Fresh Ice

8:00 am temp: 12
Yesterday: 11/3
Normal: 30/17

Ice has started forming along the edges of the lake.

Looking out toward the street this morning.

The ice grows mostly at night. It started three days ago, and each day it extends farther out into the lake. Already more of the lake is covered with ice than at any point last winter.

It warmed up to 12 at our house yesterday, so Tess and I resumed our mid-day walks. A couple weeks ago that would have seemed cold.

This morning we woke up to 7 or 8 inches of fluffy snow and big flakes coming down.

River Skate

8:00 am temp: 6
Yesterday: 8/-14
Normal: 31/17

Well, I didn’t hibernate yesterday after all. The sun came out and we were lured outside to try skating on the Whitefish River.

There was good, thick ice on the river. Steve chopped a couple holes with his hatchet and at about 4 inches down there was still no sign of water. The surface was pretty good, slightly bumpy, and there was a thin layer of snow on top.

We skated for miles, the only ones on the river, except for…the person who had planted the idea, Don Scharfe, and his wife. I forgot my camera, so above is a video Steve shot.

I enjoyed the changing views and the quiet of cruising down the river. There’s snow in the forecast, which may mean the end of ice skating, but there could be some good skiing on the river ahead this winter.

Time to Hibernate

8:00 am temp: -5
Yesterday: 4/-13
Normal: 31/17

Thin sheets of ice collect along the shore

I came home last night around 11:30. It was -10 at our house. It took a while to warm up my toes. I’m hunkered down at home today.

We saw the first signs of ice forming on the lake yesterday, thin sheets that the wind had pushed up against the shore.

A friend who lives south of town told me she saw what looked like a big cloud yesterday morning, which was the plume of steam coming off the lake. It’s amazing how long it takes, even in this severe cold, for the water temperature in the lake to drop to freezing.

Icy Wonders

8:00 AM temp: 21
Yesterday: 28/23
Normal: 34/21

Four-legged icicle.

There were some interesting ice formations along the edge of Whitefish Lake yesterday.

What a beautiful planet we live on.

Still waters

8:00 AM temp: 31
Yesterday: 50/29
Normal: 47/27

Mountain reflection

Yesterday evening we walked down by the lake after a rainy afternoon. Water had pooled on top of the small amount of ice that is left, creating a still surface for reflections.

It wasn’t so still along the edge of the ice, however. There the waves were causing the ice to fracture and were pushing smaller pieces of ice on top of the larger slabs. You could hear a tinkling sound, like ice cubes in a glass, as the waves jostled the ice fragments against each other.

Ice breakup

Receding ice

8:00 AM temp: 45
Yesterday: 54/30
Normal: 45/25

For Tess it’s swimming season again. For the rest of us…well, we’ll wait.

The ice by City Beach shrank noticeably the past couple days, but hasn’t broken up yet. Usually the Whitefish Lake Institute has a fundraiser where they suspend a large rock above the ice and people guess which day in the spring the ice will melt enough that the rock falls into the water. Typically that day is in April, but that part of the lake never froze this year.

The melt

Puddles on ice

There are puddles on top of the frozen part of the lake today. The forecast highs for the next couple days are in the 50s. How much longer will this ice last?

Slush ahead

8:00 AM temp: 30
Yesterday: 49/27
Normal: 44/24

It’s snowing now (11 AM) but is supposed to turn to rain this afternoon and through tomorrow. Ugh. Have I mentioned that March is my least favorite month here?

There are big chunks of ice floating in the lake today. Presumably they broke off from the sheet of ice covering the City Beach area and floated out into the lake. I got out the telescope to take a look at some gulls standing on a piece of floating ice across the lake. There is definitely more bird activity on the water the last week or two.

No pretty pix to post today, but I added some graphs to the Monthly temps page. The one for this winter is interesting, so I’ll post it here as well.

March…the lion part

8:00 AM temp: 32
Last 24: 35/32

New snow March 7 2013

In addition to the hard ice covering the bay at City Beach, there are patches of a thin slush on the lake this morning. The forecast high is 39, so the slushy patches will probably disappear by afternoon. There have been other similar days this winter. Looks like that’s as close to ice as most of the lake will come this year.

A new snow is always beautiful, as is the early morning blue light of such wintry days. We always have a lot of gray weather here in the winter, but it feels to me like this winter has been particularly gray. There is sun in the forecast the next couple days…I hunger for it.

Melting Glaciers

The glaciers in Glacier National Park have been shrinking since about 1850, the end of the Little Ice Age. When the area was established as a national park in 1910, there were 150 glaciers. Today, there are 25, and these are expected to disappear entirely by 2030.

Glaciers have been present in this landscape for 7,000 years, so we are witnessing the end of an ecological era.

As someone who has lived near the park and hiked its trails for 25 years, this prospect causes a lurch in my gut. Two USGS scientists, Dan Fagre and Lisa McKeon, created an exhibit about the disappearing glaciers called “Losing a Legacy.” That name captures the sadness many feel about the extinction of these ice fields. But, as depressing as the idea of a Glacier-Less National Park is, that is only the beginning.

As a park naturalist explained, once the glaciers are gone, the entire ecosystem will change. The bright turquoise color of glacial lakes, caused by light reflecting off the silt, or “glacial flour,” created as the glaciers grind against the rock, will eventually fade once the supply of silt dwindles. Without a constant flow of water from glaciers through the summer, vegetation will change, including those gorgeous green subalpine meadows filled with wildflowers. As the vegetation changes, wildlife will change its patterns and follow its food sources. Forests will become drier, and more frequent and more intense wildfires are expected.

No one knows what Glacier National Park will look like in 50 years, or 100. But Fagre and McKeon of the USGS have done a great job capturing what the change of the past 100 years looks like. The images above from their web site (http://www.nrmsc.usgs.gov/repeatphoto/overview.htm) look down on one of my favorite hiking destinations, Grinnell Glacier.

Below are photos I took at Grinnell Glacier in 2009. They show a ground-level view of the ice-melt lake, the glacier, and the striated rocks visible in the 2012 photo above.

Grinnell Glacier and ice-melt lake 2009

Striated rocks where Grinnell Glacier has receded, 2009

Where’s the ice?

Current temp: 33

Looking out the living room window this morning at the mostly unfrozen lake

Usually we’d be skiing on the lake this time of year, and people crazier and more patient than me would be ice fishing. But, for the first time anyone around here can remember, the lake is too liquid to support humanoids of any kind. We’ve been watching out the living room window since early January, which is around the time the freeze usually occurs. Steve, who loves to skate on “wild ice,” tries to catch the short window after the ice forms and before the snow is too deep for skates to push through. Now in March, with only the bay around City Beach sporting any respectable covering of ice, we have to admit we are watching a scary kind of history unfold.

By any local standards, it’s been a mild winter. It didn’t dip below zero even once, and there was only a two-week period in January where the temperature stayed below freezing 24 hours a day. Most of the winter it’s been popping up into melting territory during the day, transforming the packed snow on the roads into a thick crust of…hey…ICE…