Warm, Wind, and Snow Forts

January 27th through February 2nd, 2025

Lake Lucerne
It warmed up last week. High temperatures topped out above freezing and when they were below 32°F, we got a little snow.
Lake Lucerne
The lake ice this year is strange. The light amount of snow has made it clear all the way through with air bubbles frozen at random in a 3D matrix. We don't recall seeing anything quite like it.
Lake Lucerne
One of the first tasks of the week was to check the lake ice thickness. It took a while to drill the hole.
Lake Lucerne
At the start of last week, the ice on the lake was 15 inches thick.
Lake Lucerne
With the warmer air came a little snow and a lot of wind. Last Tuesday, gusts had snow devils dancing north on the lake all day.
Lake Lucerne
The snow would deposit behind anything poking up above the ground. Some of the drifts were impressive.
Lake Lucerne
So far this year, even with the drifts, there's not enough snow to cover what's left of last year's milkweed pods.
Lake Lucerne
The north end turkeys seemed to enjoy the warmer temperatures and light snow.
Lake Lucerne
Most sunsets last week were boring, but one splashed fire across the sky for a good 5 minutes.
Lake Lucerne
And then it was time to build forts for the annual Lake Lucerne Bottle Rocket War. The opening ceremony was short and had an eaglely flyby.
Lake Lucerne
The south's fort walls were started first.
Lake Lucerne
A real tamper was added to knottlane's fort building tools. The resulting walls now have a uniformity that would shame a stack of Pringles.
Lake Lucerne
A colder Saturday produced a mostly frictionless surface on the lake. Wall construction (and the wall construction crew) suffered greatly.
Lake Lucerne
A small snow event late Saturday gave the lake surface the traction needed to resume a standard construction pace.
Lake Lucerne
Safety tip: When tamping near the top, be careful not to catch the heavy tamper face on the far top edge of the form. If you do, the heavy handle will came back towards your head. That can result (and did, twice!) in the operator suffering a brief bout of Tourette's followed by a headache. Despite a few tamper based injuries and some DOMS (delayed-onset muscle soreness) due to some fancy frictionless surface dancing, the men are in pretty good shape. If the wind is light and the contusion rate continues to remain low, next Saturday promises a good battle.


-Nemo needs a thicker hat.