David Hodsdon makes the official determination of ice-in and ice-out on Clary Lake and according to him, ice-out occurred sometime between 4 and 5 pm on April 14th. His criteria for ice-out is all the ice out of all the coves. He also notes that the loons were back on the 12th, a fact I can confirm from my own observations. Even though it seems like a late spring, a look at the ice-in and ice-out records going back to 2001 show that this year’s date is about average.

It sure did go out fast once it started to go.

Spring has arrived! I’m sure of it! Less than a week ago there were people ice fishing on the lake and at the time I speculated that it would be at least 3 weeks before the ice went out. Today, there’s a significant amount of open water on the north shore of the lake and the remaining ice looks very gray indeed. You can see the open water in the picture at left. What a difference a week makes! Now I’m thinking the ice will be gone in another week or less. We’ll see. There is open water around the edge of much of the lake. racket. I plan to launch my kayak this weekend and see if I can make it up to the channel. You can also see piles of white here and there around the lake where the wind has driven the ice up on to the shore. I recall this happening on my shoreline early one winter some years ago, the ice actually piled up 4′-5′ thick and it made an awful racket!

You may have notice that the lake level is higher now than it has been for some time. In fact, it’s only been this high 2 other times in the last 3 years. As high as it seems however, it’s still 20″ below the top of the dam. Though the gate is open, the ground where not frozen is saturated and most precipitation runs right off. We’ve received only 1.21″ of rain so far this month but the lake came up 20″ for a runoff multiplier of about 16x. I think a more reasonable multiplier would be 10x as snow melt accounts for about 7″ of that rise.

There is almost 3.5′ of water over the foot of the ramp at the State Boat Launch, more than a foot more than the design minimum so those of you so inclined to launch your boats this spring shouldn’t have too much trouble though don’t expect the water level to remain high this summer. We’ll see what the fall brings.

I posted the above picture in the Winter 2014 album. I should have posted it in the Spring 2014 album, but there isn’t one yet. I’ll get right on that.

Jack Holland forwarded me a copy of a Damariscotta Lake Watershed Association (DLWA) notice about an upcoming workshop they’re giving intended to train volunteers to identify and categorize Non-Point-Source (NPS) pollution sites. The end goal is performing a Watershed Survey for Damariscotta Lake, a truly daunting task give the size of Damariscotta Lake’s wateshed. The Clary Lake Association performed such a watershed survey for Clary Lake back in 2001 (see our Clary Lake Watershed Survey Basemap) and at last year’s Annual Meeting we formed an ad-hoc committee to work to update that survey in the near future.  Some of our NPS committee members will need some training too so I’ve written to Garrison Beck to see if we can participate in the training. I’ll let you know what I find out. Here’s the email notice:

Do you want to help protect the water quality of Damariscotta Lake? Then join us on Saturday, April 26th from 9am – 3pm at DLWA for training needed to be part a team that will find and locate harmful sources of pollution.   

After the training, you will work with DLWA staff and other volunteers to conduct a complete survey of the Damariscotta Lake Watershed looking for sites of non-point source pollution. In brief, non-point source pollution is all pollution in the watershed that cannot be attributed to a single point (ex. a pipe). This pollution comes mostly in the form of erosion and runoff from the land, which carries nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen into the lake and its tributaries.

Our watershed is over 30 square miles and we need your help! Your job would entail walking the near-shore area on Damariscotta Lake and driving watershed roads looking for sites of erosion and runoff. Our goal is to complete the entire survey within one month of the training!

If you are interested in attending the training or assisting in any other way, please contact Garrison Beck at 207-549-3836 or [email protected].