Early morning temperatures plunged to the mid -20s ºC the last few days, refreezing local open water and giving some nice frost flowers in local roadside ditches.

Curious pancakes of ice at the outflow of an elevated culvert into the Inlet:

Neat evening sky at Big Lake …  3 days after this photo was taken there were ice fishers in a portable hut on the right side of this photo:

The water dropped in this ditch as the temperature dropped … giving little flowers along the edge of the upper sheet.  Water still flowed down below giving some moisture for the flowers.

Ice floes have plugged and solidified outside of Dave and Maureen’s beach:

The Inlet is still open at the first set of buoys downstream from young George’s place.

More frost flowers in the ditches …

The liquid water froze, keeping the little waves intact.

Edges of the Inlet are frozen tight…

As are these pancakes …

The advance of pussy willows has stopped.

Although a low of -26ºC with a windchill in the low -30s is forecast for tonight, the sky is clouding over, making such a forecast low unlikely.  We are expecting another week of well below normal weather which will really slow down our earlier rapid rush into spring.   A good thing for wildflowers, crops, and critters.