Lake of the Woods Ice Patrol | Aerial photographs and updates on spring ice conditions in Kenora, Ontario Lake of the Woods Ice Patrol Aerial photographs and updates on spring ice conditions in Kenora, Ontario Menu Skip to content Home About FAQ Glossary Search Search for: October 24, 2022: Tragic News 2022/10/24 / icecaptain / 7 Comments Ice Patrol has lost one of its contributors to a fatal plane crash on Lake of the Woods. I recently learned that the pilot who died in the vicinity of Shore Island in late September was Josh Broten. Joshua D. Broten May 18, 1982 ~ September 21, 2022 (age 40) He was the sole occupant of the plane, his Arion Lightning. Josh was an early and regular contributor to Ice Patrol, sharing many photos of the spring ice conditions taken on flights from his home base in Roseau, Minnesota. He was an enthusiastic and cheerful correspondent, and clearly loved our lake. I’m sad that I never had the chance to meet him in person. You can see his obituary here. That’s all for now. May 17, 2022: Aftercasting 2022/05/17 / icecaptain / 10 Comments We’re not forecasting any more, but Sean always finalizes his graphs to see how close the predictions came. Short version: the thaw went better than expected. Before we examine the final version, let’s go back and look at this spring’s first forecast, from late April. You can click on these to see larger, sharper versions. Early in the spring, Sean estimated that we’d need to reach a target thaw index of 190 points. That’s the horizontal yellow line. That value of 190 was based on the severity of the winter. Last winter’s freezing index was close to 1900 points, and a ratio of ten to one is his starting point for predicting the thaw. April Thaw Forecast Graph. The blue line is formed by plotting this year’s daily temperatures (Mean Daily Temperatures, to be specific). In the early spring, he sketches in the blue line using the weather forecasts, and then as time passes, he replaces the forecast line with actual data. Now here’s the post-season analysis version. Final Thaw Graph. As you can see, the blue line plotted from actual weather reports rose more steeply than the early version based on weather forecasts. Also, the ice melted at a slightly better rate than the base ratio of ten to one predicted, so the thaw was complete (marked with a yellow star) at a lower thaw index than the target of 190. It happens. Temperature is a big factor in the thaw, but it’s not the only one. Some of the other factors aren’t included in weather forecasts, especially long-term ones. Perhaps you’d like to see how this spring’s temperature profile compares to other years in our records. Sean has a graph for that, too. Spring Temperature Trend After Inflection. In this graph, the timeline across the bottom is synchronized to each year’s Inflection Date, not the calendar date. Also, the lines for previous years continue to plot the rising cumulative index even after the ice is gone. We’re just comparing spring temperature trends, not trying to factor in ice thickness or anything like that. This year’s data is shown in a dotted line, and it’s the second highest track on the graph. On both this graph and the previous one, that red line that we didn’t quite equal represents 2007, a very warm spring, so we did quite well this year. As Sean commented, once we finally got Mean Daily Temperatures above freezing*, they were often in double digits. *When the Mean Daily Temperature goes above freezing and stays there, we call that the Inflection Date, and that’s what Sean bases his graphs on. Lastly, the Shark-fin graph. There’s really only one change to this. This year’s ice-out date of May 16 has been marked with a red dot, bringing the thaw phase to a close. Shark-fin Graph. Sean will continue to plot the summer numbers on here so that we can see how much summer heat we accumulate, which will affect water temperature and the inevitable freeze next winter. In the meantime, here’s hoping that he can plot a summer fin that is tall and wide, because that would be the sign of a season that is both warm and long. Signs of spring: The trees are leafing out, and I saw daffodils blooming in someone’s garden today! Fun tidbit: Sean did some internet sleuthing, and as far as he can tell, Lake of the Woods Ice Patrol is the only website of its kind anywhere in the world. I think that’s about if for this year. I’d like to thank everyone that helped. Sean, of course, for the graphs and predictions. The pilots and drone operators, and everyone who sent in photos. They made Ice Patrol possible this year. The donors, who alleviated the stress of trying to do this on a shoestring budget. Having enough money to book flights meant I didn’t have to worry about going without aerial photos in the critical weeks. The people who participated via email or the comments form. I received a lot of very helpful information from those sources, and it’s growing as a way to pool our knowledge. And