are more highlights, graphs and statistics about Maine’s 2019 weather, brought to you by experts who get paid to analyze, hypothesize and watch the weather.
As Meteorologist Mallory Brooke, head of her own weather forecasting business Nor’easter Weather Consulting LLC, reported, “I consider 2019 a ‘status quo’ year — nothing too extreme, but not too boring.”
Writer and editor Karen Schneider has been a regular contributor to the Lewiston Sun Journal for over 23 years. Contact her at iwrite33@comcast.net.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
