Still Looks Like Winter, But Dangerous, Weakening Lake Ice Says Spring

We're a week into spring now, and around Vermont, temperatures were in the mid-winter single numbers either side of zero this morning.

Ice fishing enthusiasts on Lake Champlain near
Colchester, Vermont in February, 2012.
The ice might have been safe then, but
the warm late March sun is making lake
ice unsafe now.  

There's still plenty of snow on the ground, so it doesn't look at ALL like spring.

But don't let looks fool you. I noticed the Vermont Department of Public Safety and National Weather Service in South Burlington, Vermont put out a notice yesterday warning of increasingly dangerous ice conditions on the lakes.

The lakes and ponds look every bit as solidly frozen as they did a month ago. But looks are deceiving. Even on cold, subfreezing days this time of year, the sun is strong.  The dark grey ice near the bottom of the ice layer, near the water, can collect heat from the sun.

So the ice might be thinning and weakening from the bottom up. What looks like solid ice to us, us we just walked on a week ago, might be too thin to handle us now.

That means it's time to get off the ice in the Great White North. That's whether you're on Minnesota's 1,000 lakes, the deep lakes of the Adirondacks, and the many fishing ponds and lakes across Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

In Vermont and New York, Lake Champlain hasn't frozen over to this winter's extent in years. A lot of people have taken advantage of the novelty by walking out there in big groups. Probably not a good idea now, as the ice can break under an entire group, and then who will rescue them?

It's also about time you get your fishing shanties off the lakes, too. Most northern states have a deadline of about now to remove them.  If they fall through, you have to get them out and that could cost TONS of money.

It's going to warm up over the next few days, so ice will keep getting more and more unsafe.  The time to walk on water is over, folks.

Take it as a sign of spring. We take what we can get when spring is off to this slow a start, right?