Those of us who winter on Long Lake spent December and the first part of January wondering if the ice would ever form. There were days when we saw white caps on the water..not ice. At the same time, we were getting questions from our "snow bird" friends, "Has the lake frozen over yet?"
Many points on the lake seemed to be frozen and then thaw again. On Jan 9th many people thought the lake had frozen over. But as you can see from the graphic above, the temperatures varied during that week.
Sharon Natzel's description of conditions during the week of January 8th:
This year's ice-in spotters had to work very hard. The weather just was not consistent. Our ice spotter that is positioned on the very steep west bank looking directly east across the lake, using binoculars, noticed a long narrow strip of water, running north to south, that opened up in the ice Tuesday 1/9/24 in the late afternoon. The temperatures started dropping Thursday afternoon and by Friday, January 12, 2024, the lake finally froze over. Thank you to all the ice spotters around the lake. It takes teamwork!
If you want more details of how Ice-In is determined and statistics, take a look at the Ice Data page .
