Warm temperatures and, more importantly, a high wind took out the ice on Red Lake and all the other water bodies except Trout Lake on May 7.
Satellite photos showed Trout to still have some ice yesterday, May 8. Trout Lake is higher than other area lakes and that extra bit of elevation means the air temperature is cooler. It's also a bigger, round-shaped lake and deeper. All those things can make ice-out five days or so later than Red Lake.
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| EOSDIS Worldview pic today, May 6. Ice mostly gone |
Once the ice has melted away from the shoreline, which it has, it starts shifting with the wind and crushing against the windward shore.
Hooray!
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| EOSDIS Worldview |
The latest that I have heard is that the ice is still shore-to-shore, is 16 inches thick but is candled and ripe for breakup.
I wish I had left my first prediction at May 8 as that is likely close to actual ice-out.
The last few weeks of April turned out colder than normal and that set back ice melting. Again, it is only the weather in April that matters. It was the warmest winter on record but it played no part on ice-out.
You can see daily detailed satellite photographs that show ice melt by going to this site EOSDIS Worldview. The satellite passes over Northwestern Ontario about 3 p.m. EST each day. All it takes to see what is happening with the ice is a clear sky. Unfortunately, the last day that happened was April 24, a week ago. In the screen shot of EOSDIS Worldview above, you can clearly see that Middle and Sadler Bays -- small water bodies at the west end of Red Lake -- are still frozen.
Zoom Earth also has near real-time imagery but it is not as detailed.
You can also download the free apps for both of these satellites to your smart phone. That is what I have done.
There's bluebird weather in the forecast the next two weeks and that makes me move my final ice-out prediction to May 1 or one week earlier than "normal."
We deserve a nice spring after some of the crappy ones in the last few years.
How do I know this?
Well, April is just about here and using my system that says April's weather is the only month that matters when it comes to ice-out, I look at the Weather Network's 14-day forecast and see that the first two weeks of April are expected to have normal temperatures. Normal ice-out is May 8. So there you have it.
If the actual weather differs from the prediction or if the last two weeks of April are not normal, I will adjust my ice-out time.
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| Worldview satellite image shows snow cover |
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| Windy App shows snow depth |
In all honesty, that could be the headline for any year from now on but there is something really alarming happening -- there is barely any snow in Northwestern Ontario. We're talking one inch for Thunder Bay and areas west along the U.S. border all the way to Manitoba. It isn't much better going north toward Red Lake. They have about four inches. Typically we would have two-to-four feet of snow at this point. There also is less than half the usual ice thickness on lakes.
None of this guarantees that the 2024 fire season is going to be a doozy but typically less snowfall indicates the ground will be really dry come spring. And the frost in that ground is only inches deep this year, not two feet like normal.
Forest fire experts have been on radio and TV during the last couple of weeks saying there still is a chance disaster might be averted. We can still get some deep snow and more importantly, heavy rains next spring. Just like when it comes to predicting ice-out, it all depends on the weather in April.
The odds are, however, that April is going to follow the same weather pattern we have seen for about six months which is warm and dry.
We should be prepared for a record-early ice-out, record-low lake levels and a record-bad fire year.
There still are 150 forest fires burning from last year in Northern British Columbia and Alberta but Northwestern Ontario mostly escaped last summer. There was a bit of a fire flap early in the season in the Lac Seul area but then we got enough rain to keep things quiet.
There are other worrisome factors at play too. We are heading into another spruce-budworm cycle this summer, something that happens every 40 years. That means large areas with balsam fir will begin a four-year countdown to death. Each year the tiny budworm caterpillars will eat the new growth off the trees which also continue shedding their needles from years earlier. After four years, the trees are barren and there will be large areas of Northwestern Ontario covered with dead balsam fir that burn explosively. That situation will get progressively worse for years and will move with the prevailing wind a little eastward each season. It starts in Northwestern Ontario and eventually ends up in the Maritimes.
