Deep Winter Redux

February 8th through 14th
The week before last was pretty mild. Last week was not. It was overcast half the time, clear the other half, and extremely cold through both halves. When the sun was out, it gave not a whisper of warmth, which was fine. We had hats after all. The Bottle Rocket War forts turned 2 weeks old last Saturday. The mild-extreme-mild-extreme Winter has aged them faster than past forts. In addition to acute cold, the lake area had extraordinary winds. The wind streamed new snow over the landscape. It made the roads interesting. The sub-zero cold kept the crowds down at Ski Brule. As you might imagine, the lines for the lifts were not very long. The snow was nice and groomed. The air was a little frostbitey. By the weekend, the winds died down and we were good to go fly around the pines on the North end of the lake. Despite wicked cold, the new drone performed well. In case you were wondering, Devils Lake was still frozen. Lake Wabikon was still ice-covered, too. Lake Lucerne is not accepting boats at this time. On Sunday, we drilled a hole in the ice to check its thickness. Huzzah! Fourteen inches is a little thin for this time of year. Could be an early ice-out. The underwater camera took its first dive of the year. The entire 14 inches of ice is clear (un-rotten), so maybe ice-out isn't just around the corner. Didn't see any fish under the ice, but we didn't look very hard. The cold had the webcam acting a little squirrelly around mid-week. It's better now. The cookers were quiet for now, but we're one week closer to tree tapping. We think that last week will be the final week of Deep Winter. Forecasts are predicting the third sub-season of Winter, Thaw, to start in the next day or so. If the predictions hold, we'll get the ice-out contest up some time this week.<br><br>-Nemo, 30 runs and no broken bones. Yay.