'Cruelest Month' is almost over

Scene out our window in Nolalu today

There is nothing more depressing than a blizzard in the spring. It started this morning and the snow is expected to continue for the next few days although the bulk of it should come down today. Here in Nolalu we are expecting 5-15 cms (2-6 inches). Rats!
I knew it had to happen because the robins showed up about a week ago and robins are always snowed upon. Talk about a bittersweet moment: you see the first robin and you say "Yay! Spring is here!" and then you think, "Oh, no! It is going to snow some more."
The truth however is we have been blessed by beautiful spring weather. The snow had almost totally disappeared and the ground was drying up nicely. The melt occurred gradually enough that there was no flooding. We are so much more fortunate than our friends in Eastern Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick where record floods are all occuring.
There are only three weeks to go before the start of fishing season! Will there be open water? It looks that way. Although the weather has cooled off from what it was the last two weeks, everything is still melting. Red Lake missed this snowfall and that's a plus. Such an event always sets things back until the snow is melted.
I'm sticking with my 2019 ice-out or breakup forecast for Red Lake of May 12.  Come on sunshine! I want to have a fish fry!

Lovely weather could speed-up ice-out

Warm, sunny days and above-freezing temperatures at night the last couple of weeks should put the 2019 ice-out on Red Lake, Ontario back nearer the average date of May 8. Colder-than-normal conditions the first two weeks of April had me speculating in the last posting that the breakup would come a week later -- May 15. Maybe I'll split the difference now and pick May 12.
Incidentally, my predictions are for when a boat can travel on Howey Bay, the bay right in front of town. It is usually the last place to melt.
Walleye season opens May 18. It is always the third Saturday in May.

My system predicting Red Lake's ice-out

I've got a pretty good track record for picking the date for ice-out on Red Lake, usually pinpointing it within a few days. I thought others might be interested in how I do this.
First of all, I don't make my prediction until April. That is when spring melting actually begins and it is the weather in this month that accounts for 75 per cent of the timing of ice-out. The other 25 per cent comes from the weather in the first week of May.
I am emphasizing this to keep you from going down the rabbit hole of believing that last winter's conditions have anything to do with it. They simply do not.
I don't know how many times I have heard people say that because they had to put extensions on their ice augers in March that breakup would be exceptionally late and then the actual date was early. Or the opposite situation: there was less ice than normal so ice-out would be early -- except it wasn't.
Trust me on this; I've only seen it about 60 times.
Now, let's start with the fact that Red Lake's average ice-out date is May 8. That is just a fact gleaned from nearly a hundred years of data. Except for a handful of years, all the other ice-out dates are within one week either side of May 8. OK? So, you could say that normal ice-out is from May 1 to May 15. May 8 is right in the center.
When April comes around start paying attention to the highs and lows and how they compare to the averages for that date. The Weather Network conveniently does this for you in a graph on their 14-Day forecast.
If the temperatures are exactly normal all the time guess when ice-out will be? May 8! Do you see where this is going? Days below normal add to the time of ice-out and days above normal subtract.
I don't actually keep track of the days but rather the weeks. A week above normal moves the date to May 1. But if that is followed by a week below normal the date is back to May 8.
Finally, there are a couple of fudge factors. For instance how abnormal were the highs and lows for the weeks? If the deviation was only a few degrees, it will hardly make any difference, a day or two, for instance. If the temperatures are way out of whack, like 10 C, for most of the week, then it could move ice-out by an extra week.
A few other factors, like wind and rain, also play a marginal role. High winds, especially near May 8, will hasten the process. Rain any time does the same thing.
So, starting April 1 each year you can look ahead at the forecast and start to get an idea for your prediction then refine it as time goes on and you observe what actually happens weather-wise.
It's a fun thing to do while you anxiously wait for open water!
I'll just bring you up to date by telling you that the first two weeks of April were below normal but not critically so. That makes me move the ice-out date to about May 15.

'Where the heck have I been?'

I won't go into detail here but I've experienced an interruption this spring that has kept me from blogging.
If all goes well I hope to be driving nails on the new cabin all summer and won't have access to the Internet. So it could be next fall before my blog schedule returns to normal.
Since I know it is of interest to a great many people, let me just report that spring breakup of area lakes, including Red Lake, is very unlikely to be early and could be late. Average ice-out for Red Lake is May 8.
It was a cold winter but we have learned over the years that winter ice and snow depth don't make much difference on breakup times. What matters the most is the weather in April. To date the temperatures in April have been below normal. It looks like the forecast for the next couple of weeks is for warming but still not where it should be.
On the good side there haven't been many spring snowfalls that set everything back.