Here we are, digging out from another four inches of new snow. The wind howled like a lonesome wolf last night, and snow drifted around the house, sweeping clean high spots like the top of our driveway and dropping the snow along the banks and gullies in little drifts. It felt more like a March than mid-April. Today the temperature remains in the 30s, but there is warmth in the ground and the snow is soggy, melting in spots, which is fortunate because it's too darned heavy to shovel much. I cleaned off the deck and the front walkway; Fred made two tracks down the driveway in case someone had to come up to the house, and it's all melting from underneath. A good sign the earth is warming, in spite of the cold air sweeping over us from Canada.
     Jamie's "Peach" (Jeep with a plow) has a flat tire and with the weather miserable, he has been hoping we wouldn't have much snow to plow at this late date. So when we got snow earlier this week, our neighbor, Bob McKay, came over with his small tractor plow and kindly cleared our driveway so we could get in and out. Today we didn't need to go anywhere and had nobody coming here, so Fred cleared two wheel tracks - just in case. Now Jamie is plowing us with his big tractor - hopefully for the last time this season. He'll get the "Peach" back in operation once the weather warms up so it's comfortable to work on it outside. Which reminds me - we are scheduled to have our winter tires taken off this coming week! Perhaps bad timing?
     Diane sent this picture of the clock and thermometer this morning, asking the question: "Are we making progress?" 
     I don't know how many inches of snow covers the ice right now, but the forecast is for very warm weather - possibly in the 60s next week, with lots of sunshine. That will melt the snow quickly and there will be a lot of water coming into the pond as well as all the water from the melting snow on the surface, so there will almost certainly be flooding in some areas. 
     Ray Rouleau (W Shore Rd) mentioned the other day that in the week since they've been back, we've had nothing but winter weather. Ray and Cyndy spent many winters in Vermont before migrating to Florida after retirement, so they are no strangers to the frustrations of sprintime here.
     Someone said to me recently that this has seemed like an unusually long winter and cruel spring - like some of us remember and talk about with relish as being like it was in our childhood. The figures do not seem to bear this out. Statistics gathered by NOAA reports that March 2018 in New England was 42.6 degrees, 1.1 degree above average, and precipitation was 2.42 inches, .09 inch below average. That is not representative of Vermont's temperature range, however. Take a look at these charts of March and April.

Click on images to make them appear larger.