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Ice-In 2019

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December 2nd through 8th

Last week started with the air crisp, the sun shining, the lake liquid, and the knottlane drone making tiny little holes in the sky above the North end of the lake. Nobody skied. Ditto for swimming. Double ditto for Rafto. There was more ice on the South end. The government islands were surrounded, the named islands were connected, and the ski run between Anthony and Cleopatra was right out. Not that anyone should ever do that run. It's somewhat dangerous, forbidden by law, and really fun. On the hot days in August you can almost see the corn growing. The wee hours of Wednesday were just like that only with December replacing August, cold replacing hot, and ice replacing corn. Open holes remained. The groundwater is very high. Some speculated that this makes the lake's springs more active than is normal and the welling up of this spring water was keeping the holes open. The sun probably helped with the ice-in delay, too. What ever the reason, the open holes pushed ice-in back from Wednesday, to Thursday, to Friday. On Friday, December 6th, the open water that had dotted the lake succumbed to the season. There was also sun. Congratulations to this year's ice-in contest winners! Weather permitting, we'll be mailing out your checks today. And overnight, a light snow. The light snow didn't help with the roads. They were bad before the dusting, they remained poor after. Knott Lane is passable. There's packed snow and ice, but it's mostly squirrel free. All the previous week's snow mixed with the sun to produce some truly impressive displays of iciclerey. Ice-in 2019 occurred 2 days before the previous year's ice-in. That's 2 days worse for those of us that prefer a more liquid lake, but still much better than a November ice-in (see 2013 and 2014.) The time lapse movie of this year's ice-in wasn't as good as we had hoped due to the near instantaneous nature of the event. I'll try to get it posted before I forget to post it. Lucerne now has 6 weeks to firm up and collect snow for the 29th Annual Lake Lucerne Bottle Rocket War. The time lapse of the fort building will be much better.<br><br>-Nemo hasn't slipped and fallen yet, but it's been a close thing.

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