Deep Winter II

January 1st through 7th

Last week started out bone chillingly cold. This was the second week in a row of sub-zero highs, icy winds, and sunlight that held no warmth. It is January, so this was not completely unexpected. The extreme cold is not without its charms. Downhill ski runs are not so crowded, hot chocolate somehow tastes even better, and the wait times to get a tennis court at Cardinal Park are way down.

The cold has had a very positive effect on the lake ice. At 13.5 inches, it's on pace to approach 2 feet by the end of the month and a yard thick by March. No one skied.

The ice coming off the bar's roof is over a yard long.

It was too cold and windy to put a UAV up, but that's never stopped us before. Many, if not most, snowmobiles have heated handlebars. It'd be nice if the drone's control joysticks had the same feature.

A friendly lake association requested some Winter aerials of Lake Metonga, so we made some tiny holes in the sky over Crandon to get them. Not a lot of ice fishing shacks yet.

No ice fishing shacks on Clear Lake either, and the buoys for Footstock have yet to be placed on Lake Peshtigo.

Looking down at the East side of the lake has us thinking that speeding along Lake Lucerne Dive is a bad idea.

Speeding down Knott Lane is not a good idea either.

The full moon combined with the snow cover turned night into a reasonable facsimile of day. It was bright enough to golf the front 9 at Nicolet, but we didn't. Partly because we didn't have the time, but mostly because we're not insane.

When you're looking down the lake and take a deep breath of fresh air only to have one or both nostrils freeze shut, you know you're in the sub-season of Deep Winter. We hate when that happens. The end of the frigid is in sight though. Weather forecasts are predicting highs well above zero followed by much needed snow just in time for the annual Lake Lucerne Bottle Rocket War. Fort building should start on Thursday, with the arrival of the white stuff, and continue right up until the first fuses are lit at around 7:00 on Saturday (January 13th). The bar will be opened just before war time for those that would rather watch from a warm distance than endure explosions behind ablative snow armor.<br><br><br>-Nemo, behind ablative snow armor, nostrils wide shut.