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.

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…