An early ice-out would lead to a rapid heating of the ground by the sun and with little frost, trees will begin to grow, sucking out what little moisture there is in the soil. You get the picture.
I did hear one expert give a weather-related prediction today. Thunder Bay's entomologist says get ready for a "bumper tick year." Oh, boy.
As the opening weekend for fishing season approaches, Brenda and I can't help but think back to all the ones we went through as owners -- and before that -- workers, at Bow Narrows Camp. It was always a thrilling, exhausting, but totally memorable time.
The timing of ice-out with the season opener was what set the stage. The opener is a moveable feast. It is the third Saturday in May. So, it can be as early as May 15 and as late as May 21. Early openers always meant we were flirting with being still iced-in when the guests arrived.
Sometimes we needed to fly from the Chukuni River in town over the lake ice to the open narrows in front of camp. Even in those situations we could usually get the staff into camp a few days ahead of the guests to get things prepared but at least once we all went on the same day. Dad, Brenda and I were the staff at that time.
You can imagine the chaos: water is not yet running to the cabins, boats are not in the water, motors are still in the storage shed, etc. The first priority was to get everybody out fishing. The next was to connect propane tanks so they could use their kitchen stoves. By that point it was dark. We gave everybody plastic pails to get water from the lake.
The next day we slowly started getting the water system going. The problem was the main underground water line was still frozen in many places. This meant jury-rigging over-the top lines that would suffice until the ground thawed, something that might not happen for weeks. It took days but eventually everyone had running water.
We had immediately tried to schedule a supply flight but were told all the fly-in camps were in a pickle. The lakes were opening up day by day and as soon as they did, all the planes were booked to fly-in those guests who had been stuck in hotels. Our supply trip would just have to wait.
Days went by and we were almost totally out of gas for the outboards. And worse, lots of the guests were forced to leave most of their beer supply in their vehicles when they had flown in. There just had been no room. The situation was becoming critical.
Finally, about mid-week we got a call from the airlines that they could get one Cessna 185 into our place. It was the smallest of the aircraft and could carry about 900 pounds. What did we want them to bring?
We held a general meeting of the guests. Gas or beer or some of both? After a lot of discussion about the merits, they agreed -- fill the plane with beer. They could fish off the dock.
And that is what happened.
What I'm saying is, it's time to gaze into the crystal ball, throw a dart at the board, play a hunch, take a risk, stick your neck out and pick a date for ice-out in Red Lake.
So, here's my prediction: May 13.
We got a clear image from space today on Worldview as you can see above. It shows no snow on the ground from Duluth all the way north to Northern Manitoba. You can find Red Lake by finding the larger zig-zag lake about three-quarters up. That's Lac Seul. Its northwest end points to Pakwash Lake. To its northwest is Gullrock Lake and to its northwest is Red Lake, the horizontal lake with the hammerhead on the west end partly obscured by cloud. Trout Lake is the large roundish lake to the east of Red Lake.
Incidentally, Nolalu is well off this image to the northeast. We still have a foot of snow in the bush here and several inches out in the open. Most of this came in two dumps during the past two weeks.
If you want to load the above image into your computer so that you can enlarge it for better resolution, click here.
It takes a little practice to interpret the Worldview satellite photo but that smooth, dun-coloured area west of Red Lake is all a burn. Many of the places that burned in 2021 had also burned in 2018 and 2016 and earlier.
In reading 2022 blogs of canoeists who paddled Woodland Caribou Provincial Park -- the area west of Red Lake -- they tell how places with 3-5-foot new growth trees from those earlier fires burned again in 2021. Even the standing dead tree trunks from those earlier fires burned. There wasn't even enough wood to make a campfire. In lots of places even the soil burned leaving nothing but exposed bedrock.
As I speculated in this blog at the fall of 2021, I wonder if the treeless prairie is now extending all the way to Red Lake?
Woodland Caribou is the eastern half of the gigantic wilderness canoeing area west of Red Lake. The Manitoba western side is called Atikaki Provincial Park. Together they encompass millions of acres and just about all of it has burned, mostly in 2021.
