Heinz Kerry Global Warming Wind Surfing charity event cancelled.
Via The Cap Times
How thick is the ice on Madison’s lakes? Researcher Ted Bier almost didn’t have enough drill to find out this week.
Bier takes ice depth samples as part of his work for the UW-Madison Center for Limnology, and he was out in the middle of Lake Monona on Thursday to get a reading. The drill kept going and going until finally reaching water underneath the ice.
When they extracted the ice core that you can see in the photo above, the depth measured 65 centimeters, more than 25 inches.
“Generally speaking, all the lakes in the area had 2 feet or more of ice on them at some point in time this winter,” Bier said. “That’s 40 to 50 percent thicker than we usually have. I’ve been here 13 years and it’s the thickest I’ve ever seen.”
In records dating to 1996 from the North Temperate Lakes Long Term Ecological Research project that Bier works with, the previous high depth on Lake Monona was 50 centimeters (about 20 inches) in 2008.
Bier said a measurement for Lake Mendota a few weeks ago showed 63 centimeters of ice, just over 2 feet.