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	October 7th through 13th, 2024

The northwoods became more autumnal last week. In addition to the shortening daylight and tumbling leaves, the temperatures fell. By the weekend, highs and lows were below normal. We were not so sad over the lack of diving, swimming or skiing.

The cold mornings committed lake heat larceny. By the weekend the cooler days dropped the lake temperature under 60°F. Until next summer, swimming will be a mostly involuntary event (tripping on the dock, tripple dog dares, bad bets) and will add to the rich oral history of the area.

Several days last week had winds that were very light. Regrettably, nobody skied. Especially between the islands.

Other days had strong winds that made waves big enough for local squirrels to grab their little surfboards and ride the big breakers to the sandy beaches of the north end.

Just to the east of the lake, St Leonard's addition is coming along.

We're no fan of a flat roof, but maybe materials have gotten more durable than in the days that we fought flat roof wrecking rain, sun, and raccoons.

Parsons Ford, the only new car dealership in Forest county is no more. It has been erased to make way for a rumored Kwik Trip.

In other improvements to northwoods infrastructure, new gravel was added to a service road at the NCC golf course.

Early in the week, little balls of dirt covered the fairways of the front nine as a result of the annual aeration event.

A short time afterward, the greenskeepers swept the little things into the rough and all was good except for the length of the evening. If you are not off the course by 6:30, bring glow in the dark balls.

Many trees finally got their peak color on.

The ones that peaked prior to last week have their winter colors on.

Still others were in between peak and winter.

The holistic result of the uneven tree progress was still pretty peaky.

At the start of October, there was a significant coronal mass ejection. This led many to forecast a great Aurora Borealis in the coming days. We witnessed one of the best displays ever on Thursday evening at around 9:15 PM local time.

Normally you would only see shades of gray shimmering and pulsing across the sky with the unaided eye. On Thursday you could clearly see the reds and to a lesser extent the greens. It was amazing.

There was rain! A shower earlier in the week was weak, but the rain on the weekend did not disappoint.

By Sunday morning, the lake was three tenths of an inch deeper.

We had the first frosts last week, but the cold mornings did not include precipitation so no snow. Huzzah! October snow can suck the fun out of the fall faster than a squirrel can empty a bird feeder or a raccoon can wreck a flat roof. The amount of rain we got, while significant, will not halt <a href='/LakeLevel/LL2.html' class ='defaultlink2' target='_blank'>Lucerne's decline</a>. We'll need inches of the wet stuff to reclaim the levels we enjoyed back in July.<br><br><br>-Nemo perfers his sky red, green, and shimmery.

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