Good Morning!

Our weather has moderated today - thermometer is climbing and is reading 24 degrees outside my window. The forecast is for more snow, three to seven inches, beginning late today and continuing through Thursday. Then we're supposed to get a warming trend and possibly some rain during the weekend.

That's good news and bad news. Good news that it won't be so cold, but bad news if you're traveling or if you haven't cleared any already heavily loaded roofs, especially flat or nearly flat ones. With this much snow on them and then the rain, the weight could be more than the building can sustain. Fred took care of the roofs at our house, and a student, the son of a friend of ours, is lined up to do the flat roofs at camp sometime in the next day or two.

We've been reading about the comeback of the Canada lynx in northeast Vermont. One was recently shot in a farmer's chicken coop in Derby. They are on the endangered species list, and there have been only a few confirmed sightings in Vermont. You can learn more about how to identify this animal by going to Fish and Wildlife

The lynx looks a lot like the bobcat Ray Richer photographed last year on Joe's Pond (see picture lower right), but there are important differences when you compare them. Over the years we have heard about people seeing a lynx in our area, but I don't know that any of those sightings were actually confirmed.
According to a web site I found, the bobcat may actually outweigh the lynx even though the lynx appears larger due to longer legs and more fur. Both prey on rabbits, squirrels, and other small animals, or on larger animals that have died or been left by other predators.