Ice bowl? As I write, on the morning of January 20, it’s a “balmy” 22 degrees. The sun is rising over the hills, and all’s well with the world.

But the river’s frozen solid here, about a mile below Skinners Falls, which rarely happens. The Delaware River today matches its condition during the winter of 2000-2001, when it froze solid between Narrowsburg and Skinners Falls and remained that way until March 20.

That winter the first slushy ice drifted by on Thanksgiving Day, and the earliest ice fishermen appeared on the Big Eddy at Narrowsburg on December 15, 2000.

This time the weather has been fickle. Ice covered the Big Eddy before Christmas, but a heavy rain on New Year’s Day cleared the river. (Several ice blocks that landed nearby were seven inches thick).

Ice fishing begins. The recent inflow of Arctic air, which began on January 12, has again shut tight the Big Eddy. And it summoned, last Friday morning, the season’s first ice fishermen.

Parking below the business district, yesterday, and following a trail onto safe ice, I checked a couple of fishing holes with a yardstick. Given the frigid weather and surface waters at the freezing point, I discovered the ice was already 8.5 inches thick at the holes I measured.

How cold? After seven consecutive mornings in single digits, two of them below zero, it was a relief this morning to find the thermometer at 22 degrees. At my place the average low temperature from January 13 to19 registered 4.2 degrees.

It recorded minus 6.2 degrees on January 18 (nature’s salute to visitors arriving for the Narrowsburg EagleFest).