Forests have an impact on weather systems. They slow the wind and retain moisture. Now that there is mostly wide open space between Red Lake and the Prairies, I think we can expect some big changes.
Trout Lake angler George Miller uses the end of snow on the ground as a start to the countdown of when ice-out will occur on Trout Lake. It happens roughly 30 days later.
This makes sense. Once the snow is gone the dark ground heats rapidly and makes the whole area warmer. So early no-snow dates caused by lack of trees should lead to earlier ice-outs.
Check out this photo of Howey Bay in Red Lake, yesterday, taken by Red Lake Marine's Sherry McCoy.
All the snow has melted off the lake ice.
Then check out the snow cover layer on Windy.com website and app. It shows Red Lake and areas all the way west to Lake Winnipeg being barren of snow.
I'm moving my ice-out date back to May 8.
And if you are wondering where the snow-line is in North America, look at this clear view from NASA Worldview today.
The first week of April could easily have been the first week of March, weather-wise. There was zero melting and a big dump of snow. So, I have adjusted my ice-out slide rule accordingly. At this point, I would say it will be a week late or May 15.
In the old days when my dad, Don Baughman, and step-mom, Anne, operated Bow Narrows Camps they would travel to Red Lake from Mentor, Ohio, the first week of May and settle into the Red Lake Inn while they waited for breakup.
With nothing much to do, they would drive around and look at the lake ice from various locations. It was during these little sightseeing trips that dad made a discovery. Every year the ice went out in Howey Bay seven days after it disappeared from Skookum Bay.
Skookum Bay is a long, narrow, creek-like bay that you cross on a small bridge on Forestry Road.
When I came back to the business in 1992 I would get telephone reports from Dad as he watched the bay. Our home in Nolalu, near Thunder Bay, is just a six-hour drive from Red Lake so there was no point in me waiting at the Inn with Dad and Anne.
Finally, Dad would say the ice was gone in Skookum and so I should arrive in Red Lake seven days later. I would do so and would find Dad and Bob Uhrina from Red Lake Marine launching the Banana Split -- the camp's large trip boat. The ice was breaking and either we could go directly to camp that day or wait until the next to give the big ice pans a chance to blow against one shore and leave a clear passage on the other.
After Dad passed, I would try to get reports from Red Lake residents on how Skookum Bay was melting. I even phoned people who worked at the Forestry Point and had to cross the bridge every day. None ever paid any attention to the bay and its ice. That's how I came up with my alternative method of calculating ice-out which I have documented here on the blog.
I've always wondered about how Skookum Bay got its name. I have read enough Jack London novels and Robert Service poems to recognize that Skookum is a west coast name or at least a far northwest name. There were lots of Skookum references in the Klondike gold rush. That rush took place in 1896 and was the second largest in history. The biggest was the San Francisco gold rush of 1849. The Red Lake rush in 1926 was the third-largest.
Could someone from the Klondike gold rush with a name like Skookum Joe have lived on the bay in Red Lake? It's possible.
But what does Skookum mean anyway? I found an interesting website called Indigenous Corporate Training Inc. that tells how First Nations had a special trading language called Chinook Jargon which let them do business with each other, especially the west coast nations. Non-indigenous people came to use this language as well and some of those terms are still used by us. Anyway, one of those Chinook jargon words is Skookum meaning big or powerful.
Skookum Bay is neither which makes me wonder if someone like "Skookum Joe" might have lived there. Anybody know?
Long-time Trout Lake fisherman George Miller provided his technique for figuring ice-out on this big lake northeast of Red Lake. George is always an opening week angler at Booi's Fly-In Lodge.
George had just read on the blog my system for predicting Red Lake's break-up and writes:
Diana Beresford-Kroeger looks at it from the bio-chemical level and Malcolm Squires from the macro-economic. She is an academic and he is an industry forester. There is no right or wrong here, in my opinion. They are both right.
