In spite of having lovely spring weather for the past few days, our block and flag seem to be unchanged out on the ice.  Diane Rossi sent this picture this morning.  The open water on the right is the runoff from their water well - not due to the ice releasing from the shore.  

Although the first two ponds have a lot of open water, the big pond has very little.  The channel at the north end of the pond is cutting its way down, but even that hasn't made a lot of progress.  There is a lot of warm water coming off the hillsides all around the pond, and this will help to not only melt the ice from underneath, it will also lift the ice as the water level gets higher and that will dislodge the ice from shore and begin to break it up with large cracks forming.  Not really safe to be out there as we really don't know what's happening underneath the ice or how thin and honeycombed it has become.  Every year is different.  We're thinking it will probably be another two weeks before the clock stops - we could have a May date this year.  We'll keep you posted.

Today the temperature here has been around 50 degrees.  There's also been quite a bit of wind, and that helps to move the ice, especially once it has melted around the edges.  Then it will begin to break up more rapidly.  We had some rail last night, and the brooks are running full.  Most of the snow is gone except patches in the woods.