We've had more snow today, can you imagine? Above is how it looked out our living room window this morning. I measured another 6 inches this morning, making a total for this storm of 7.5 in. That was at about 8:30 a.m., and although there was a little sunshine mid-day, we had more snow showers this afternoon.

Fred went out early this morning to clear driveways and especially the end of our driveway where the town plow had been by and piled up a ridge of mushy snow. Later, as we went down W. Shore Road, Don Encarnacion was out with his plow, and further down the road Bill Rossi was snow blowing their yard. At the end of the pond, we could see the Ice-Out flag is in place. This is good. Even though we keep getting more snow that makes everything seem to be in winter mode, now we at least have something to watch that indicates there will be open water eventually. It isn't going to happen for a week or two, but when people drive down into the fishing access parking area, they can see the flag and know the clock is ticking.

St. Johnsbury, was pretty spring-like today. Not as much snow there as we have, and quite a bit warmer. We picked up Ice-Out tickets at all the outlets and did some other errands and by the time we were ready to come home the sun was out and the temperature actually got into the upper 40's.

We took Rte 15 to Cabot to pick up at Harry's Hardware, but it was well past noon when we were heading home and we really didn't want to go all the way around. We had monitored the outside temperature and by the time we got to West Danville, our car thermometer indicated it was 37 degrees. Cabot was no warmer so Fred decided to take a chance on the Cabot Plains Road. We had no trouble at all. There were some ruts, but nothing had really thawed out, in spite of the sunshine, so we got home without incident. The road promises to become a muddy quagmire once the weather really warms up, though.

On Cabot Plains Road, not far off Rt. 215, we were happy to see steam billowing from Keith Burtt's sugar house (see right). We had wondered what sort of sugar season our neighbors were having, so this was encouraging.

Tonight Bill and Diane came to have pizza with us and we did our annual "wrap up" of the ticket collection portion of the Ice-Out Contest. We actually are waiting for a couple others to bring in their tickets, and there will be a few days next week when tickets are still coming in the mail, but all sales have stopped and it's just a matter now of getting all the tickets to our input specialist, Carl Couillard. It's been fun, and now it's just a matter of waiting for warmer weather to melt the ice so the pallet sinks, the clock stops and we have a winner - or winners.

We want to thank everyone who bought tickets, and we wish you all luck. We also thank the people who helped us sell so many tickets. Many of our members took tickets with them on vacations and kept some at their cottages over the summer so visitors could join in the fun of the contest; there were business people who found unique ways to promote the contest; and lots of people spread the word about our fun game - all of which may have made this the largest Ice-Out contest in our 24 years, and we sincerely thank everyone for joining in and making it happen.

Fred will continue to have regular "ice reports" on the website, and I'll continue to give you information here on the blog.