The immature Bald Eagle that showed up to feed on the turkey carcass yesterday afternoon came by again this morning. I got this video of it feeding.
UPDATE: A little later in the morning, an adult Bald Eagle showed up to feed on the turkey carcass. There was actually a second adult that never came down to the ice. Eventually, they flew off with what was left of the turkey carcass.
The ice skating on Clary Lake has been extraordinary this year, and a good many people have taken advantage of the fabulous conditions. This afternoon I was out skating and encountered 4 people from Waldoboro (at left) who’d heard about the excellent skating conditions on Clary and came by to see for themselves. They were suitably impressed. Unfortunately the snow, sleet, and freezing rain storm coming in tonight will likely put an end to skating this winter. Here’s a video I shot this afternoon.
A word of caution: despite the low temperatures, there is still a considerable amount of open water out in the middle of the lake, (see video above) and a few open or mostly open leads around the shore where you wouldn’t expect to see them. This condition is due to a combination of the relatively high water level (2′ below the top of the dam) and a strong current resulting from the dam’s gate being wide open (the lake level is dropping about 1″ per day now). The current flows in a generally straight line from the inlet by the State boat launch passing close by the point at the end of the Duncan Road, to the outlet channel at the northwest end of the lake. The channel itself is ice free as well. The picture at left was taken New Years Day and the open area has gotten considerably larger since then.
This condition has occurred several times in the past few years. These open areas will probably fill with slush from the coming storm and skim over without getting really solid. Snowmobilers and skiers beware: if you don’t know where the safe ice is, you’d best stay close to shore or off the lake altogether.
I’ve also posted a few pictures in the Winter 2015 photo album that Tony Marple sent me yesterday, including this one at left that almost could have been taken on a calm summer day. The clouds reflected on the ice show just how smooth it really is. Thank you Tony.
Having (almost) nothing better to do for the last few days than put wood in the stove and read, I decided to make a time lapse video with pictures from the Clary Web Cam. The time period covered is December 14th and 15th from 5:00 AM in the morning till 6:58 PM at night with a picture being taken every 2 minutes. It’s pretty exciting stuff. For example, about 12:30 PM on the first day, a water drip runs down the glass and when night falls, you can see a couple of lights on in houses on the other side of the lake 🙂
The technical stuff: the video is composed of 838 pictures being viewed at 24 pictures (frames) per second. That works out to just a hair over 34 seconds of riveting video excitement. You’re welcome 🙂
The official 2014 ice-in date has finally been determined to be December 6th and I have updated the Clary Lake Ice-In and Ice-Out accordingly. While the lake was completely frozen over on the morning of November 29th, more than 1/2 of the lake melted off 2 days later when the temperature rose into above 40° for a couple of days, accompanied with some rain on top of that. Since then the lake has struggled to completely freeze over again until last Saturday morning when it finally seized up tight. Since then it’s put on quite a bit more ice. It was only 5° this morning as the cam pic at left will attest.
The ice isn’t the greatest for skating this year and the weather coming in tomorrow (snow, sleet, freezing rain) isn’t likely to make it any better. We only get really good ice 1 year out of 3 or 4. Here’s another video I found from December 2010 to show you just how good it can get:
Jack Holland called me earlier today and told me to get over to the boat launch and bring a camera. I didn’t stop to ask questions, I just dashed off. Well, the scene I encountered when I arrived there a few minutes later defied comprehension (see picture upper left). Nonplussed, I decided to just shoot first and ask questions later (you’ll find them in the new Fall 2014 gallery). I also decided to shoot a couple of videos. The first one shows them hauling the Cat loader out of the muck:
I was surprised and impressed those 2 trucks managed to drag that loader out, I’m pretty sure it weighed more than both trucks put together. Then with the loader out of the way, they were able to address the pickup truck problem:
I guess this situation would be funny if it weren’t so tragic. Backing your truck into the lake to get your boat because there isn’t enough water at the end of the ramp was not a great idea, getting stuck was virtually guaranteed. Getting the Cat loader stuck was inevitable once the (bad) decision was made to drive that into the lake to pull out the truck. Then they called dad.
These kids were fortunate really, nobody injured, nothing lost but face. Oh. And a broken drive shaft. And a tow rope. They stirred up a plume of clay sediment (visible in the above video) that will take a while to settle out and they’ve left some ruts in the lake bottom that will be there for years to come, but to put things in perspective, really, the environmental impact of their silly escapade is inconsequential in comparison to that being visited on Clary Lake by the dam owner himself, and through their inaction, the Department of Environmental Protection. Kids will be kids. While it is easy to be critical of their behavior, I can remember doing some pretty stupid things myself when I was young. Nothing like this of course.
David Chase has compiled a pretty cool video contrasting the water levels of Clary Lake between 1997 and 2013. He has posted it on the Clary Lake Association Google+ Community. He did it using a Google Earth flyover “tour.” Very impressive, and the comparison in water levels between then and now is stark. Thanks for sharing David!
Here’s the post:
https://plus.google.com/117329993421272712954/posts/b1Bxcr5M3Dk
Here’s the direct link to the video:
With the lake level higher than it’s been in several years, it follows that outflows from the lake should also be at levels not seen for quite some time. Well I had occasion to measure the outflow from Clary Lake this morning, out of curiosity as much as anything and sure enough, based on my calculations the current outflows as of the time of this writing are on the order of 83 cfs (cubic feet per second). The raw figure I arrived at was 98 cfs but it is customary to scale that figure down by as much as 15% to allow for flow losses resulting from friction on the sides and bottom of the stream which inevitably result in uneven water velocity and a lower overall flow value.
I estimate that about 55 cfs of water is flowing out of the dam’s outlet pipe and the rest of the water, about 30 cfs, is the result of water leaking through the hole in the dam and from seams on either side of the outlet. That there is a substantial amount of water leaking through the hole and cracks is apparent just by standing on the side of the road and looking at the downstream face of the dam. Here’s a short video I took this morning. What you can’t see in this video is the water leaking through the dam on the left side. It it essentially leaking across the entire face of the dam: Continue reading
This video, posted by David Chase on YouTube some years ago, shows logs being unloaded at the Clary Mill mill pond and towards the end of the video, the dam with water coming out of the center weir. Great video, but mostly I just wanted to test the ability to embed YouTube videos in posts 🙂
I’ve also added a new post category “Video Multimedia” to make is easier to find these posts. Looking forward to posting more videos.
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