Last week started out warm (for this time of year) and wet. If you managed to avoid a weather forecast, you'd have thought that the downhill skiing season was over, tapping season was early, and a March ice-out was a sure thing.
It rained! By Tuesday, the lake was a quarter of an inch deeper not including the very active watershed.
The maples cut loose. The first sap runs of the year are generally a gradual thing. They usually start off slowly, crest over the tops of the buckets two or three weeks later, and then end with the budding. This year started off by going full April on us.
With predictions of the return of Deep Winter, it was a race to get the sap out of the woods before it froze.
The brief taste of Spring is now a fading memory. Deep Winter is back. The small, shallow puddles on the top of the lake ice have refroze. The days and the nights are filled with the groaning sound of building lake ice. If you have never heard it before, it sounds a little like whale song. It sounds like the DNR has stocked the lake with a pod of humpbacks, especially at night. We spent too much time mining pucks of sap ice from the woods to get a lake ice depth check last week. We'll be sure to get one this week.
-Nemo is considering adding June dates to this year's ice-out contest.
