When will the ice be out in the Boundary Waters?

     The Boundary Waters has thousands of lakes and covers over 1.5 million acres.  It would be nice to say all lakes in the BWCA are ice free on April 20th but that won’t happen this year or any year.  How long ice stays on any particular lake depends upon a number of factors including lake depth, size and location.

     Some lakes south of the Twin Cities are already ice free. They experienced some really warm weather and wind down south that sped the process up.  The lakes in the Boundary Waters usually lose their ice 1-2 weeks behind the southern lakes and you can watch the progression on this website. 

     Saganaga Lake at the end of the Gunflint Trail is usually one of the last BWCA lakes to be ice free.  The earliest date the ice has gone out on Sag was last year on April 10th, the latest it went out was May 17, 1996 and the average date is May 3rd.  With the winter we had and the spring we’re experiencing my guess is ice out on Sag will be 7-10 days after the normal ice out date.  Whenever it happens we’ll be sure to let you know here on this blog.