(Okoboji)-The ice is officially out in the Iowa Great Lakes, KUOO’s Becky Thoreson has details:
Warm and windy weather on Monday finished off the last of the ice in the Iowa Great Lakes.
DNR District Fisheries Biologist Mike Hawkins explains the monitoring process. “We’ve been monitoring ice out conditions as we do every year and although there’s a little subjectivity that goes into both ice on and ice off dates, we’ve try to keep fairly accurate records through the years. Our Fisheries Research Team spends a little time monitoring the area lakes here. It’s also interesting that some of this data has been used in studies that look at ice on and ice off dates and the number of days that the lakes have been frozen, and they use that for building trends over time. I think the reason being that the average number of days that the lakes are ice-covered has something to do with the changes in our weather and climate. So, this year East Okoboji looks like it was ice free on the 24th of March, Spirit Lake went ice free on the 27th of March and then the 29th, West Okoboji went ice free.”
He notes that there’s a wide variance in how long the lakes are frozen. “The average ice duration at about 124 days for Big Spirit Lake. West Okoboji, on the other hand, about 112 days. The shortest ice duration for Big Spirit Lake was only 75 days back in 2007. The shortest ice duration on East Okoboji was about 81 days, and then shortest ice duration on West Okoboji was, again, in 2007 at 75 days, so quite a bit of variability there.”
The last ice on West Okoboji was located along Terrace Park, where it finally melted on Monday.
Photo courtesy of David Thoreson