lastly, the followers and visitors. Ice Patrol had a busy spring this year, racking up nearly 75,000 views in under five months. Traffic peaked at over 2400 views a day. That keeps me going, and I’m tickled that people check in from all over the world. Thank you all. Ice Patrol will now go (mostly) dormant until next spring. Talk to you then! May 16, 2022: All Clear 2022/05/16 / icecaptain / 6 Comments There was still some ice on the south end of the lake yesterday, in the vicinity of Oak Island. It may have been wiped out later in the day, but I don’t know for sure, and it might not have been the only patch left, so I’m using May 16th as our official ice-free date for Lake of the Woods this year. I believe Shoal Lake is also clear. So let’s see how that stacks up. The 2022 Brick Graph. This year’s brick goes in the previously empty May 16th-20th slot, and shows 2022 as the second latest thaw in my records. It certainly feels like it. Now let’s see how it looks on the Pancake Graph. You can click on these to see larger versions with sharper text. 2022 Pancake Graph. The rapidity of this year’s thaw is not quite as exceptional as I thought. 2020 was two days faster, and 2013 was a match, at nineteen days from Inflection Date to Ice-free and just one day earlier. Something that turned out to be not so similar was 2014. I drew a lot of comparisons this spring between this years melt and the one in 2014, because the thaws then and now both started late, ran to cold weather and featured high water levels. Despite having all those things in common, the ice went much faster this year. This may have been partly due to the wet weather. Something I learned from meteorologists this year is that high humidity has a powerful melting effect on ice. I’m curious to see how Sean Cockrem’s graphs look this spring. They’re more sophisticated than mine, and will reveal how this year’s temperature profile compares to those other years. It’s worth mentioning that some of Sean’s earlier predictions turned out to be pessimistic, but that’s because they were modeled on weather forecasts that also turned out to be pessimistic. If you tell Sean it’s going to be cold, he’s bound to respond that it will be a later melt. Now that the May Long weekend is not overshadowed by the possibility of ice on the lake, we’re all set to start our summers, right? Not so fast. As I write this, the weather forecast is calling for gloomy conditions, with cloud, rain and below-normal temperatures for the next week. We could see near-freezing temperatures Friday and Saturday night, and it doesn’t currently look like the long weekend’s Saturday will be warm at all. The Weather Networks says a high of just 7°C with showers of rain, perhaps mixed with snow! and Environment Canada is just a little more optimistic, suggesting partly cloudy and 10°C. For Sunday, they trade positions, calling for 15 and 12 respectively. An average high for the 21st of May is close to 19°C. Even the 14-day outlook doesn’t suggest any temperatures above 18°C before the end of May. Let’s hope they’re being pessimistic again. May 15, 2022: Is it Gone? 2022/05/15 / icecaptain / 5 Comments Yesterday, there was still significant ice in the Manitou, but not much anywhere else, unless there was some down in the Big Traverse. Devon Ostir has a dock cam with a view across the Manitou towards Whisky Island, with a smaller, nameless island in the foreground. Yesterday, he sent in a picture that showed quite a lot of ice clustered around his property, and he promised to send another when the ice was gone. He made that update at around suppertime last night. Here are a pair of pictures that show the last ice going from his location on Hare Island. Yes, you can click on them if you want to see a larger version. Devon Ostir’s dock cam at 4:52pm on May 14. Devon Ostir’s dock cam at 6:36pm on May 14. Naturally, I checked the weather for that time frame, and saw that the wind, which had been from the south or southwest most of the afternoon, became westerly at 5:00pm. This ice was part of the largest remnant in the northern half of the lake. Has the wind destroyed it or merely shifted it? I hope to find out today. If you’re out boating in the Manitou today, drop me a line if you do encounter any ice. Same goes for any of my pilot friends. Please remember that even if the ice is gone, the high water will have resulted in lots of ‘deadheads’: floating logs or timbers. Also, some rocks that used to be visible will now be lurking as submerged reefs. We missed Satellite Saturday yesterday, so here’s how things have been developing there. MODIS image of Lake of the Woods from Terra satellite, May 13, 2022, in false colour. I’m fairly certain that the blue patch seen near the Northwest Angle on Friday is ice. There might be some showing on Shoal Lake, too. Cloud cover makes it hard to tell if there’s any ice in Buffalo Bay, as seen in Jared Cantor’s photos from Saturday morning. MODIS