Our day didn't warm up much, and it's been either spitting rain or snow off and since the sun went down. Our thermometer is reading 35 degrees, and it didn't get much warmer than that all day.

We went to W. Danville to check the mail and the Ice-Out flag. The flag is still flying. Actually, it's more of a "streamer" than a flag. Evelyn has made some very elegant flags in the past, but they didn't survive the wind, snow and battering of going down through the ice and then being hauled out; so now she provides a red streamer sort of thing and it's no big deal if it has to be replaced each year.

We were struck by how much debris is left on the ice this year. Some blue tarp and big chunks of something or other - wood supports, probably, indicating the shanties were pretty solidly frozen into the ice. It happens every year, but stuff like the plastic tarp will be around for a while, either on the bottom or washed up on shore eventually. The wood blocks will probably just go over the dam and be mashed on the rocks on their way down Joe's Brook to the Passumpsic River.

Our roads are only slightly better than they were a week ago - the fill the town put in has helped, but there's still water coming out and making mud. Lots of frost and springs and a really high water table along W. Shore Road and some of our other roads around the pond. We took pictures: April 18, 2011

People are beginning to drift back from their winter retreats, however, and we wish we had nicer weather to greet them, but those who come back early know not to expect too much, and some say it just gives them an extra spring and kind of prolongs the season for them. We're glad to see folks as they return. Our first meeting of the season will be in a little over a month, and by then we should have some pretty nice weather. There have been plenty of times when people have shown up for our spring meeting sporting deep suntans and shorts only to have the promising sunshiney start turn into out to be a raw, windy ski parka kind of day. It almost always gets better, though, a few weeks into the season . . .