We had a surprisingly great showing of Lake Monsters on a rather bitingly cold (32F air temp) late autumn morning. Perhaps it was the later swim time, but I’m convinced that it’s more of a factor of having a newer group of swimmers who are excited about getting the winter lake experience. And they certainly got a taste of it this morning!
I checked the lake temperature with my new thermometer, and the surface temperature came in at 41F. I took several readings and concluded that the lake had indeed finally turned over since our last meetup on November 14. So I’m expecting that we will likely start seeing lake temps below 40F by our next meetup (fun times!).
I again opted to go with a neoprene shorty and cap, and I was quit comfortable during the swim with the exception of my hands and feet. My hands in particular really took a beating in the 41.6F lake (official in-swim reading), so I limited my swim to 1/4 mile. Bottom line – I shall be donning my gloves and booties going forward!
The saving grace to our swim was that we had a clear morning at 6:45am. As you can see from the pics, we had a great sunrise with abundant sunshine that really helped temper things pre and post swim. And while I still had a bit of an afterdrop, it was actually quite manageable compared with the overcast skies we had during our last outing.
Looking forward to December!