Those of you who are basking in sunshine in some lovely southern paradise must be chuckling with satisfaction that you aren't here at Joe's Pond enduring the truly unpredictable, messy, blah weather we've been having lately. 
Just look at that picture!   We've had alternating snow and misty rain all morning, and I think the snow is winning.  It seems to be melting as soon as it hits, but I'm noticing the temperature seems to be going downward.  I reported 36 degrees at about 9:15, and now I'm seeing 33.  I went out a few minutes ago and took a core sample of the snow in our back yard to send to CoCoRaHS.  Other winters I've done that at regular intervals, but this year I decided to give myself a break - besides, the snow never got deeper than 24 inches at my backyard measuring stick, so it didn't seem very interesting.  Now is different.  Only about a week ago I was reporting 4 inches at the stick.  Now there's 9.  I was surprised when I realized that each morning this week there seemed to be another inch or so of snow.  I wasn't measuring that much on the board I have out on my front deck - but maybe that isn't such a good place to measure, even though it's a lot more accessible than trudging out into the yard someplace every morning during the winter.  

Anyway, I went this morning, armed with my equipment, a ruler, the specially designed tube for taking the core or catching precipitation, a stiff piece of cardboard to slip under the tube so the core of snow won't slide out, and a pan to carry everything.  I went without my shovel, and found my ruler wouldn't pierce the thick crust under the first couple of inches of snow, so had to head back to the garage for that.  The crust held me perfectly, so traveling to different spots to take the measurements was easy.  

We are instructed to take several measurements in a fairly large area and then report the average depth of snow.  I had to break the crust with the shovel before I could insert the ruler, but that operation went perfectly, and I got 5 measurements: 8, 9, 10, 9 and 7.  We report the nearest half inch, so the average was 9.  The 7 came from my measuring stick location.  Oh, well.  If the snow keeps up today, I'll be measuring more snow depth tomorrow.

This is a picture of my measuring equipment - minus the shovel! - that I use every morning to get the total precipitation amount. You can see the reports from all over the U. S. and some in Canada by going to www.cocorahs.org.

I think Fred mentioned on home page ice report that Henretta Splain saw two fishermen walking across the ice yesterday to get to their favorite fishing spot in back of the islands.  I'm confident they wouldn't be out there if the ice wasn't safe - they are old hands at fishing and have been keeping track of the ice all winter. 

Homer just wrote that a snow squall had gone through Barre and turned the ground white this morning.  He said he believes the ice is here for a while yet, and I respect his opinion.  Homer has been watching the ice here at Joe's Pond longer than most, and was one of the founders of the Ice-Out Contest, so when Homer speaks, we listen.

I just heard from Helen Morrison that she isn't able to see the slide shows I post here.  I've asked Fred to help me figure out why that is - she said her computer is an older model, but I'm not sure that's the problem.  I haven't heard from anyone else that they haven't been able to play the slide shows, but would like to know, so send me an e-mail:  janebrown@fairpoint.net.  I changed from Flickr to Kizoa a while back when Flickr changed their format making it really hard to work with; however, perhaps the easier Kizoa isn't the answer.  We'll see what we can do.