Melt-ish

Last week started well, but this time of year is delicate. The last two Horsemen of the Snowpocalypse, Zombie Winter and Silenced Spring, are imminent and ever-present perils faced by the lake. We had some cold nights with one going down to 19°F, but Spring remained noisy and un-dead Winter remained just plain dead Winter.

Much of the Spring noise was the sound of melt water rushing into the lake. The lake level is going up.

In addition to the level going up, if the lawn puddles get any bigger, Lake Lucerne will get larger.

While Lake Lucerne is still ice covered, we were unsure about other area lakes. The drone was launched to check the state of other bodies of water.

Lake Metonga usually holds on to its ice as long as Lucerne. This year is no exception. Lake Metonga is ice covered.

Devils Lake, just to the East of Lucerne, is still frozen.

Same with Wabikon and Riley. I would expect them to ice-out in a week or two, but you never know.

It was further noted that the snow forts of January are especially gone.

The maples ran all week. The sugar content of the sap is falling. It is currently running 50 or 60 gallons of sap to 1 gallon of syrup.

At the start of last week, walkers and tracked vehicles were the rule in the tapping fields.

Near the end of the week, the warmer weather exposed much of the forest floor of the sugarbush.

As the snow disappeared it was also noted that the pumpkins of October are especially flat.

By the weekend, the wheeled could make it to the taps.

The trees really started to leak on the weekend. The evening was largely spent rushing empty jugs to those collecting the sap.

And then rushing the collected sap to the cookers on Knott Lane.

Eventually the boiled down sap became syrup and was rushed through a plate filter and into bottles.

The ice is starting to pull away from the shore and almost all the snow lately is rain. There's a growing feeling that permeated the northwoods that ice-out, golf, and an end to tapping is just a week or two away. Most dare not speak of such things for fear of jinxing it. The last report has the ice at 14 inches with the top 3 or 4 inches being very soft. That could carry ice-out close to two weeks away unless we get lots of warm and rain (sooner ice-out, huzzah!) or a visit or two from a Snowpocalyptic Horseman (May ice-out, Boo!). All will be made as clear as the water of Lake Lucerne in just a few weeks.

-Nemo's cautiously hopeful.

Melt-ish

March 30th through April 5th, 2020