20°F Below Normal

All the pothole puddles on Knott Lane also froze.

Then came the snow.

The first snow event totaled 4.5 inches and whited up the pines quite nicely.

It was at this point that many bowed to their new Winter master.

While the entire lake shore has been wintered up, the lake itself remains mostly ice free.

Later in the week, the snow turned to rain, then back into snow, then back into rain. By the time it ended, the lake was 0.75 inches deeper and the shore was 0.75 inches wetter.

The rain took much of the snow from the lane only to have it replaced later by a weekend dusting.

The lake temperature is falling. If this weather continues, it'll be an early ice-in.

Somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
the band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
and somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
but there is no joy on Knott Lane — the raft still needs to be taken out.

At the bar, much of this week was spent finishing the interior of the off deck video game shack. An important lesson that should be passed on involves the roller type to use with a "paint stick". A paint stick looks sort of like a giant syringe with a roller replacing the needle. Paint is sucked up into its handle and, when pressure is applied to the plunger, the paint flows into the roller and is applied to the surface. I can't stress the importance of being sure to use a roller with interior perforations. Paint will not flow through a solid cardboard tube and as the pressure builds the result is an explosion of paint from the roller's sides which will coat floors, walls, and wife with shrapnel of color. After Mrs Nemo stopped crying, we cleaned it up and used a manual paint roller.