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January 22, 2006
:: Only In Minnesota
(Photo copyright 2006 Eric Miller, US Pond Hockey Champioonships, www.uspondhockey.com)
The first-ever US Pond Hockey Championships were held this weekend on Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis. They cleared and flooded 26 rinks on the sheet of ice currently covering the lake to hold the tournament which pitted several amatuer (like I mean I-play-with-the-guys-from-work-every-Saturday amatuer) teams against one another to with the covented "Golden Shovel" (the champion's trophy).
I figured this was about the best thing to blog about today, as many people I enocunter who are not from here are mystified by the fact that Minnesotans are brave enough to "walk on water" when the lakes freeze. Congruent with the fascination over pond hockey are other frozen lake sports: ice fishing and sled skipping:
Photo courtesy of Lyn Yost, via www.stragesports.com
In this sport, people dare to "skip" over open water in snowmobiles at high speeds. Makes walking across a frozen lake look pretty safe, doesn't it?
Posted by pierre at 11:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 7, 2006
:: The Sunshine Returneth! (for now)
For those of you who do not read Meggisi regularly, just a bit of background information before I write on today's topic: I am located in Lakeville, MN, a suburb of Minneapolis. Lake Meggisi is in Ontario, Canada. Unlike parts of Alaska, Minnesota and Northwestern Ontario DO receive plenty of sunlight in the Winter. It isn't eternally "twighlight" or anything like that. Except this winter...
According to the National Weather Service, Minneapolis Forecast Office, "The period December 24 2005 to January 4th 2006 was the 3rd gloomiest 12 day stretch in the Twin Cities in 42 years according to solar radiation records at the University of Minnesota St. Paul Campus...The other site with a measure of sunshine in the Twin Cities is a device that records minutes of sunshine at the National Weather Service (NWS) in Chanhassen. Zero minutes of sunshine were recorded at Chanhassen for eight consecutive days from December 24 to December 31 2005."
Now granted, the caveat here is that sunshine cannot be measured at night. But, the cause of the lack of sunshine has been the stubborn cloud deck stranded over our part of the world. Chanhassen borders Victoria, MN, home to my good friend Scott. Here is a picture from his 'plantation' today, a view of his chicken coop:
I originally planned to write just about Scott's Coop today, but decided to save that for later...it was a good "the sun is shining today" picture anyway.
So finally, Canadian high pressure was allowed to leak into the 5-state area today, and we had a good shot of sun.
So good, in fact, that the subsequent meltdown of snow from my roof this morning met head-on with an ice damn sitting in the gutter system. The backup caused the overflow to run right over my front door, and was endangering the sills. So my morning coffee was interuppted with the fun task of chipping out ice from the gutters to get some flowage.
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Ah, yes. Fun fun fun. It took a good 45 minutes to chip out all the ice and scoop out all the residual slush. As a side benefit, my gutters are pretty clean now, as all the muck that had settled on the bottom of the gutters got frozen into the ice, and now has subsequently been chipped out.
The sun lasted about all day long. There were a few periods of clouds, but not all day...and sunglasses were required! It was a good day...everyone I encountered seemed a little more uplifted as a result. Weather forecast has more gloom in the future...let's hope not as long!
Posted by pierre at 11:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack