Winter Weather

It's too bad the rest of the lake doesn't freeze... then you could just truck everything in!

But it could be worse... the Prius told me it was 0 degrees F on my way to work this morning

 

I'd show you pictures of Winter here, but you'd only be jealous.

 

No, no, no...it's not a fairy frozen in the ice, it's a person of alternative lifestyle. what?....what's that?.....Oh, a FERRY!

Never mind!

 

Uhhh....yeah, that's it.




Water freezes? Like, outside?

 

We've had some fabulous days... sunny and warm. Spring preview!

 

Preview? No, it's here. The trees are in bud, the tulips are out of the ground, and the forsythia has blooms on it.

 

Another few weeks of that, and you'll be able to go ice sailing!

 

Until then, you could always use the snowmobile. Apparently they work on liquid water, too.

 

In North Western ON they're -26 at home right now. Warm compared to the week after Christmas, when we didn't see -15 for almost 2 weeks. We don't generally drive over the ice, as we are 25 kms from the nearest plowed road, so we ski-doo in. (We live on one island, our only neighbours live 4 km down the lake on another island). Occasionally we need to move heavy stuff over the ice, so we plow and pack the trail to the shore over the course of the winter, and then do the big hauls in March before the ice begins to melt. What most folks don't realize is that snow on the lake creates all kinds of problems. Consider this, the combined weight of any snow on the ice, forces the ice down, bringing the water up through the ice. The result is the water gets into the snow causing major slush. Because the snow insulates this shush ice often won't refreeze all winter. Depending on the winter, we may have 30" of blue ice, with little slush ice, making for very safe travel. Other winters we may have 12" of blue ice with 24" of slush ice on top. This can be very dangerous. You can break into that 24" of watery slush and get stuck quite easily in a snowmobile. If you are far from home, the results can (and have been deadly).

So, if you have ever watched ice road truckers, the big reason they plow the ice is to allow the ice to freeze deeply with no snow on top, and to keep the slush at bay.

Since we only have the two families we don't bother plowing, we just run the ski-doo. There are whole series of engineering specs for ice. The weight capacity increases exponentially with thickness. If 6" will support 1000 lbs for example, 12" might support 15,000 lbs. (I have driven 85,000# track hoes over the ice before). The biggest issue with ice driving is critical speed. As you load ice, you push it down, and as you move, you create a pressure wave. If you go to fast, as you near the shore, that wave can be big enough to break very thick ice. Generally ~15 mph is suggested for heavy loads.

I am currently on the RECORD WARM west coast right now. (Record warm for the entire month of January! Lest anyone think that all this talk of ice suggests that global warming is a hoax.

 

Pics from our front door,

Timber wolf on the ice,

Second, I call, waiting for spring!

 

It's almost 10pm, and still 48F outside.

We've had rain.. a few days of weak sunshine.. a little more rain... some partly sunny... fog and rain...

It's great. I now drive 112 miles round trip per day, over a mountain ridge, to and from work. No ice to deal with

 

Maybe no summer water (or less for sure) Winter snow pack in te cascades is ~50% of average. I skied Baker today, and there is NO SNOW until just at the base elevation ~4500'.

 

As nice as it is to enjoy a winter without snow (ok, we had a dusting in December) the long term worry is water. It's hard to imagine that being a concern in the 'wet coast' rainforest, especially this time of year, but the mountain snowpacks water vast areas all summer long. Winter seems to be getting shorter, and the local mountains are unusually bare at the moment. We've had summer water restrictions for several years now, and low water flows combined with higher temperatures are hastening the demise of the salmon that are critical to the food chain.