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	February 13th through 19th, 2023

Thaw continued its springward march last week. The snow piles were shrinking, there were rumors of grass patches emerging, and we got our first good rain of the year.

But first the hideous news. We have Malort at the bar again. We are so sorry.

The rain mostly fell early Wednesday morning. We got just over a half an inch. No rain gauges were harmed during the freezing period that followed.

Almost all the snow on the lake has been drowned. The snow forts from the bottle rocket war have seen better days.

Then it snowed. This was more a function of the plummeting air temperature squeezing the moisture from the air than any actual storm activity.

On top of many of the melting snow piles, were plow injured mailboxes.

We helped with the rehab of one such box on Westshore Drive.

It wasn't so much damaged as it was shook-up. After a short recuperation, it was judged good enough to be released back into the wild.

There's been a huge up-tick of activity in the eagle nest on Metonga. Later in the week, it looked like camera was adjusted to see more of the nest.

The wild turkeys around the bar were very active and well lit during much of last week.

The bar's squirrels remained fat and tetchy.

The corpulent little crime balls can <a href='/WeeklySummaryPages/2022/1106/SquirrelFacts.html' class ='defaultlink2' target='_blank'> empty a feeder of seeds</a> in a day, after which they work on the suet.

At the start of last week, a little of the ornamentation on the forts was still identifiable.

By the end of the week, the red orbs were just another lump of ice on the lake.

The north's fort was in even worse shape with its thinning wind wall and collapsed main wall.

Both forts are just another rain or deep snow event away from completely disappearing.

The last task of the week was to check the thickness of the hard, cold ice covering Lucerne.

It took more turns of the auger than we had thought to get through.

Huzzah!

There's 14 inches of very good ice between us and the first ski runs. That's up from last week, but still a little less than is normal for this time of year.

An underwater camera was lowered into the fresh hole to check the underside of the ice.

The water was very cold and even more clear.

The underside of the ice is very smooth over a few weed pieces.

Sunsets have been made better by the reflective, contusiony surface of the lake.

The sun was out, the air was warm-ish, and the snow was pulling away from the trees, but the lake was still frozen deep. There's no better time to test one's prognostication mettle than now. We'll get the Annual Lake Lucerne Ice-Out Contest coded and posted by the end of next week. Tree tapping is still a few weeks away. The forecasted high temperatures are not all that high and the remaining snow is still tight to the maple tree trunks. That, plus it looks like a touch more snow might be coming.<br><br><br>-Nemo's got work to do, Malort to avoid.

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