Deep Winter's End Week

February 12th through 18th

Last week started off cold, as did the week before, and the week before that, and most of the weeks going back to last year. That changed as the week progressed. Sub-zero mornings morphed into single digit mornings. Single digit highs rose to the teens and twenties. It may not be the start of Thaw, but it clearly was the end of Deep Winter.

Snowmobiles peaked last week both on trail and on not-trail. If the area does not get more snow soon, watch for those numbers to plummet.

A few days last week went above freezing. Then the air dropped back down to well below frosty. This anti-thaw cycle turned Knott Lane into a treacherous sheet of ice with a delightful dusting of snow on top.

Early in the week, we made a hole in the lake to check the ice thickness. During the process, there were a few breaks taken.

It's not yet quite a yard deep, but 24.5 inches is still an impressive amount of ice. It seems especially thick when manually punching a hole through it.

The LLAA webcam at Water's Edge was up for the entire time last week. The knottlane webcam not so much. The knottlane camera has been outdoors and functioning since April of 2008 until last Friday when a catastrophic shift of its mount caused an internal power interruption. It was taken inside, disassembled, debugged, cleaned, and reassembled. It'll be back on its perch soon.

With the maple syruping season drawing ever closer, it was determined that now was the time to put the feet back on the ATV. There was surprisingly little cursing and just a few injuries.

By the end of last week, there was a feeling that the weather was no longer stuck in the snow drifts of mid-January. The week had started off with sub-zero mornings, but by week's end you could take off your hat for a few minutes and not have to worry about your ears freezing off. Huzzah! We'll have the Annual Lake Lucerne Ice-Out contest up in the next week or two.<br><br>-Nemo located his tapping hammer and is in standby mode.