You know the winter doldrums are starting to affect your brain when the most exciting thing you can think to write about in a blog is the icicle hanging outside your window. But, be that as it may, today the number is 64. And, with snow in the forecast and another dip back into the real cold on Wednesday, it is not unreasonalbe to hope that the icicle will be taller than me (at 74 inches) before its demise, although we all know that pride cometh before the fall.

It has now become necessary to either go where you are watching or to watch where you are going because a potent sun spending long hours in the sky is starting to melt stuff, in defiance of the thermometer. But then, when Sol looks the other way there's a rapid congealing, and that means slippery.

The Great Lakes are at 90%, but the peak is, inevitably, just days away. I remember the old iceboater folklore which says that by the 15th of March it's too late to take your trailer off the ice. (This year the date is shifted back to at least April Fool's Day.)

And what does all this mean for Great Lakes water levels? As can be seen in the projection above, even at the low end of the forecast the water in Kagawong is going to a lot higher come July than what it was when the boardwalk got washed away last September.