For those of you wintering over away from New England, you missed out on an epic storm last week. For those of you that live in the northeast all winter and have finally plowed, shoveled, plowed, and shoveled again – you can truly appreciate the magnitude of this storm. Indulge me in setting the scene for this truly magnificent weather event and our walk out onto Wilson Lake.
Starting Friday of last week (Feb. 8th) and carrying right through until around noon on Saturday, the snow fell and fell and fell. In some places, 2-3″ an hour was being reported! This storm, named Nemo (cause apparently we name winter storms like hurricanes now), was the culmination of a moisture laden front moving up the eastern seaboard that slammed into a cold, arctic front moving down from Canada and the Great Lakes. These two fronts collided and began dumping snow from New Jersey up through Maine and into Canada.
Nemo was not only capable of dumping over 2 feet of snow all across New England, but was unique in its ability to produce hurricane force winds, 89 mph at Mount Desert Rock, ME and 84 mph off the coast of MA! Snow fall totals set records in several major cities; Portland, ME had 31.9″ and Hamden, CT reported 40″!!
Snowfall totals across the northeast from Nemo (NOAA)
But enough about meteorology, as I would like to show one of our beautiful lakes almost a week after the mighty Nemo.
We set out Wednesday morning to explore Wilson Lake on what turned out to be a gorgeous, 35°F “blue bird” day. We hopped onto the lake along Hawk Road and headed out across the lake. Despite the area receiving anywhere between 20-30″ depending on snow drifts, the snow is distinctly different right now. After our lovely couple feet of light, fluffy powder, we got an inch of wet, heavy stuff that turned to sleet and rain on Monday! This is pretty typical of our winters these days. This packed the snow right out, leaving behind a nice hard crust!
The crust was thick in some places and thin in others. Gunnar had trouble staying above the crust most the time and really enjoyed himself when we got to the lone snowmobile trail cutting across the lake. The above picture is his famous “flop and roll” he likes to do!
It was a perfect day to be out on the lake. There was no one around, not a soul! In fact, it was a pretty deserted scene. There was a total of three ice shacks and one snow mobile trail weaving across the center of Wilson. We broke trail until we neared the middle of the lake and joined up with the well packed sled trail.
The above panoramic justly represents the gorgeous day we had trekking around this wonderful lake. After reaching the sled trail, we hauled across the lake to the boat launch and then returned. It was a fairly quick trip this time out, but we had to take the opportunity to show you how beautiful these treasures are in the winter!
Hope you enjoyed the pictures and the few more to follow. Some pictures are of Horn Pond and why we didn’t go out onto Horn as well is explained below. If you don’t live around the lakes in the winter, it may be worth taking a little mid-winter vacation sometime to visit. If you do live around them, snow shoeing is a great way to see the lake in the winter. Have a great day everyone and we shall see you next week!
The red house, off center left, is a project host from 2012 that the YCC installed infiltration steps, rubber razors, and infiltration walkways on!
We were going to venture out onto Horn Pond after our Wilson trek, but found a few too many open sections for our comfort level! Horn Pond drains Great East Lake, is fairly narrow and then outflows to the Salmon Falls River. The lake flushes about 7-8 times a year and has a lot of water moving around under the ice, therefore, we took some pictures from the road (below) and called it good!
Looking North.
The inlet to Horn Pond from Wilson Lake.
Looking South.