We are watching the Ice-Out flag very carefully this afternoon.  It has tipped crazily, but hasn't gone down enough to stop the clock.  The rope that tethers it to the shore has been solidly frozen into the ice, and we believe that is all that is holding the pallet from sinking.  The ice this year has turned to crystals, which sometimes happens so that instead of chunks of solid ice with lots of open water along the shoreline, we have fairly uniform ice crystals that melt during the day and freeze up again at night.  We had a low of about 21 degrees last night, and this morning there was a fresh skimming of ice over the open water along the shoreline.  The clock might stop this afternoon, or it might last into the night.  It's really hard to tell what's going to happen.  We are watching closely, you can imagine.  For you who perhaps cannot see the web cam pictures, above is a photo taken today at about 3 p.m.  Since then the corner of the flag is touching the water, and the pallet may be held only by the rope that tethers it to shore.

Today is sunny with pretty strong SE winds, but the temperature has only reached a high of 54, and is already heading back down as the sun begins to get lower.  We're expecting another pretty cool night and tomorrow to be about like today, but then rain on Wednesday.  

We've had calls from lots of folks watching the flag tipping into the water this afternoon, and some have wondered it the clock has stopped.  Larry Rossi just called from the site and said everything is still intact but there's lots of pressure on the connection, so he thinks it could go almost any time.  However, if it lasts until dark and the temperature drops so it freezes up again, that could delay things.  All we can do is wait and see.  We'll let everyone know as soon as the clock stops.  It may be a little more time before we know the winner(s) as we have to double check the time on the clock and then find and verify the actual ticket and try to locate the winner.  That can be a bit difficult sometimes (finding the winner) what with people on vacation, etc., but we persist.  We'll let you know as soon as the clock stops, though.