Our weather has moderated big time - we've made it up to 20 degrees and that's ABOVE zero, so even though there's still a pretty stiff wind blowing, we feel like we're getting a break.  However, there are some really threatening looking clouds moving from west to east, and some snowflakes in the air, so winter is definitely not over.
     Kate Chatot,  who lives about a mile south of us, sent this

picture to me last night.  This was her thermometer at some point yesterday - perhaps early in the a.m. or maybe Wednesday night - she didn't specify - it could have been either; clearly showing at least 35 below, (when I had reported a low of 22 below).  By the looks of her thermometer, it better not get much colder than that.  I have one that only registers to 40 below, too.  I guess the manufacturers didn't expect them to be used in Vermont.  I just looked at the thermometer outside my office and it can go to 70 below - I just hope that doesn't happen!  These are the older mercury thermometers; I guess the digital ones can go as low as necessary.
    The sun just disappeared, that threatening cloud is overhead and it's snowing hard and down to 15 degrees.  So much for that "spring" feeling!
    I had a call from son Bill last night - he said he'd been talking with one of our Joe's Pond ice fishermen that had been here over the weekend setting up an ice shanty.  The fisherman told Bill it was brutally cold out on the ice and a squall came up obscuring the shoreline so he and his buddy were barely able to find their tracks to get back to the boat launch with their truck.  They had drilled a hole in the ice (hopefully to test it before they drove their truck out onto it!) and it was 14 inches thick - plenty safe to drive a vehicle on, apparently.  There hasn't been much snow on the ice - we'd had almost no new snow until last night when we got about two inches, and the whole pond was pretty much clear ice with only patches of snow.  But the wind picked up whatever snow there was and  carried it down the pond in huge white clouds.  Weather like that can be really dangerous because you lose your sense of direction.  
    I was glad to know the depth of the ice (thank you, Bill!) and Fred has added that information to the Ice-Out page so the folks that get really serious and scientific about choosing when the ice will go out will have something to add to their formula or whatever.  We'll keep you posted on temperatures, snow depth and measurements as the ice increases.  And it will.  There's no real warm-up trend in sight.