Maine's tourism industry suffering due to cooler, wetter, weather

Article from UK Daily Telegraph that Autumn is arriving early:
Autumn begins early after a washout August
By Aislinn Simpson
Last Updated: 3:01pm BST 12/08/2008
Autumn looks to be arriving early with traditional harbingers such as blackberries and russet-tinted leaves already appearing around the country.
Forecasters warn that the rest of the summer is set to be a washout and hopes of an Indian summer are now fading.
Such wet conditions, combined with warmer average temperatures brought about by climate change, confuse plants into thinking that Keats’s season of “mists and mellow fruitfulness” has already arrived.
Hedgerows are already studded with ripe blackberries and mushrooms are springing up in the woods, more than a month ahead of the official start of autumn, the September 23 equinox.
At the Westonbirt National Arboretum in Gloucestershire and the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, southwest London, trees such as Beeches and Spindles are already on the turn.
Owen Davies, of the Forestry Commission which runs Westonbirt, said leaves begin to turn as temperatures drop, but added the wet weather could also be blamed for breeding diseases that discolour leaves.
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“The leaf is the food factory of the tree and so as the nights draw in and the temperatures start to fall, the tree realises autumn is approaching,” he said.
“Since trees do not grow during this period, the factory closes down and the leaves begin to die.”
Travel agents said the disappointing weather has generated an increase of up to 30 per cent in bookings, as Britons fly away in search of sunshine.
“There’s always an element of this in August but this year, people are clearly desperate to get away from the rain,” said Sean Tipton, of the Association of British Travel Agents.
Ian Johnson, of the National Farmers Union, said the early arrivals showed that summer in the traditional sense is no longer.
“The seasons seem to be extending – you get a spring/summer for two months and then you’re right into autumn for three or four months,” he said.
Despite their ability to adapt to the changing climate, he said, farmers are now praying for a brief let up in the deluge.
“They really do need a sustained period of sunshine now,” he said. “It’s frustrating for them having to watch their crops rotting in the fields with all this rain.
“A bit of good weather is long overdue.”
Jonathan Powell, senior weather forecaster at Positive Weather Solutions, said that while there could still be a few brighter days, on the whole “that really is it for summer 2008”.
“Our attention is turning to September and the hope of a last gasp, but even that now is looking distinctly unfavourable, with yet again the Atlantic considerably influencing our weather,” he said.
Oh dear the sun controls the weather

It is a rather cool, wet summer up here in Maine. Very fitting considering it is following a fantastic long winter with plenty of snow! I have already hung up my wakeboard for the summer and am looking forward to another nice winter for snowboarding. I plan on doing some quality hiking, camping, and 4wheeling before fall sets in with hunting season. I love this state! I am on vacation year round.

I spent the last two weeks of July in the Muskoka region of Ontario. Not a single day above 75F (24C). Most days were in the mid 60’s to low 70’s and it was mostly cloudy with showers.
Spent a few days in Toronto and Ottawa, where it was about 10F warmer and (Toronto especially) a bit muggier. Still lots of clouds and showers.
I had a great time at the lake all the same. Everybody else was whining about the cool, wet summer weather! The nice part was that it wasn’t muggy. I guess I was more used to that kind of weather being from the PNW.
I haven’t been there since the early 1990’s and I recall it being much warmer, but memories are fuzzy things.

FatBigot: Your hired your credentials seem perfect for the job, but I get to fly the personal jet, and drive the limo.
Oh and we need a big boat to that runs in bio Diesel, I get to drive that to O.K.?

Terry: Sorry to hear about your washed out trip to Cornwall, but (living here) I can confirm it; this is the wettest summer I can remember, and is really going to damage our tourist industry. Truro is packed with doggy, depressed-looking families looking for something to do… Right now we have a Force 9 Westerly and driving rain; more like end of September than mid-August.
What I call the “low pressure cannon” which usually feeds us a classic low (warm front+cold front) every 2-3 days across the Atlantic in the early Spring and Autumn has been working overtime for the 3 weeks or so, and looks like it’s going to continue;
http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/coast/pressure/
I’m guessing this is some kind of teleconnection with La Nina?
I can’t see how the Telegraph can possibly simultaneously blame the leaf-fall on ‘climate change’ and falling temperatures! But I can confirm that trees are getting hit hard by fungal diseases this year because of the damp. My sycamores have all gone brown early from it, and we’ve suddenly lost an elm to Dutch Elm Disease which has been absent for a decade. But on the plus side we’ve got the best (and earliest) apples we’ve had for years.

De facto climatic autumn began on or around July 19th in many areas of the Far West. Even in the midst of our short climatic summer, the normal zonal pattern never took hold strongly. Instead, we had multiple episodes on meridional flow, including the most dramatic instance at the Solstice, where a cold pool intruded into a stagnation scenario (which had given some record high temps along the coast) triggering a massive outbreak of moisture starved thunderstorms, resulting in the now infamous California fire crisis. In Jobian fashion, the smoke from the fires hindered insolation significantly for over one month, seriously setting back this year’s wine grape crop. I hope this is not a precursor to even worse things, but fear it may be.

That what one gets when basing an industry on something which is unpredictable.

Noa said:

Cool summer – a normal nature’s cycle, just like bad harvest, good harvest. But I see a disturbing pattern here – because Artic [sic] and Antarctic plus Greenland ice is melting at an alarming rate, the cold water and the cold air created is cooling the atmosphere… that’s temporary. After all the ice is gonbe [sic], there will be a huge unprecedented warming with tewmps [sic] into way over 100s every summer anywhere on Earth. Mark my words in your memory and check it out in 10-20 years.

Umm, what melting are you talking about? Nothing is melting at an alarming rate. Greenland is gaining overall mass while melting a little around the edges, at least as of last year, probably gaining all around this year. The Antarctic has been gaining mass for many years, the ice has been so bad in the surrounding oceans that normal shipping has had major problems.
The current cooling in the Northern Hemisphere has nothing to do with ice melting anywhere, but due to the Pacific Ocean flipping to a cool phase, as it does every few decades, then back to a warm phase, etc…