Arboretum goes into fascinating detail how each species of tree and shrub in the Boreal provides a life-sustaining function to the entire planet. This is the largest forest ecosystem in the world. It goes completely around the globe at the northern latitudes.
Few of us realize how trees filter the atmosphere, removing toxins and particulates. They do the same with water. If there is one thing most of know about plant medicine it is that willow bark contains salicylic acid which is a pain reliever. Think acetasalicylic acid -- ASA -- Aspirin. Well, other trees, such as alders, have this too. They all grow along creeks and marshes. As streams flow around these tree roots this chemical is released into the water and helps purify it.
Trees such as pines and firs release aerosols into the air. That is how we can smell them, of course. Did you also know that these aerosols have healthy effects on us? Just by breathing in cedar and fir scents we help prevent diseases such as cancers. It makes me feel good knowing I have 65 acres of cedars and firs wrapped around our house here in Nolalu.
Needless to say, Beresford-Kroeger doesn't want to see the Boreal Forest cut down. She starts her book by telling how she was at a forestry conference in Northern Ontario where to her horror it was being discussed how to log off half the Boreal Forest! She might be a fine scientist but she is a poor journalist since she doesn't say where or when this conference was held. Well, there is only one forestry school in Ontario and that is Lakehead University right here in Thunder Bay so that must be where she was. It took some digging but I finally found on the Internet that the conference was in 2003.
This explains why I don't remember this event. I was the environmental reporter for the daily newspaper here and also worked awhile in the forest industry from 1979 to 1992. But by 2003 I was back in the tourism business at Bow Narrows Camp in Red Lake. If this had occurred while I was here I would have been all over it. I live and breathe this stuff.
I'm sure Dynamic Forest author Malcolm Squires was at this same function. He was a senior forester for Abitibi-Price which had several pulp and paper mills in Thunder Bay and others elsewhere in Northern Ontario.
Knowing what I do about the forest industry I would guess that 50 per cent of the Boreal Forest in Ontario had already been logged by 2003. Did Beresford-Krueger misunderstand that they were talking about logging the remaining half? I don't know but this is where Squires book comes in although it is unrelated to the conference.
Squires spent his life cutting and regenerating the Boreal Forest. The title of his book Dynamic Forest is a clue to his perspective. The Boreal Forest changes if you cut it. It also changes if you don't cut it. It is continually changing. How can that be?
To understand the Boreal Forest you must first know that tree species are soil-specific. Guys like Squires can look at high-resolution aerial photographs and know what the soil is just from the species of trees growing there. Where is the best place to build a road? Right where there is a continuous stretch of jackpine. This will be a sand esker, a ridge of sand and gravel created when a glacier paused in its retreat at the end of the last ice age. Jackpine have taproots and therefore can go deep-diving in the sand for water. A good example of a road built along an esker is Hwy. 105 -- the Red Lake Road -- from Perrault Falls north to Red Lake.
A mature jackpine forest is just beautiful for camping. The trees are spaced probably 20 feet apart. About the only ground vegetation is blueberries. The trees are probably 80 to 120 years old. It is picture postcard perfect. But these well-drained soils also dry-out the quickest. One lightning bolt and the whole place can burn down. This happens all the time. Eventually the fire goes out, of course. The forest is still standing there, now just blackened posts. The jackpine cones will have opened with the heat and now sprinkle seeds all around. The forest is renewed but for decades to come it will be impassable to humans as the burned trees fall to the ground. The blueberries love the extra sunlight and black bears love the extra blueberries. Woodpeckers, especially the black-backed woodpecker, appreciate the standing dead trees and their insects. The mature forest would have been great for woodland caribou since the trees would have been draped with lichens, their favourite food. After the fire there is nothing for them. Moose will increase a bit with the brushy vegetation that will temporarily increase with the extra sunlight but jackpine stands are poor moose spots. They want hardwoods.
