Ice-out on Detroit Lake; about 15 days later than the 131-year average

Detroit Lakes, Minn. (KDLM) – Ice-out has reached Detroit Lake.

According to the Lake Detroiters Association, ice-out on big and little Detroit lake occurred on May 5, which is about 15 days later than normal.

This winter, Detroit Lake had its frozen ice cover for 167 days. An average winter ice cover for the lake is about 151 days.

In a social media post, Dick Hecock, the lake ice record keeper for the Lake Detroiters Association, said this year’s longer duration of ice cover could be an outlier because the total ice time has decrease by about 8 days in recent years due to with warmer fall temperatures and later ice-in dates.

He also stated ice-out dates have varied greatly over the last decade with four of the 18 total May ice-out dates for Detroit Lake occurring in the last ten years. However, those late ice-out dates are offset by four early ice-out dates of March and the first week in April, which have also occurred on Detroit Lake since 2012.

According to Hecock, the latest ice-out date was May 17, 1950 and the earliest ice-out date occurred on March 23, 2012.