CARIBOU, Maine — When Carolyn Shaw of Houlton got home from work late on Thursday evening, the last thing she wanted to do was look in her basement.
“I just knew what I was going to see down there,” she said Friday. “It had been raining most of the day, and I was sitting at work listening to people talk about dreading going home and finding their basements full of water. Sure enough, I had about an inch or two of water in my own basement when I got home.”
Steady rainfall and moderate temperatures in Aroostook County on Thursday helped flood a number of basements, but it had little impact on levels in local waterways, according to the National Weather Service in Caribou.
Victor Nouhan, meteorologist at the NWS office in Caribou, said Friday that the most rain, 2.52 inches, fell in Oxbow, while 2.05 inches was recorded in Houlton. Monticello picked up 1.83 inches, and Caribou saw 0.91 inches. Presque Isle recorded 0.90 inches, while 0.73 inches fell in Frenchville.
The temperature rose to 39 degrees in Caribou on Thursday, which was 20 degrees above normal. It was 47 degrees in Houlton, which was 25 degrees above the normal value and just three degrees below the record temperature of 50 degrees set in 1996. Frenchville recorded a temperature of 37 degrees, which was 20 degrees above the normal value of 17 degrees.
“The rain really didn’t have much of an impact on our rivers, lakes and streams,” he said. “It also didn’t impact our snowpack all that much, because the snowpack just really absorbed it.”
He said that the rain was only able to penetrate the top ten inches of the snowpack, which currently is about 30 inches deep.
It was a different story in central Maine, however.
“Water levels did rise in parts of the Penobscot River and the Piscataquis River,” he said. “Again, however, they did not rise too significantly.”
According to the weather service, the temperature of the snowpack stayed between 21 and 24 degrees on Thursday. The snowpack must reach 32 degrees in order for snowmelt and runoff to begin. Along the coast and pockets of western Maine, however, the snowpack temperature ranged from 31.9 to 32 degrees.
Thus far, 101.9 inches of snow has fallen at Caribou since the winter season began, according to the weather service.
