Dear Friends,
It’s wintertime in Wisconsin, which means no outdoor work can be done on Ishwar’s Meeting Hall project. As I write this blog, the temperature in Bruce is a balmy +30 degrees F (-1 C), but the average January low is 0 degrees F (-18 C), and the record low a frigid -48 degrees F (-44 C). The Meeting Hall will need to be very well insulated indeed!
Incidentally, Bruce experiences some hot summers, as well as cold winters. Bruce’s record high was +109 degrees F (+43 C) in 1934. This creates one of the larger temperature variations of any place in North America, with a range of 157 degrees F!
Here’s a photo of a frozen Chippewa River near the Meeting Hall site in 2012.
A lot of snow can fall on Bruce in the winter. The average annual snowfall is about 54 inches (4.5 feet, or 1.4 meters), with much of the accumulation in December and January. However, the area commonly experiences large snowstorms in the spring, such as the 15 inches of snow that fell in May of 2013.
Photo of the McCaffery Farm in April of 2013. The barn in the distance was the site of mitti seva in September of 2016.
Photo of the moon setting over the site of the future ISHA Conference Center in Bruce, Wisconsin.
Cold nights in rural Wisconsin, far from the lights of cities, can translate into spectacular views of the night sky.
Here are two amazing photos of the Milky Way taken by our talented satsangi photographer in Bruce.
With warmest regards,
Paul Bauer
Chair of the ISHA Building & Fund-Raising Committee