Things were not looking too promising at 4:30am on Saturday. I had already been woken up repeatedly by loud cracks of thunder and heavy sheets of rain, so I was tempering my expectations that a lake swim was even remotely possible.
Nevertheless, the skies opened up between the storms, and we were able to get in a quick 1/2 mile before chaos once again descended on our world famous swim site!
When I arrived at L1 at 5:10am, we still had some thunder and lightning to the north which nixed swimming for at least 30 minutes. What made this agonizing was that the lake was perfect – calm and clear with a surface temperature of 63.1F. By that time Fred had arrived, so we waited around to see if the storm activity continued. Fortunately for us, we made it to 5:45am with no fireworks in the sky, so the swim was a go!
We got in right away and made a mad dash for Oak Street Beach, hoping to complete the 1/2 mile before the storm gods chased us out of the lake. Lucky for us, the skies remained calm, so we were able to finish our swim without incident. And we certainly timed things perfectly – the rain and storms started up once again just as we arrived back at L1 by foot!
It’s always a crap shoot this time of year with the late Spring t-storm activity. But every so often we luck out and snatch a victory from the jaws of Ma Nature.
And this was one of those mornings!
A short window of time for swimmin’!
The storms return
