We have had a fairly uneventful day, weatherwise, but tonight the temperature has fallen from about 50 where it was during the day, to near freezing, and we expect it will get lower as the night progresses.  There's still a misty rain falling, and we've had enough  to swell the brooks and rivers in the area, so low lying regions are in danger of flooding.  I measured .20 in. of rain this morning, but it has rained pretty steadily but not hard most of the day, so I expect I'll have a good bit more in the gauge tomorrow, and it will probably be frozen.

The ice on the pond may be thinning a bit, along with a diminishing snow cover.  There is a lot of water flowing into the pond from the hillsides, and that will no doubt raise the temperature of the water in the pond a bit; however, by Monday, things should be freezing up again.  From listening to the weather reports, we are fortunate in contrast to the Burlington area where they've had ice problems today and are expecting more during the next 24 hours.

Fred and I walked late this afternoon, in spite of the rain.  We took our umbrellas and I wore my creepers, although I really didn't need them as the road has been well sanded.  There is thick, solid ice under the sand, but so far the rain hasn't washed away the sand, so West Shore Road was in very good condition. 

Once this all freezes up again, there should be some very strong crust on the snow.  That can make it difficult for some animals - in particular, deer, because they will break through, but predators such as bobcats or coyotes will be able to scamper over the crust without breaking in at all, making it easy for them to take a deer.  Our coyote population has grown steadily over the past 20 years or so.  There was a time, not so long ago, we rarely heard them; but now we can hear them just about any night as they run through our woods in packs.  One old-time hunter told me they are "teaching the young to hunt," when we heard their chilling yapping, at first far away and then sounding like only yards away before they took their noise off into the distant night again.   

This watercolor by Susan Mahoney brought back childhood memories.  I remember how we looked forward to this kind of warm spell when I was a kid.  It seemed to happen nearly every year when we'd get a January thaw with some rain that would turn the snow into a tough, walk-anywhere-on-it crust.  The neighborhood kids would all grab cardboard boxes and head for the nearest slope.  We'd start off with the box intact, but after a couple of trips down a steep bank, and tumbling over a few times, the seams would break and we'd have a big flat sheet of cardboard that was good for going belly-bump, or doubling up with a friend, careening and spinning down a shiny, glazed hill.  Climbing up the hill on the crust was a challenge, so we would make a path of "steps" off to one side by breaking through the crust.  We took some tumbles, and occasionally somebody would crash into someone else, but mostly our heavy woolen jackets and hats kept us from getting seriously hurt.  And the cardboard would last a surprisingly long time, even with rough use.  We probably didn't even need the cardboard except without it, the seats and knees of our woolen snowsuits or broadcloth trousers would have been in shreds after only a few slides.  The cloth was no match for the friction caused by energetic kids on crusty snow.  Now, of course, there are those neat, brightly colored plastic "snow slides," with handles.  They are prettier, and no doubt last longer, but I bet kids don't have any more fun on them than we did in our cardboard boxes.