THE PRESSURE RIDGE

  

ICE PRESSURE RIDGE, BASSWOOD ISLAND IN DISTANCE..

ICE PRESSURE RIDGE, BASSWOOD ISLAND LEFT BACKGROUND, MADELINE ISLAND RIGHT...

ICE PRESSURE RIDGE, MADELINE ISLAND IN BACKGROUND

Sunday, 8:15 AM. Wind W, very gusty and chill.  The sky is mostly cloudy but clearing, the humidity 68%.  The barometer is climbing steeply, now at 30.01".  The week ahead is forecast to be mostly partly cloudy to clear, with temperatures in the high twenties into the thirties.  It looks like an early spring, but we are bound to still get lots of winter weather. March is usually our heaviest snow month.
   An ice pressure ridge has developed from the ferry path in the channel in an arc north to to the mainland shore.  This pressure ridge, which occurs in about the same location each winter as the channel ice freezes, thaws, refreezes and heaves, often interferes with snowmobile and ATV traffic, and even with wind sled movement, and that is what is happening now.
   Neighbor Tina, who commutes to the Island daily by snowmobile says the ridge, which is up to about three feet high in places, is blocking her snowmobile and she will switch to an ATV, which should be able to negotiate it.  Complications occur when gaps of open water suddenly appear along the ridge.
   It has been announced that the ferry will run all winter, and that being the case we will probably not see the wind sleds at all.
   A few brave souls are going out around the islands to ice fish, but they seem few and far between.