35 degrees F Cloudy Wind NW 9 mph
“Don’t eat the yellow snow!”
Every kid who grew up in Minnesota heard that admonition at sometime or another in his life.
After one day of spring weather on Monday, winter returned with a vengeance Wednesday through Friday.
A huge winter storm moved in with snow and high winds across the Upper Midwest. Parts of the state experienced blizzard conditions with no travel allowed/recommended/possible.
There were hundreds of accidents, semi-truck blown over on the highway and even many power poles snapped off in the wind and ice and snow.
A couple places received over 20 inches of snow although we ‘only got’ between 5 and 8 inches here at Loon Lake. It was hard to tell exactly how much with the wind blowing the snow and with the snow being the real heavy, wet, sticky kind of spring snow.
The worst day was Thursday with winds that meteorologists said were just under ‘hurricane force winds’.
All day yesterday the snow continued off and on. But it was much lighter with not much additional accumulation.
One of the more bizarre things about this storm was the “yellow snow”. On Thursday the snow that came down was “yellow”. There was pure white snow under it from Wednesday. Pure white snow on top of it from Friday. But Thursdays snow, the day of the high winds and blizzard, was ‘yellow’.
It turns out that this storm was part of a huge storm that went all the way down to Mexico!
And in Texas and New Mexico and Northern Mexico, there were huge dust storms from the high winds. And those winds carried that dust and dirt all the way up here to Minnesota! And it came down with the snow and turned the snow ‘yellow’.
Even today you can still see the ‘yellow snow’ between layers of white snow.
It wasn’t quite the ‘yellow snow’ that we were warned about as kids. But I sure would not want to eat this snow either!
Every spring I reach a time when I am DONE with shoveling. This was that time for me this year.
My saying is, “OK, God, YOU put it there. YOU ‘shovel’ it!”
But the biggest news is that the ice went out on most of the lake due to the high winds on Thursday!
It was one of the more strange ‘ice out’ events that I have ever seen.
Usually the ice starts melting along the shore and there are areas of open water and gradually the open water expands until finally the main body of ice goes out of the lake.
Even though most of the lake is now open, there is solid ice right up to shore by my place and it is frozen right down to the bottom. This ice extends out from shore for 150 feet and more.
So even though the main part of the lake is open, there is no way to get the loon nest in the water or to get the camera hooked up for you yet.
I keep watching and listening and wondering if our loons are out there someplace. But so far I have not seen or heard them. But that does not surprise me since with huge storm, they would not have been able to fly. I assume they are well on their way but still someplace south of us.
Probably WELL south of us. Although I have heard 2 reports of loons on open water in the area.
Today the sun is mightily trying to come out but it has been losing out to clouds for most of the day.
So we wait. For warmer weather For ice and snow to melt.
For LOONS to return!
Copyright 2019 Larry R Backlund