August 3, 2012 -- On Leech Lake

As was the case yesterday, at 8:00 a.m. there was low rumbling of thunder, a light rain falling, a cool temperature of only 61 degrees and a light breeze out of the north at 3-5 mph. But unlike yesterday, as the morning progressed the weather didn't clear up.

At 10:30 a.m. the rain finally did cease, but the ground was wet, puddles stood in the driveway and sky remained grey and overcast. The temperature was steady at 61 degrees, and with a dew point of 61 degrees, the humidity was pegged at an even 100%.

Just before noon the clouds began to part and the sun came out. By 12:30 p.m. the clouds were nearly gone from the sky, the temperature had warmed to 82 degrees and a good wind of 10-15 mph was blowing out of the south.

It was right around this time that I gathered my wallet, phone and keys and drove the truck into Cass Lake. I had invited John and Karen Newman over for pizza this evening so I needed to go to the Great River Pizzeria to pick up a couple of unbaked pizzas. I'll bake them fresh and hot for dinner.

Once home from "town," I decided to go fishing for an hour so. With the wind coming out of the south, I positioned the boat so that the wind would push it out into the Bay and north to a spot between the house and cabin in 12 feet of water. I noted that the water temperature had dipped a bit to 79.3 degrees.

I jigged with a Northland grub for a full hour but caught only one medium-sized perch. At 4:30 p.m. I came ashore to prepare for the Newmans arrival.

We enjoyed a beer or two while the oven heated, and then had a wonderful pizza dinner -- a classic combo pizza and one with pepperoni, mushrooms and anchovies. It turns out that all three of like anchovies so that pizza took the biggest dent.

The Newmans left by 8:00 p.m. as the sky darken not only with the sun dropping toward the horizon, but with a severe thunderstorm moving into the area. I checked the Weather.com "maps in motion" and saw a band of very heavy storm activity moving toward Leech Lake and scheduled to hit between 9:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m.

Given our experience with the bad storm on July 2, I lowered the flag pole, shut the windows and prepared for the worse. Luckily, it the storm that hit tonight was no where near as bad as the one in early July. Sure, we had lots of lightning and thunder claps directly overhead and tons of rain, but the wind was only 20-30 mph compared to the 80+ mph wind with which last month's storm hit us.

By 11:00 p.m. the storm had passed for the most part, although we did get some rain throughout the night. I kept the stereo unplugged -- due to the close proximity of the lightning -- so I watched a DVD rather than listen to music tonight.

Good night from the shores of Leech Lake.