Frozen Lake - Now This Is Cold For Around Here

After growing up in Northern West Virginia and South Jersey, I moved to East Tennessee forty years ago. Over the years here, I can remember some winters with quite a bit of cold and snow and years when I planted stuff in my garden on New Years Day. We’ve owned the property where we now live for around 20 years and have had a boat dock in our little cove, where the winter water depth is about six feet, the entire time. In those 20 years this is only the second time for it to freeze over. I think the first time it was thicker as the dogs were out walking on it, but this is still a rare event. The first time may have been when Knoxville was announced as the coldest place in the country, at –24*, which is a very rare event indeed. Here are a couple of shots from Monday.

The lake we live on is directly connected to Fort Loudon Lake which is a navigable lake in the Tennessee River system, therefore it only drops six feet in winter, compared to maybe 50 feet for the storage lakes. This a shot from my little parking area out to my dock - it's all water in the summer.


This is a closer view from the same direction.


This is toward the back of the cove. Don't know how thick it is but would not want the dogs to walk on it. I did notice though, that nothing seemed to crack as I walked on the dock.


As a reminder, this is what it looked like when the water was a couple of feet above normal in September.


This is a shot toward the channel and you can see the beginning of the ice. The last time, I think it was frozen out to the next corner.


I took this shot Monday morning on my way home from taking Alex to school. It is an embayment of one of the creeks feeding the lake and it is frozen clear across - no big deal for those of you in the frozen North, but hey this is the South.



It got above freezing on Monday and is predicted to be in the 50's on Thursday. This was the longest below freezing stretch for Knoxville in 115 years. Since I’m BBQing on Wedneday and cutting up and moving a big oak log on Thursday, I’m ready for it to be warmer. Us old southern boys don’t do as well in the cold as us young northern boys used to do :)

Have a great day,

Larry