AUBURN — Lake Auburn’s ice sheet has been especially thin this winter, so it only took a windy March day to melt it for good.
Auburn Water District officials declared the lake officially iced out as of 1 p.m. Friday.
“There is a little bit of ice left in the north end and a little in the west end,” said Mary Jane Dillingham, water quality manager for the Twin Cities’ water utilities. “But 90 to 95 percent of all of the ice is off of Lake Auburn.”
It’s a record for the earliest the lake has iced out since record-keeping began in 1836. Lake Auburn has only been considered ice-free four times in March: March 31 in 2006, March 23 in 2012 and March 22 in 2010.
“It is the earliest ice-out we’ve recorded,” Dillingham said.
She said an early ice-out was expected after the mild winter.
“It has been unusually warm all winter, and it led to a very thin layer of ice all winter long on Lake Auburn,” she said. “It wasn’t safe enough for us to get out and do our typical winter water sampling and the area around the deep hole was open for most of the winter.”
Dillingham said there was a thin layer of ice still clinging to about one-third of the lake Friday morning.
“But the wind picked up and it just took it out,” she said. “It pushes it a little but it really accelerates the melting process.”
It means the lake is now open to boats, and the automated gates to the boat launch were turned on Friday afternoon. The gates will open daily at 4 a.m. and close at 9 p.m. until next winter, she said.
According to Dillingham’s records, Lake Auburn’s ice usually disappears in April, with ice-out occurring in that month 141 times in the past 180 years. The latest the ice has melted was May 14 in 1874.
The National Weather Service in Gray reported ice-out at Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire on Friday, as well.
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