The Long Freeze-Up of 2015

I haven't posted anything in this island blog for two years, I see! This morning I decided to fire it back up, as we're having an unusual ice-up season this year that I want to record. This isn't unheard of, warm weather in December, but it's not normal, either, and it's the first time we've had to deal with a very slow freeze-up since we moved up here nine years ago.

We had a low enough temperature overnight on November 29th to freeze the surface of the entire lake in our area, but since then the temperatures have been higher than average. We also got a 5" layer of heavy, wet snow, which turned to gray slush on top of the ice, insulating it. Normally, we would have gotten an arctic blast by now, to freeze the ice good and solid, but a strong El Nino is pushing the jet stream far to our north, and leaving us warmer than normal.

We've already been cut off from normal "real world" activity for eight days due to thin ice, and we're looking at two more weeks of this before we can leave the island safely via ice, according to the weather forecast.

Gary's been measuring the ice daily and it's been a steady 2 to 3 inches  the past 8 days. Thanks to a short cold snap the other night, the ice thickened enough to enable him to safely kicksled to our car on the mainland yesterday morning, and run to town for some groceries and our much-desired held mail, to tide us over a while longer. Yesterday afternoon, the temperature warmed up to 40 again, so there will no more great escapes.

We'll be amateur scientists for the next couple of weeks, watching and recording ice conditions during this unusual weather year. We'll be measuring the ice daily and recording conditions. We're curious to find out if our current 2 3/4 inches of ice will melt during the coming warm days, or will the temperatures at night be sufficient to make up for any ice lost during the day? We have no idea, but we'll soon find out.

Here's the forecast (Fahrenheit):

Dec 5 (today):  44/30
Dec 6:  41/25
Dec 7:  39/27
Dec 8:  40/29
Dec 9:  39/30
Dec 10:  40/31
Dec 11:  39/33
Dec 12:  40/34
Dec 13:  36/28
Dec 14:  32/22
Dec 15:  31/24
Dec 16:  29/21
Dec 17:  30/21
Dec 18:  31/21
Dec 19:  29/22

The John Deere and sleigh shed in the snow