Yesterday's precipitation caused the sheet of ice resting atop the lake to divide itself into separate masses, the breeze driving them apart from one another like continents, exposing channels of open water which had been sheltered from the air for the past several months. I intended to portage the canoe out of storage today and traverse the newly opened passages, however the violet winds, gusting at up to fifty miles an hour, prevented me from doing so.

Blowing in from the northwest, these fierce winds slowly pushed the masses of ice towards the nearby shoreline, causing them to crack and heave against the pressure of the sand wall, which splintered and stacked the ice on top of itself before grinding it down to a fine texture, piles of which accumulated around the coast like drifts of snow.