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The Daily Doings of Steph

Another long winter is behind us. The smell of thawing dog doo is in the air. That can mean only one thing! It’s time for the Westchester Lagoon Ice Classic!

As in years past, it’s time to break out the weather almanac, consult weather service predictions, check your horiscope, try to figure out if this is an El Nino or a La Nina year, read the tea leaves, ponder the state of the pussy willows, count the number of returning geese and assess the impact of global warming - all in an attempt to be the winner of this year’s Ice Classic!!!!!

This year may be a little different. I’m a little late in getting the contest up and running. Usually, I announce on April 10th. But I wasn’t too concerned about the 6 day delay. After all, we just had one of the snowiest winters ever and the 4th coldest March of all time. I didn’t think the ice would be going out until sometime in mid-May. However, we’ve had some rain in the past week. That rain melted the snow covering the ice. So the snow melt and rain water have just been sitting on top of the ice and that’s quite a bit of weight on top for the ice to bear. As a result, the ice has started to sink. According to Peter, this sort of thing has happened in the past and the ice can go out much sooner than expected. So, bear that in mind when you calculate the ice-out date.

The rules (such as they are) are listed below. You’ve got a little bit of time to get your guess in, but don’t wait too long. That ice could go out and leave you behind!

Rules:

1. The participant must guess the date the ice goes out of the Lagoon.
2. Each participant gets only one guess.
3. Date for entries closes at 11:59 PM ADT on April 25th, 2007.
4. A guess consists of just a date - no time. I refuse to install a timing tripod on the Lagoon.
5. I will check the ice several times each day.
6. ALL the ice must go out. It sometimes goes out in chunks - but chunks don’t count.
7. Participants must supply their e-mail address. This is so I can contact you if you win.
8. If more than one person guesses the winning date, each winner will get a full prize - up to 4 winners. If there are more than 4 winners, the winning 4 will be selected based upon earliest entry into the contest.
9. All judge’s decisions are final and I (Steph) am the judge.
10. Ah - the prize. It’s a good one - a $25 gift certificate to Amazon.

Voting:

1. Voting will be done through the comments feature.
2. The voting comments button is at the bottom of this post.
3. Click on the comments button and submit your vote.
4. The cool thing is that everyone will be able to see everyone else’s vote - hopefully there will be a lot of them.

Notes and Hints:

1. In 2006, the ice went out on over a two day period: May 3rd and May 4th. Our winners were Gordon, Da Ski Boy, BJ, and Sean!
2. In 2005, the ice went out on April 29th and the winning prognosticator was Cory Gish.
3. In 2004, the ice went out on May 4th a day on which we set a record high temperature of 66 degrees. The 2004 winners were Dr. L., and Phil.
4. In 2003, the ice went out very very early, April 26th The 2003 winners were Brad and Phil.
5. In 2002, the ice went out quite late: May 10th and the winners were Erin and Brad.
6. Tyge and I took our last walk on the Lagoon on April 8th. Now all the ice at the West end of the Lagoon is under water.
7. The section of Chester Creek just East of Spenard Road is completely open. For you non-Anchorage-ites, Chester Creek feeds into the Lagoon.
8. If I got to vote, I’d vote for April 21st - my bet is that the ice is going to go very very quickly.

So vote away.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 16th, 2007 at 8:10 pm and is filed under Alaska, Tyge. You can follow responses via my RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your site.