Seeing that I have nothing better to do than take care of my twins I decided to do a little science project. Let’s look at the facts, shall we? This is the extended forecast:
Fri Apr 09 48/30 Sat Apr 10 47/29 Sun Apr 11 42/31 Mon Apr 12 45/35 Tue Apr 13 50/39 Wed Apr 14 53/34 Thu Apr 15 53/33 Fri Apr 16 48/31
Daytime Average: 48-50 Night: 32-35. This is based on forecasts which have a margin of error anyway.
Now last year on these days the temps were recorded as:
9th 50/28 10th 52/28 11th 46/27 12th 64/36 13th 52/37 14th 57/25 15th 79/39 16th 73/39
Daytime High: 59 Night Low: 32
The 15th and 16th really spiked the average. Without those two days it's 53 for an average. After the 16th the temps moderated to an average of 51 degrees until the 25th-ICE OUT. The highest was 66 but the three days prior to Ice-Out were only in the mid forties.
SO I have been following the
www.nhboat.com Ice-Out pictures. I did the same thing last year. If you compare to last year at this time we are way ahead in terms of melting. In 2003 on this date the ice was still pretty socked in around the docks at Silver Sands. Currently the Ice is just about wide open to the left and right of the docks and by my uneducated guess about 20-30 feet out past the end of the docks. If you look at 2001 you can see that the ice hadn’t really even started subsiding until April 15th and on this day it was totally locked in around the docks. That year Ice-Out was May 2nd.
So what does all this mean? Absolutely nothing I guess. I can only say that based upon what I see I think we are ahead of last year’s schedule. All we need is one or two warmer than average days and a good wind and we’ll see some major progress. I’ll go with an April 17th Ice-Out.
