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Sweet Events Drizzled With Bitter Cold

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April 13th through 19th, 2026

Last week started with warming temperatures, exposed lawns, and a frozen Lucerne. As the week went on, the lawns remained exposed, Lucerne became less frozen, and the warming temperatures abruptly ended. There was a bit of hard, crusty snow around, too. There were also building clouds at the start. The lake area went from blue sky to anvil clouds in about an hour. The lake ended up half an inch deeper by Tuesday. Parts of West Shore Drive became a river again. A day later the new river dried up and the highway department was dispatched to fill erosion trenches and amazingly straighten mailboxes. By the middle of the week, rain and a new warmth began to take a toll on the lake ice. It was still there, but darker and thinner. The ponds just south of the lake were filled with turtlely goodness. In a sure sign of impending ice-out, flocks of noisy lawn slimers were doing fly overs of Lucerne on their way north. A few seem to have stayed. The rain and mid-week warmth opened the edges enough for small water craft to explore north Lucerne's littoral regions The ice on the edge was this thick. Nobody swam. The NCC opened on Friday! Well...only the front nine opened. The back was way too wet. Most of the snow was not on the fairway. The rain and snow melt spawned a few new water hazards that should be gone in a week or three. As the weekend got close, the air chilled and the sky grew ominous and strange. The lake was made about an inch deeper after the rain stopped and the temperatures plunged. By Sunday's close, there was less than 200 acres of ice separating the lake from ice-out. It was close to a storybook week until the weekend. With highs in the 30s°F and lows close to the teens many of the men showed the twitching and Tourette's associated with winter PTSD. We expected the sub-freezing temperatures to push back ice-out a week or so. Astoundingly, a strong wind from the north continued to wreck the remaining ice on Lucerne. A small but growing crowd is blossoming outside the Knott Lane sapshack waiting for the red smoke that signals a lake full of open water ready for the planting of piers, lifts, and skiers. The next official lake level check is scheduled for May 1st, but preliminary checks have shown the lake is over a foot deeper than it was before ice-in. It would seem that the drought rumors floating around last fall have been smothered and drowned out by Zombie Winter and all the rain that followed.<br><br><br>-Nemo's not purposely swimming anytime soon unless you count pier planting.

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