It has rained pretty steadily all day. Not hard, but unrelenting. I've been monitoring the chatter of the road crews in the area and they have been very busy. They've dealt with flooding, plugged culverts, washouts and irate citizens all day and I give them credit - they take it all in stride. I did hear one of them say as they were finishing up for the day that he thought tomorrow might be a good day to start his vacation. They apparently think tomorrow will be just as bad or worse than it was today with the rain continuing and brooks and rivers getting higher by the hour.

I measured only .15 in. of precipitation this morning, but we've seen the snow pack recede dramatically under the drizzly rain, so the melting is going on and rushing hell-bent into the pond. We will be going out tomorrow and will report on the mud and water situation. I expect the water at the dam in W. Danville is raging.

I had an e-mail from Bob LaBrie in Goshen MA, with pictures of their Ice-Out flag, tilted precariously at the edge of the ice - as if a stiff breeze would topple it. He said the trees are budding there and the grass is greening up with the rain they've had, but the ice in their small pond is holding on.

Fred has been busy getting a new rental page up on the website; I've been working on the new Joe's Pond directory, bringing the information up to date, getting it ready to print. I can't do anything more with the JPA newsletter until we have an Ice-Out winner, but there are a few "housekeeping" chores we have to do to close up the contest. We just got a tally sheet from the folks who log in tickets for us, and we sold about the same as last year, over 11,000 tickets. We were interested that in addition to nearly every state in the union, tickets came in from Afghanistan, Alaska, Hungary, Quebec, Hawaii and New Zealand. It's been a fun year - it'll be really interesting to see how the clock gets stopped this year.

If I don't post anything here on the blog tomorrow, it will no doubt be because we are stuck in the mud someplace. I'm not even sure we can go every place we need to in St. Johnsbury tomorrow - some of the roads were close to being under water even yesterday, so no telling what they'll be like if the rain continues all night. If all goes well, we'll get our banking and shopping done and head back to the hills for the duration. By the time we need to go for groceries again in two weeks, the roads should be a whole lot better - unless we get a big snow storm, which isn't out of the question, of course . . .

My advice to those of you who are dreaming of returning to Joe's Pond from your winter retreats is - don't rush it. We still have a long way to go to get to anything like enjoyable spring weather, let alone weather that resembles summer. So hang out for a few weeks more where it's warm and sunny. We'll let you know when it's safe to venture north again, otherwise you'll be like the geese and ducks last week when they arrived and there was no open water to make a graceful landing. They were kind of like those airplanes trying to land with no help form the control towers . . .