So, speaking of hardwoods, let's look at areas with clay soils. The predominate tree species there will be quaking aspen, paper birch, white spruce and balsam fir. These areas don't get as dry as sand eskers but eventually they burn up too. When that happens, the entire place comes back as quaking aspen. That is because the aspen send up hundreds of shoots from their roots. They are the fastest-growing trees in the Boreal. In the first year after a fire these saplings might be 10 feet tall. They shade out the birches and spruce although a few of those species will break through the canopy eventually. The fire will have wiped out balsam fir, temporarily, but this shade-tolerant tree will start spreading in from the edges of the burn or from unburned spots. If the area goes more than 100 years without burning, the aspen will have fallen over from old age and the balsams will predominate. Anyway, you can see how the Boreal Forest is anything but static.
Logging imitates fire disturbance, to some extent. It doesn't recycle the nutrients, true, but it takes so long between harvests -- 60 to 80 years -- that it might take many centuries to see a depletion in soil fertility, if it happens at all.
Something that people like Beresford-Kroeger don't take into account is that unlike the destruction of the Amazon Rain Forest, no one here is converting the Boreal Forest into farmland. It is immediately regenerated back into more forest. In Ontario, for the past 40 years, forest companies and the Ontario Government have created agreements where the amount of cutting that can take place must match the amount of growth from regeneration. And they also try to take other user groups into account when doing their cutting. These can be First Nations, trappers, the tourist industry, regular hunters and fishermen, etc. It isn't perfect but for the most part it works pretty well.
The hardest places to regenerate are swampy areas and those with thin soils. The swamps contain the most-valuable species -- black spruce -- whose pulp is prized for its long fibers. This makes paper exceptionally strong. These trees can be more than 200 years old but might only be eight inches in diameter. How do you plant a tree in a swamp? It might have taken nature hundreds of years of blanketing the whole place with spruce seeds just to find the right spot for one to grow. You might think leaving seed trees would be the answer but these typically just blow over. I've been out of the business for a long time so maybe someone has come up with an answer by now.
When you drive through the bush of Northern Ontario it is easy to believe that it always has looked the same. The reality is it has done nothing but change. Lots of what you are seeing is second-growth after logging. It has all burned hundreds of times.
It does perform myriads of life-giving functions, just as Beresford-Kroeger explains. One of the biggest right now is extracting carbon out of the atmosphere and producing oxygen but there is much more as well. She is absolutely correct that the Boreal Forest is vital to the planet.
I got word late Wednesday that the ice disappeared in the Stretch, Red Lake's largest water body just west of Howey Bay. So that is ice-out!
That was followed by an update from the Town of Red Lake that Quibell Road Detour is temporarily closed. It may re-open tomorrow, May 19.
I will not give any other updates on road conditions because changes are happening so rapidly.
There are no ifs, ands or buts, get the Ontario 511 app. It has up-to-the minute road conditions, including accidents.
What a crappy spring!
There is still ice in Red Lake. It is cold and rainy today and the lake is flooding. My prediction of May 22 for ice-out might still become a reality.
If you are traveling to Red Lake for what is supposed to be opening weekend of fishing, May 21, be advised of the following:
Highway 17 has water over the road east of Vermilion Bay. A friend of ours drove through it two days ago and said the water is at least a foot deep. If you are coming from the States, crossing the border at International Falls-Fort Frances, you can avoid this spot by going west from Fort Frances on Hwy 11 to Hwy 71. This goes north to join Hwy 17. Go east on Hwy 17 toward Vermilion Bay.
At Vermilion Bay turn north on Hwy 647, also called Blue Lake Road. This is necessary because Hwy 105, the usual route to Red Lake, is closed just north of Vermilion Bay due to flooding.
Take Hwy 647 to Quibell Rd. At the town of Quibell, take Hwy 609 east to Hwy 105. Now you can head north as usual.
I recommend everybody download the Ontario 511 app to keep abreast of road closings and openings.
