20 degrees F BLIZZARD
Sunrise 6:30 am CDT Sunset 7:56 pm CDT
Ahhhhhh!
Spring in Minnesota. What can be better?
Warm temperatures. Grass growing. Flowers and trees blooming. Gentle breezes. Blue skies. Even bluer lakes.
And loons calling.
Does it get any better than this?
The short answer is no it doesn't get any better. The longer answer is that this year we don't have a clue about what spring is!
This is the winter that just won't quit.
We have had several snowstorms in the last few weeks.
But right now we are in the midst of a good old fashioned blizzard. The wind is howling. And heavy snow is blowing horizontally in front of the windows.
This is a huge snow storm that reaches all the way from Michigan through Wisconsin and Minnesota and South Dakota and Iowa and Nebraska and Colorado down to Kansas.
The Twin Cities is supposed to possibly get 12 to 18 inches of snow and high winds and areas of SW Minnesota, South Dakota and Nebraska are to get even up to 24 inches of snow.
Being north of the Twin Cities here at 'Loon Lake', we were not in the blizzard warning area and were not supposed to get more than a few inches of snow. But the snow storm has moved north and we are getting hit and are in the Blizzard Warning area now. So far I would guess that we have gotten 6 to 8 inches of snow out of the storm already and it is supposed to continue snowing until tomorrow morning.
Needless to say the lake is still firmly frozen. The ice has not started melting at all yet and with the insulation of this new snow it will be delayed even more. We have had over 2 feet of ice on the lake this year. That is a lot of ice to melt.
Once it starts to melt it will probably go fast. But I think we are in for a very late ice out date this year.
Last year the ice went out on March 8th. But then the lake refroze and the final ice out date was March 25th. The year before ice out was march 15th. But in 2013 the ice did not go out until April 30th. Will we match that record this year?
Time will tell.
But it certainly is no place for our loons to be here right now!
I had hoped that most of them were still down on the Gulf or had stopped somewhere well south of here. But then this afternoon one of the neighbors said they had heard a loon here yesterday. I hope it wasn't a loon but it very well could be a one that had stopped on open water of the Mississippi River or some other river and was making reconnaissance flights out over the lake looking for open water.
By now for sure our loons have shed their drab gray plumage and are wearing their 'Minnesota finest' - that dramatic black and white plumage that we know and love.
However, for now we will have to wait as a blizzard roars through the area.
But soon it will once again be LOON SEASON!
And we will hear and see our beloved loons.
And all will be right with the world once again.
Copyright 2018 Larry R Backlund
