It was record breaking temperatures for the area. It hit 66 on a thermometer at the lake. The small amount of snow on the lake melted and “ponds” of water that were an inch or so deep. If it freezes back up before it snows, it could be great skating.
The temperatures are dropping and it will be back to about normal temperatures for the next week. Some snow may fall the day after the high temperatures. It is sure a strange winter. At the same time, there is always beauty on the lake.
Old ski tracks are visible on the lake going through the puddles. A few days earlier, the ski tracks were through snow, now they are through puddles.
Because water is more dense than ice, when it is on the surface, it wants to get down below the ice. The buoys on the lake thawed out a bit and this caused small gaps between them and the ice and the water found a way down next to the buoys. While the ice on most of the lake is over a foot thick, these “holes” in the ice allow water to drain off the surface. Around the buoys, there were patterns formed in the ice by the flowing water.
The white ice is ice that formed by water saturating the snow to make slush and then froze. Under that layer is the ice that is more like ice formed in your refrigerator although there are water bubbles in it.
The curve on the left is an area where the water on the surface is going off the “slush ice” to the crystal ice.
And the water on the surface also produces some nice reflections, in this case of Brummitt Island.