image of Lake of the Woods from Terra satellite, May 14, 2022, in false colour. On Saturday we only got this partial view of Lake of the Woods from Terra, and Aqua’s view was worse. There might be some ice on the south end of the lake, but at least some of that blue is probably wisps of ice cloud. The only debate now is whether ice-out was yesterday, or will be today or tomorrow. I don’t think I’ll be able to positively confirm it for yesterday, so it will likely go on the graph as the 15th or 16th, depending on what information I receive today. The weather: Some cool temperatures are coming in the next week, along with some more rain. The rainfall amounts could be in the 10mm range, which would be bad, as water levels are already very high. As for the temperatures, it might drop as low as 0°C on Friday night. As we start the long weekend, grr. I suppose the garden hose will have to stay in the basement a little longer. We might see a skin of ice on puddles, but certainly not on lakes. May 14, 2022: Courtesy of MAG Canada 2022/05/142022/05/15 / icecaptain / 3 Comments Early this morning, I received two photos from Jared Cantor. He took them yesterday morning from an airliner on the way from Toronto to Winnipeg. Jared was sitting on the left side of the plane, so his window seat looked south. Here’s what he saw from about 30,000 feet. Click on these pictures to enlarge them. Bigsby Island, Big Island and Big Traverse. Everything’s big on this end of the lake. Above and left of centre are slender Pine Island and Sable Island, Four Mile Bay, and the mouth of the Rainy River. The patch of ice is near Long Point. Big Traverse, Buffalo Bay, Buffalo Point, Muskeg Bay, and Warroad, Minnesota. In this second view from a minute or two later, the right side of the frame shows the view south across Buffalo Bay to Buffalo Point. Beyond that is Muskeg Bay and Warroad, Minnesota. The big patch of ‘land’ in the middle of the picture is actually another expanse of ice. Thanks, Jared! The photos above were omitted from the first version of this post. I meant to include them but lost track. Knowing where we stood yesterday, I was very eager to go flying today. I knew there couldn’t be much ice left. I wanted to see what there was, to get the best idea of when the last of it will be gone. So I called my old friends at MAG Canada to see if I could book a short flight. They wouldn’t take my money. They insisted on giving me a free flight for old time’s sake. I always knew that the company supported me and Ice Patrol on a local level, but I was touched to hear that this was supported by the head office. Thanks, Mark! So I met up with Andy Zabloski at the hangar, and we went for a short tour. I wanted to head down towards Sioux Narrows, because I haven’t had any pictures from that direction recently. You can click on these pictures to see a larger version. Bigstone Bay. Sultana Island and Quarry Island are in the middle of the picture. The first thing we noticed was that there was no ice at all left in Bigstone Bay. Sometimes Heenan Point or Needle point will trap some late ice, but not today. All the bays in this area are completely ice-free. We had set off to look at Andrew Bay, Witch Bay and so on, but we couldn’t find any ice in that region at all, so we turned towards areas more likely to have late ice. The first ice we did see was in the Manitou. The Manitou. Bare Point in the foreground, Town Island in the middle. There is ice here, but not very much. It’s hugging the shore of Wolf Island and Hare Island. Here’s what it looks like from Devon Ostir’s dock cam on Hare Island. He’s promised to send me an update when his shore is clear of ice. Thanks, Devon! Now back to our flight. There’s usually late ice south of the Barrier Islands, but we didn’t see anything obvious, so we went further south to see if we could spot any at the south end of the lake. Cliff Island and the Alneau Peninsula. Little Traverse is in the distance. It was a long way away, and the patchy light from a broken cloud layer makes it hard to be certain, but I think there’s some ice down by Bay Island, in the Little Traverse. Next we turned north to take a closer look at the Barrier Islands. The Barrier Islands. We had missed it at first glance, because it’s not a big sheet, but there’s some ice against the south shore of Shammis Island, very near the centre of this picture. Zoom in to see it, and the larger area of ice in the Manitou that we saw before. The Manitou also has another ice remnant around Wolf Island. Wolf Island, Welcome Channel, Thompson Island, Holmstrom’s Marsh. There’s still some soft pan ice drifting in this area. In this picture, it’s right by the propeller blade, near Houghs Island, but it’s probably on the move. We got a nice shot of the Scotty Island to Hay Island area. Scotty Island, Middle Island, The Hades and Hay Island. We found no ice at all in this area, and that also includes Slate Island, Railway