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[triplemultiplex]

There are great records about ice coverage on Lake Mendota here in Madison.  Before it became a 'big' town, it was one of the many places they'd harvest ice to supply refrigeration for the rest of the year in the days before we invented a way to mechanically keep things cool.
The graph charts the number of days Lake Mendota is frozen over each winter dating back 165 years:


This winter, the freeze-over date will definitely be in January.

Lake Mendota's ice cover is a useful bell-weather for long term winter trends.  It's large enough and deep enough that it responds slower to short term weather events, so it takes sustained conditions to create or melt ice on the lake.  Also, there are only minor streams in its watershed, so ice cover won't be affected by current the way it would on say, Lake Wisconsin or Lake Koshkonong.

[kernals12]

There are great records about ice coverage on Lake Mendota here in Madison.  Before it became a 'big' town, it was one of the many places they'd harvest ice to supply refrigeration for the rest of the year in the days before we invented a way to mechanically keep things cool.
The graph charts the number of days Lake Mendota is frozen over each winter dating back 165 years:


This winter, the freeze-over date will definitely be in January.

Lake Mendota's ice cover is a useful bell-weather for long term winter trends.  It's large enough and deep enough that it responds slower to short term weather events, so it takes sustained conditions to create or melt ice on the lake.  Also, there are only minor streams in its watershed, so ice cover won't be affected by current the way it would on say, Lake Wisconsin or Lake Koshkonong.

That must've been one hot winter in 2001.

[kphoger]

+5% here in Wichita, and that is no surprise to me.