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Lake
Opeongo is now ice-free – a new record date of April 7th!
Lake
Opeongo is Algonquin's largest lake, and the ice-out date has varied
since official record-keeping began in 1964.
Official ice-out is determined by the safe navigation by a vessel
(usually a fisheries research boat or a water taxi) from the Lake
Opeongo Access Point (#11) to the Proulx Lake portage and return.
Lake Opeongo is typically one of the last lakes in Algonquin Park
to become ice-free. There are two main reasons for a late ice-out:
- the
lake's relatively high elevation (404 metres above sea level)
compared to more northern lakes in the Park, and
- the
lake's enormous volume of 791,360,000 cubic metres (or enough
water to fill about 316,629 Olympic-sized swimming pools).
The
earliest documented ice-out of Lake Opeongo was April 12, 1981 and
the latest was May 16, 1972.
Overall, the trend from 1964 to 2009
is for earlier ice-out dates as shown by the dotted line in the
linked graph
(120k PDF), but ice-out is determined by numerous environmental variables
including ice thickness and condition, spring temperatures, wind
conditions, and precipitation. This combination of variables contributes
to the range of different ice-out dates observed over the years.
Ice-out data for Lake Opeongo has been recorded by:
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