Island, Queer Island and Square Island. That concluded our look at the ice on Lake of the Woods. In short, we found almost none. If it’s not gone tonight, it certainly will be by Monday morning. Here’s a picture from Kelly Belair, showing what some of the ice looks like when it piles up on a reef. This was taken near Rocky Point at about mid-day today. He says the picture doesn’t do it justice. Ice pile by Rocky Point. By the way, ice remnants are not the only boating hazard right now. Because of the high water levels, there are lots of deadheads and debris in the water. Parts from damaged docks and cribs have been reported. All marinas should be operable now, but they’ll have a lot of catching up to do. One last picture from our flight. As we were circling to return to the airport, we flew over Upper Black Sturgeon Lake. Water levels are up there, because the Winnipeg River is so high that it’s flowing into the Black Sturgeon Lakes, instead of the other way around. This was apparently an overstatement. River levels are high enough that the Black Sturgeon Lakes are not draining normally, but I heard recently that the rollers are still above water, so the river is not actually higher than the lakes. At least, not yet. Beauty Bay Golf Course. As just one example of how bad it is, the water is lapping at the clubhouse of the Beauty Bay Golf Course. The front parking lot and dock area (near the middle of this picture) are submerged. So a special thanks to Andy and my old colleagues at MAG for this farewell flight. I got to ride one more time in GTWW, a plane I flew for thirty-two years and (checks logbook) over 5000 hours. Sad sniff. Signs of spring: My dog found a bee today. Motorhomes and campers. Boat Trailers. Generally heavy traffic. Potholes with a capital P. Ice Patrol will be wrapping up for the year soon. We’ll try to establish the actual date the ice was all gone, and we’ll update the graphs accordingly. I’m still hoping for a nice satellite image of an ice-free lake to round things off. If you found Ice Patrol valuable this year, let me just mention that I did insert a donations form back in March. It uses the services of Stripe, and works in US dollars. Traffic is way up since March, so here’s a link to it, in case you missed it, and feel like it. The form is at the bottom of this post from March 16. Every donation is appreciated, but there’s no obligation. It’s entirely up to you. May 13, 2022: Forecast Friday 2022/05/13 / icecaptain / 1 Comment Soon, the ice-out date will be history, and not a matter for forecasts. But while we still have a little ice left, here’s Sean’s last take on it for this year. Remember, you can click on this graph to see it large and sharp. Lake of the Woods Thaw Forecast. This year’s temperature profile (the blue line) runs parallel to the best case example from 2007 (the red line). Since last week, Sean has updated the path of the blue line to replace forecast temperatures with actual ones up to the present. His conclusion? Based on temperatures, the lake should be entirely ice-free in the evening of May 17th. Temperatures are not the only factor in play, though, so there’s still some wiggle room for wind and high humidity to get rid of the ice even faster. Certainly it is very windy today. I think it’s possible that the ice might be gone a day or so earlier than the temperatures suggest. In the meantime, although there is still ice present, many people will be able to reach their cottages by boat already. For those who cannot, yet, it is only a matter of days. Satellite imagery is a bit of a tease lately, because of cloud. Yesterday, Terra satellite was able to see only the south west corner of the lake. Today, Aqua got a look at only the east side. In both cases, there was no significant ice visible, but we’re reaching the stage where it would be hard to spot from space. Lake levels continue to rise. Water is flowing into Lake of the Woods faster than it can be let out. Sean calculates that the surplus amounts to an olympic-sized swimming pool’s worth of water every second and a half. That would raise the lake by an inch and a quarter every day. If that continued for a week, it would come to another fifteen inches, but nobody knows exactly how long the inflow will remain so high. As mentioned on Ice Patrol yesterday, the water level of the Winnipeg River is so high that it’s raising the water level in and around the Black Sturgeon Lakes. That’s washed out a number of roads, and resulted in an evacuation order for a lot of people that live north of the Kenora Bypass. The evacuees will have a narrow window to get out. The City of Kenora Works Department is attempting to re-open one route with heavy equipment, and they think they can keep that road passable for four hours this afternoon. After that, the floodwaters will close off all the ways out. You can read more–and see a map of the affected area–at Kenora … truncated (19,542 more characters in archive)