©Bert Gildart: Who ever said it couldn’t snow when the temperatures dipped to into single digit figures? Throughout the week, despite the subzero temperature, snow has been piling up. It has accumulated in fields, around barns, on river ice, lake ice, and along peaks forming the Swan Mountains.

And there is another phenomena occurring. Steam is now rising off Montana’s Flathead Lake, and we see it any day we make the four-mile drive to the nearest settlement, which in this case is Bigfork.

Steam is due to the fact that this largest of all lakes west of the Mississippi is actually starting to freeze, and that means the lake has to relinquish all that heat it acquired during the summer. So dense now is the steam that we can not see more than a mile across this seven-mile-wide body of water. So thick is the steam that you might actually think you can hear it, but that is not the case.

Of course all that will change once ice covers the lake, and from the looks of it, that could happen soon.

Last year the American Automobile Association commissioned me to take Christmas photos of Bigfork, now featured in the December ‘08 issue. Our local chamber likes to call this small settlement of about 2,000, “Bigfork Village,” and certainly, it is a delightful little town, but now, quite artsy.

 

 

Bigfork Annual Parade set in town and all backdropped by Swan Mountains

All of this is by way of letting you know that we’re thinking of so many, and are grateful for all we have. We wish our troops scattered throughout hostile parts of the world God’s speed. We wish only the best for our elected officials and most of all, we want our friends, neighbors and family know that you all much in our thoughts.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

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This entry was posted on Thursday, December 25th, 2008 at 7:14 am and is filed under Montana Photography, Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.