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The 2010 ice-out on Lake Minnetonka was declared at 12:22 p.m. on Friday, April 2, by the Freshwater Society.
The 2010 ice-out came 11 days earlier than in 2009, when the lake became ice-free on April 13.
Click here to view a calendar of ice-outs on Lake Minnetonka, as compiled by the Freshwater Society, from 1855-2010. The calendar includes two recently discovered ice-out dates, from 1863 and 1873, that long had been missing from modern records. Click here for another version of the calendar showing the number of times ice-out has occurred on specific dates.
Since 1968, the Freshwater Society has kept close records of the day the ice yields to warmer temperatures on Lake Minnetonka. Freshwater founder Richard G. Gray, Sr., described the standard for determining ice-out in a 2003 column: The ice is considered to be "out" when it is possible to travel from any one shore to any other shore through any passage on the lake, he said.
In addition to declaring the ice-out every year since 1968, Gray has compiled a list of all recorded ice-out dates on Lake Minnetonka, dating back to 1855. The earliest recorded ice-out, measured by noted naturalist Dr. Thomas Roberts, was March 11, 1878, and the latest recorded date was May 8, 1856.
Ice-out dates on Lake Minnetonka are still missing for the years 1861 through 1876 and 1879 through 1886. Anyone with information regarding ice-out dates for Lake Minnetonka, or any other body of water in Minnesota, for those years, should send the data to the Freshwater Society, c/o Richard G. Gray, Sr., 2500 Shadywood Road, Excelsior, MN 55331. |
