Wasilla 

Location 

Lucille Lake

The Wasilla Observatory is located at 61° 34.282’N, 149° 928’W on the south side of Lucille Lake, which runs parallel to and is on the south side of the Parks Highway. The lake is 1.75 km wide by 5 km long, and the water is >1 m deep at the observatory. The frozen lake is popular with snowmachiners and ice fishermen, and we even saw at least two pick-up trucks on the ice. The observatory was set up on Tuesday 28 January 2003 by Kim Morris and Martin Jeffries under cloudy skies in a brisk wind and a temperature of about ­3°C. The mean snow depth was 0.09 m and the mean ice thickness was 0.35 m. To install the hot-wire ice thickness gauge requires a slot to be cut in the ice with a chainsaw. Since our chainsaw bar is 0.35 m long, we were fortunate to find a site for the hot-wire gauge where the ice was 0.31 m thick.