Warmup, and related issues
 

Warm air is pushing northward across New England this afternoon. Temperatures in Massachusetts are in the low 60s, with southern NH in the mid 50s. Laconia is now in the 40s.

Here at the lake we're in the mid-30s thanks to cooling provided by the lake ice. The warm air is conflicting with the lake-cooled air to produce very dense fog, and visibility is now about 500 feet. This fog will likely continue to impact travel along shoreline roads and near any other frozen bodies of water until the weather cools off again.

Last night brought us just under an inch of rain (0.95") and localized flooding has been reported on many roads in the area. The snowpack has apparently absorbed a lot of this liquid, because it still stands at 28 inches, only 4 inches off its high for the winter from a few days ago.

That means the snowpack now has more water in it than before, and will re-freeze when the weather turns colder again tonight. That also means the new frozen snowpack will be even more impervious to liquid than it was before, raising our future flood risk during any rain storms until springtime melts it, which hopefully will be a slow process.

The melting and re-freezing process has made the lake ice a lot more navigable by snowmobile than it has been, and it now looks more zambonied than slushy.