A great sigh could be heard throughout the northwoods last Monday morning. We got more snow. It's been a long Winter.

The sighs could have been directed to the few cubes of ice still covering the lake too.

It got better. The ice went out by the end of the week. It was as if a great weight was lifted from the mood of the area. Huzzah!

A few days after ice out, when we were pretty sure the lake would not re-freeze (you can't be too careful this year, it's been a long Winter), the College of Loons gathered on the north end of the lake, traditionally killed a bottle of sake, shared stories of pinched fingers and occasionally punctuated those stories with slurred shouts of ho-de-la-de-ka-de (phonetically "the ice is out" in Japanese).

Rain. We got us some. I was personally hoping for more than the 0.6 inches that fell but more is on the way this week and streams are still flowing into the lake. We are currently at 27 inches below the nail. That's up over an inch and a half from last week. Yay!

After the snow melted and the rain fell it got greener out.

There were boats on the lake by the weekend. Not a lot of boats and no skiers, but the sight of the floating craft was a sure sign that this Winter is finally over. Sure, you can make a case that Winter is laying dormant just under the lake like some sort of Jason Voorhees wanna be. The current forecast of snow next Friday morning would seem to confirm this Winter's undead nature. Still, any snow we get won't last the day and there's boats on the lake. Plus the lake is going up! We seem to be gaining over an inch every 7 days. With all the rain and snow (**sigh**) predicted this week that trend could continue.

-Nemo, using modified Ohio Players song lyrics as page titles since 2014                                                           Previous   Next