(Spirit Lake)-Aside from some large piles of ice along the shorelines, The Iowa Great Lakes are essentially ice free. Fisheries Biologist Mike Hawkins with the Iowa DNR in Spirit Lake says most of the ice is gone from the lakes:
“We keep kind of an official record of ice on and ice out dates. It’s a little bit subjective, depending on who’s looking at it, but it looks like East Okoboji was ice-free on Sunday, and we’re kind of waiting on the other two, West Okoboji and Spirit Lake, there’s still a little bit of sheet ice left on those lakes and we’ll probably be calling that either today or tomorrow sometime, but, yeah, we’re basically there.”
He notes that the DNR keeps track of early and late dates:
“We’ve got some early and late times. So, the earliest we have on record for ice out date was March 6th and 7th. That was back in 2000, and then, way back in 1933, we kind of match those, too, that 6th, 7th, 8th time frame was the earliest that the ice has gone off the lakes here. More recently, in 2018, I think a lot of folks remember April 29th was the date ice went out on the lakes. We almost made it to the Walleye Opener with ice still on the lakes here which was quite an anomaly.”
The windy conditions in the forecast for the next couple of days will likely take out any remaining ice in the Iowa Great Lakes.
