AUBURN — It happened Wednesday on Lake Auburn, and sometime in the past few days on Sabattus Pond.

But those who live near Greenville’s Moosehead Lake are, alas, still waiting.

“There’s still quite a bit of ice,” a disappointed Greenville Town Clerk Roxanne Lizotte said Thursday. “It can’t go fast enough for us. It’s just been a long winter. It was snowing here today.”

Ice-out is the talk of the state, according to the state’s ice-out chart webmaster, Tim Thurston of the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands.

“It’s almost like deer season when people ask, ‘Have you got your deer yet?’” Thurston said. The big question people ask: “’Is the ice out yet?’ There’s a lot of comparisons. Ice-out is Mother Nature’s way of letting go of winter.”

Thurston knows lakes. He’s monitors lake buoys that mark hazardous conditions for boaters. The state has had an online ice-out chart since 2010.

It’s grown in popularity, Thurston said. “It draws to our entire department. In the fall, we do the fall foliage report. It’s almost the opposite of that.”

On the state’s online ice-out chart, Pemaquid Pond and Damariscotta Lake were among the first reported this year, on April 14. Ice-outs were reported on April 22 and 23 for Cobbossee Lake and Narrows Pond in the Winthrop area.

Information for the chart is provided by the public, Thurston said. “We are soliciting this information. On our website, we ask anybody when the ice is out, send us a quick email of the town and date. We will post it.”

The definition of an ice-out is “when you can navigate unimpeded from one end of the water body to the other. There may still be ice in coves or along the shoreline,” Thurston said.

As soon as the ice is out, people can put their boats in the water, Thurston said. While cold, “oftentimes, the best fishing is right after ice-out.”

Maine’s ice-out season is in the early stage. From now through mid- or late May, ice-outs will be declared, lake by lake. Ice-outs tend to happen first on lakes near the coast. Lakes at higher elevations hold the ice longer, Thurston said.

“This year, people feel like ice-out is late,” Thurston said. “It’s been such a long winter. We’ve had a lot of snow, a lot of cold, a lot of ice.” A fisherman reported 28 inches of ice on a northern Maine lake Wednesday, he said.

But actually, ice-melting is happening in normal stages, he said.

A lake finally free of ice is an exciting event for many. For decades, communities have recorded the dates.

Take Greenville. Moosehead Lake’s ice-out dates were first recorded in 1848, according to a chart provided by Lizotte. Moosehead’s earliest ice-out was April 14 in 1945; the latest was May 29 in 1878.

This year, the Greenville Recreation Department is holding an ice-out raffle, Lizotte said. For $1, players can predict the ice-out day and time.

Wednesday night’s ice-out in Auburn was a big deal, Auburn Water District Water Quality Manager Mary Jane Dillingham said.

“We get calls from fishermen who want to start boating,” she said. The boat launches and docks will now go in. The trash barrels and port-a-potties will be put out by Friday, she said. “It’s a sure sign of spring.”

Sabattus Town Clerk Suzanne Adams said she’d been getting calls about the ice on Sabattus Pond. Is it out?

“Yes,” she said Thursday. “Now they can take their boats out, except for today.”

Thursday’s wind gusts made boating unsafe.

bwashuk@sunjournal.com

Here are historic ice-out dates for Lake Auburn, from the USGS:

Maine publishes an online ice-out chart. To report an ice-out, email Timothy.Thurston@maine.gov.

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