Well, things have changed twice in the last week. After starting with bitter cold, it warmed up into the 50s and rained an inch and a half, then the temperatures dropped to the single digits. The rain and high temperatures got rid of lots of snow and there is lots of bare ground where there was over a foot of snow. The picture, above, was taken when it was raining and the moist air was making fog off a Stamp Act shore. Cate Island is also in the picture. The snowy lake, seen below, had been changed.
After the rain, it looked a bit different.
The swamp near Point of Pines also changed dramatically. Instead of clean white snow with animal tracks (probably a coyote), there was melted stuff remaining.
The lake surface also changed dramatically. The wind and cold had created drifting patterns. Some of the drifts seemed to cover other drifts or one kind of pattern went over another pattern.
After the rain, and subsequent refreeze, most of the snow had been melted and then the lake refroze. The result is clear ice with residual patterns caused by some law of physics.
And some of the buoys that were covered with drifts are now seen and frozen solidly in the ice. Some buoys were pushed by the ice and only have an inch or so showing but a few are frozen at an angle as shown below.
Much of lake is now lacking any snow and the rain that fell and melted the snow on the ice has refrozen. The surface is a bit rough but it is shiny and smooth. Walking on it requires some kind of metal cleats but it is easy walking. Things keep changing at the lake. Ice fishermen have reported more than a foot of ice in places but whenever you venture out, realize that ice shifts and currents under the ice swirl so there can be thin places. Always be careful.