By Richard S. Lenfest
342-3179

Town office hours are Monday, 1-6 p.m.; Tuesday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. and 6-9 p.m.; and Wednesday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. The board of selectmen meets Tuesdays, 7-9 p.m.

The town office phone number is 342-5722 and the fax number is 342-2252. Code enforcement hours are 7-9 p.m. Tuesdays. The phone number is 342-3179. Availability is by appointment most of the time.

The Planning Board meets Thursday, Feb. 11 at 7 p.m.

The Belmont republican Caucus will be Wednesday, Feb. 10 at 6:30 p.m. at the Community Room of the Town Office.

The Belmont Fire department still has smoke detectors available for Belmont residents that need one. Call Maxine Harford at 342-5192 for information.

The U.S. Census for 2010 has already started in the state of Alaska. In the remote villages, it is being done by dogsled, the only means of transportation to be able to reach many of these locations reliably in the winter. Be aware that the census may be another tool that is used as a scam. The U.S. Census will not contact you by email. Report any such message to local law enforcement.

You are required to give only the most basic information; i.e. the number of people living in your home, etc. Ask for identification. You will not be asked for personal and/or financial information such as social Security numbers, etc.

The Belmont Town Office will be closed Monday, Feb. 15 in observance of the President's Day holiday. I recorded another 3.5 inches of flurries, fluff that didn't require shoveling or roof raking-the good kind of snow. Meanwhile, primarily south of the Mason-Dixon Line, they are getting plastered again, and many areas in the Mid-Atlantic states will have much more snow on the ground than we do, or that is available for the Olympics on some of the slopes close to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. They are having to truck snow in for some of the events!

January produced 31.875 inches of snow, 1.5 inches more than 2009, with 1.65 inches of rain, and combined rain and melted precipitation of 4.8375 inches, another in our long series of primarily wet months. A high of 45 degrees was recorded on Jan. 25, after a low of -12 on Jan. 23. Ten days reached 0 degrees or below compared to 14 days in 2009. In 2009, 5 days dropped to -20 or below with none in 2010. 2010 averaged some 5 to 5.5 degrees above the normal in Bangor compared to 2009, which was the 5th coldest winter on record. We are just a tad behind the 106-inch snowfall pace of the 2009 season.

As many if you that read this column from week to week know, it has been filled with weather, wildlife and historic information to keep the column interesting and attract readers because Belmont tends to be a very quiet, private community without, for the most part, those assets that create news; a large church, library or school. I have studied meteorology and for the past fifty-three years, dating to March of 1957, kept track mentally of our winter weather in New England, it's fluctuations and vagaries. Don Kent and Bruce Schwoegler could be considered to be my mentors. Don Kent, through many of his years at WBZ radio and Channel 4 in Boston was the best, and was responsible for creating the radio and TV broadcasted meteorology and forecasting, as we know it today.

The information I provide is backed by specific events and can be corroborated by U.S. Geological Survey records from Bangor, Portland, Caribou or Gray, ME, and includes both the heat and cold. In the newspaper and on radio/TV news programs and in magazines etc., we hear first of global warming, and then of global cooling! Who is right, and/or is there some of both? I can just about guarantee that the excellent recordkeeping of the U.S. Weather Bureau and the U.S. Geological Survey are used very little, if at all.

I was dismayed to read an article on page B6 of the Feb. 3rd Journal entitled "Oddball weather is a ‘wake-up call'." We have not been experiencing anything that I have not seen in the past fifty-three years. Yes, there is global warming and there is also cooling of the atmosphere and climate. Most of our weather is controlled by the jet streams that flow around the Earth at elevation and which change course on a daily basis. The jet streams are not controlled by global warming, nor are it the Pacific Currents that cause either the El Nino or El Ninia effects. The jet streams do, however, interact with arctic cold or warm ocean currents to create extremes of weather; heat in one location while it is cold somewhere else.

The winter of 2010 is no different. Pacific currents are helping to influence West Coast weather. The jet stream dipped south, and our neighbors that are snowbirds froze in the Southland. Enough warm air from the Gulf of Mexico, at high elevation, can give us rain or ice when it is below freezing. 40-degree water in the Gulf of Maine becomes a coastal front that gives some of us rain, while it snows elsewhere. When the jet stream is the boundary between extremes of heat and cold, there are huge storms and often tornados.

Most weather is cyclical and comes in periods of heat, cold, drought and wet weather, often for years at a time. Locally, the late 1900s and 2000s were dry. The Ducktrap River was low right through October for several years and the salmon run couldn't materialize for spawning. Two years with no redds (nests) at that time resulted in no redds in 2006 and 07, the end if a five year cycle, despite plentiful rain. We are now in a wet pattern that is now in it's 7th year, starting in the autumn of 2003. There are periods of low snow; then, we get buried for several years as we are now. Since the winter of 1992 or 1993, snowfall records have been established all over Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine, and at the same time there have been open or barren snow seasons mixed in. Even Boston has broken the century mark with 106 inches or so.

We are fortunate that most winters are half and half, so to speak. If you remember November and December of 1989, I cannot imagine the cold we might have had from January through February of 1990, the jet stream changed mid-season and saved us from what could have been a record cold winter and it turned out warmer than normal in the end.

To be continued another week!