By Gary Rayno, Union Leader

Yesterday’s snow in Concord was just enough to slide this winter into second place on the all-time snowfall list for New Hampshire since records have been kept, 115.2 inches, leaving us 6.8 inches short of the record of 122 inches, set in 1873-74. See in this story the listing of the top 10 snowiest winters, most all in the 1800s.

By Matt Sutkoski, Burlington Free Press

Count northern Vermont’s sugar maples among those wallowing in the winter blahs. Sugaring season across the state is dawdling, because continuous cold temperatures are keeping the sap from flowing out of maple trees and into the evaporators Vermont’s sugar makers use to create syrup.  Friday through Sunday is Vermont Maple Open House Weekend, when the public is invited to visit sugarhouses to see how syrup is made and sample the products. Despite the cold, there will be enough syrup to go around. Still, farmers wish the sap flow from maples would pick up the pace.

“It’s just barely dripping, if that. It’s off to a very slow start in our bush,” said Virginia Fleury of Fleury’s Maple Hill Farm in Berkshire. Like most syrup producers, Fleury is far from ready to write off the season. “We can make quite a bit in April if the weather comes off right. The problem is, in past years it warmed up rather quickly. The minute it hits 60 or 65 degrees, you might as well forget it,” she said. Read full story here.

Icecap Note: Just last summer environmentalists and alarmist professors from the region met at Mount Washington to predict the north country would be facing major economic impacts due to lack of snow affecting the winter sports industry and global warming leading to the demise of the maple trees that are at the heart of Vermont’s famous maple syrup industry and fall foliage tourism. So what happens, Burlington and the mountains have a record winter snowfall (December through February) and many areas are pushing all time seasonal snow records. Maple trees will not need a passport to move to Canada as the cyclical changes in the Pacific and the quiet sun ensure we return to the climate of the 1960s and maybe worse.