This page is Ernie's department. I asked him to write a paragraph and he wrote four, so I have trimmed him. — Hazel

Water Clarity, 1999

Every other Saturday from May through September, I row out to the deep hole off Birch Island and take a Secchi disk reading for the DNR's volunteer Self-Help Lake Monitoring program. A Secchi disk is an eight-inch round plate painted in black and white quarters, on a marked rope. You lower it on the shady side of the boat, without sunglasses, until you lose sight of it, note the depth, then raise it until it comes back into view and note that. The average of the two is the reading. Calm days, between ten and two, if the weather allows. The deeper you can see the disk, the clearer the water. The results go to the state, where they're compared with hundreds of other lakes. — Ernie

The pattern is the usual one for our lake: clearest in spring, cloudiest in the heat of late July when the algae are at their peak, clearing again as the water cools. The summer average (June through August, which is how the state compares lakes) was 9.4 feet, down from last year. That puts us right in the middle of the range: not crystal clear like the deep, sandy lakes up north, not pea green like a lake surrounded by farm fields. A healthy, ordinary, middle-of-the-road lake, and we'd like to keep it that way.

Summer Average Clarity, Year by Year

Five years isn't enough to say much. Clarity goes up and down with the weather, and a hot summer always reads worse. What we watch for is a slide that keeps going year after year, because that usually means too much phosphorus getting in from lawns, septic systems and runoff. Keep the fertilizer off the lawn near the water, keep your septic pumped, and leave a strip of natural plants along your shore.

Ice-Out Dates Since 1975

Ice-out means the day the lake is clear enough to row from our pier to Birch Island. My father wrote the dates in pencil on the inside of the broom closet door at the cabin from 1975 until he passed in 1988. Rudolph Pender, who has lived on the lake year-round since 1970, kept them from 1989 to 1993, and I've kept them since we moved up. The closet door is still there, and still not painted.

Earliest: April 2, 1998, after that mild El Niño winter. Latest: May 12, 1996, when we still had snow in the woods in May. Average over the 25 years: about April 23. I'd put your ice-out contest dollar on the last ten days of April. Hazel says I'm not allowed to give advice since I'm the judge, so forget I said that. — Ernie