The situation is fluid (Hah!). The area is expecting up to two inches of rain over the next couple of days. There are flood warnings for just about everywhere along the Red Lake Road, Red Lake itself, and for the Suffel Lake Road.
We got the warm rain that turned the ice black but we still need clear, sunny, hot days to melt it. Instead it has been cloudy. I'm back to thinking ice-out will be May 22, maybe even later. A rip-roaring wind could do the trick but that is something we seldom see in the spring.
It is still possible, however. You must realize all of us here are pretty jaded when it comes to optimism about the weather after the winter we just had.
Now many people in Northwestern Ontario have bigger problems on their hands than just a late ice-out. There is flooding occurring everywhere. Highway 105 has been closed for about a week with multiple washouts. At this moment cars can get through but not transports.
Dams and bridges are under threat. States of emergencies have been declared in many towns, including Red Lake. Just upstream from Thunder Bay in Stanley the Kaministiquia River, the largest river in the region, is spilling over its banks and threatening homes. Two large islands in the center of the river at the Stanley Bridge are underwater.
I expect the Whitefish River in Nolalu to overtop Old Mill Road where we live tonight. It is already flooding downstream at Hymers. Whitefish Valley School there was let out early today due to the threat ening water level. We will be fine at our house. We are located about 100 feet above the river.
All of this is caused by the exceptional snow depth we had last winter, then the rapid warming starting in May and finally, storms that are bringing an inch or two of rain every couple of days.
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| Zoom.Earth, about an hour ago. |
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| Highway 105 at Caribou Creek yesterday. Sherry McCoy photo |
That has created problems with flooding all over the place. Just witness what happened to Highway 105. The normal tiny Caribou Creek about 20 miles south of Red Lake turned into a raging river, overwhelming the culvert under the road and creating a massive washout a couple of days ago. This has left the town stranded although crews thought they would have it fixed today.
There might be reason to think it will take longer. A massive storm is heading for the region today bringing an inch or more of rain along with possible winds up to 80 km-h. That could be bad news for the repair but it would be good news for ice-out on lakes. ** UPDATE ** The highway was re-opened late last night but then another washout further north closed it again. It is expected to be fixed by tonight.
To put things in perspective, there is a LOT of ice to melt. I know of two people who were ice-fishing last week. The temperature was wonderful -- there were butterflies flitting around -- but they were sitting on 30-36 inches of ice.
In Thunder Bay, although the snow has disappeared from people's yards, families went downhill skiing on Mother's Day. That is a first.
But getting back to ice-out on Red Lake, the rapid snow melting will have sent so much water into the lake that it will have risen a great deal, breaking the ice away from shorelines. This gives the sun dark water to warm around the edges. It also means the ice pack can shift with the wind. When it does the ice will crush against the rocks. Finally, heavy rain followed by warm sun is death to lake ice. And that is exactly what is in the forecast.
Before these developments I was skeptical if the ice could be gone by opening day of fishing, May 21. I now think it is possible, that is, if the weather prediction comes true.
In today's weather warning the weather office notes that the storm, currently over North Dakota, could weaken as it moves over the cold Northwestern Ontario lakes. The warm temperatures for the rest of the week are still forecast.
I am really impressed by Zoom.Earth and its near-real-time satellite images. In particular, when forest fire season finally starts, you can click on its fire icon and see the active heat-producing spots, instead of looking at fire maps that show where the fire has been.
May 4 and the last of the snow has disappeared off the roof. Does this mean the endless winter has ended?
April 26, I put the snow tires back on the car after the latest, nightly, snowfall.
March 21, after a week of above-freezing temperatures the snow has melted a lot. Then came three more feet in April.
What does this mean for ice-out at Red Lake? Not a darn thing.
Nolalu was the snow capital of Canada this year. We may have tripled or quadrupled our normal precipitation. Red Lake wasn't in the Banana Belt but at least it wasn't like this.
Blue skies and cozy temperatures are in the offing for both places. I still think ice-out up there is likely around May 22. Around here? No idea.
