Hot and Rising

June 20th through 26th
Last week, the days were hot, clear, and flat watered. The nights were populated with large amounts of rain. "How much rain?", you ask. The final storm on Saturday night (1.5 inches) brings the total for the week close to a quarter of a foot. The creeks, streams, and other inflows are full. All that rain has pushed the lake level up to 1.5 inches below the nail. Lake Lucerne has not been this high since October of 2005. Huzzah! The expanding water is not without its own peril. Piers that were once thought to be safe from the rising water are finding themselves in danger of being covered over with lake. Looking like artifacts from an Escher painting, stairs that were used during the last several years to get down to the lake now dot the shoreline. Construction projects continue on Knott Lane. It's been interesting watching a future basement metamorphize into... a nice, house covered pool! Not sure if the cribbing will be eventually removed or be part of a giant, pool side Jenga game. Plants seem to be loving the rain and hot. Bugs also seem to be loving the weather. The biting gnats are the worst ever. Birds also seem to be loving the weather and, some of them, the fishing on the North end of the lake. This guy is not a plant, nor a bug, nor a bird. He was swimming around the Northwest corner of the lake looking sort of like a muskrat, but the tail looked wrong. It could have been a river otter, but the body was a little wrong. I don't think woodchucks swim as well as this guy did. What ever it was, it seemed to be loving the weather. Around mid-week, the knottlane drone was sent up a few times to take a higher look around. A few hundred feet up, lawns don't have that "Need to be mowed" look they have at ground level. The lake in front of Water's Edge was delightfully flat for last week's water show. The crowd was pretty good for the first non-canceled show of the year. The show was pretty good, too. At the end of last week, the waning Strawberry Moon signaled an end of the hot weather. The forecast called for cooler, dryer weather for awhile. The water temperature is 75 F. Aside from some odd bugs, blue is not a skin color of local swimmers. Smurfism is a thing of the past! Lightning strikes are a thing of the now! On Saturday night, just as bar night ended, a bolt of white exploded a tree on the northeast side of the lake. We'll try to get a picture or two of the blowed-up hemlock sometime this week.<br><br>-Nemo, your up north source for blue bug pictures and Escher references.