More snow. March weather in April.

We have finished our Joe's Pond Ice-Out ticket sales, as of April 1. The last of the tickets are trickling in, having been mailed April 1 or earlier. We're sure we will be able to report a bumper year, but I don't have actual numbers of tickets sold yet. My wish to counteract Chico's "April Fools" prank is coming true, I think. Dave told me yesterday Chico has tickets up to his yazoo, and he hasn't had the final bundles from here at the pond or all of Dave's tally from the Barre-Montpelier area. I'm sure he'll be busy logging in tickets for a week or two. Let me know if you hear him crying "Uncle!" We are pleased at the response to Ice-Out this year. We had lots of members and friends of Joe's Pond selling tickets for us, and we thank everyone who made such an effort to make this the best year yet, by far. Everything went smoothly and we had some great publicity, too. We're getting to be known far and wide. We have "stars" doing interviews for us - Diane Jejer, Dave Parker, Don Walker, Homer Fitts. Everyone has done a really great job.

You'll find some of those interviews on the menu at the left side of home page, or on the Ice-Out page: www.joespondvermont.com

We took these pictures yesterday. Ray Richer put the flag out on Tuesday. There is no real sign of melting yet - yesterday was nice, but not warm enough to do much melting. The parking lot at the fishing access was very icy. We'd had a cold night so everything was frozen solidly. There was no mud when we left in the morning, but coming back around noon, there were spots that were showing some wetness, and the shoulders along W. Shore Road were very soft, but no big ruts or deep mud holes - yet.

As I was preparing dinner, around 6 o'clock last night, we noticed ice fishermen in back of the islands. They were apparently enjoying the late afternoon sunshine and probably the fishing was good. You can see the ice is solidly frozen. Not much sign of melting anywhere.

This morning we awoke to snow again, and we've had snow showers all day. I'm hearing reports of cars going off I-89 into the ledges, but no reports of injuries so far. As I look out my window, there's a wet snow falling, so in lower elevations it is probably rain or freezing rain. Our temperature here at the pond is 30-32 degrees. There was a lot less snow in the St. Johnsbury area yesterday, as usual. The good news is, the slower things warm up, the easier the frost will go out of our roads, so perhaps we won't have a mud season bad beyond recollection . . . we can only hope.