And just like that...
 

...the ice is gone!

Here's a look from water side. The first with ice was yesterday around 2pm, then the open water one was taken just now, at 8:45. What a difference Rain and wind will make. Hope everyone has gotten their bobhouses off the ice!!
The pics are looking over toward Scenic Drive and Locke Island.

Thanks for the post, was really wondering what the condition of the ice was.

Was driving by Lake Massabesic in Auburn yesterday and it has a large opening up of the ice as well and could not help but wonder if someone would post something about winni soon.

Great news for us folks that can't wait to get back out on the water.

That's amazing! Thanks for posting! I think it is going to be an early ice out.

And it's windy today that's going to really start ripping that ice up good. Could be another year where permanent docks take a beating. There may not have been a ton of ice out there this year but get big enough slabs of solid ice breaking free and smashing into things will certainly wreck whatever is in it's path.

Walking on Belknap Point Road this morning I could see that the open water extended to the north east side of Welch. There is still ice between Belknap Point and Welch.

If that is LSP then my grandparent's cottage is right next to the yellow one ( to the left of it) in this picture. Many a summers spent there.

It is LSP. Been up here all my life. Have MANY photo albums of sunsets.

Guessing with models
 

While pouring over data to make my 2017 ice out guess (which is rarely close), here is an interesting trend line over the last 130 years to share. I used a 5'th order polynomial trend line, keeping in mind that all models are wrong, some are useful. :-)

lg: It looks like the variance has been fairly constant over time.

Looks like steady climate change
 

It's true that if one only focuses on the single data point for each year then it looks like "the variance has been fairly constant over time". But lg's smoothing curve averages recent data so that a naked eye is not fooled by year to year noise.

The chart actually shows 40 years of warming from the the 1970s to today.

Actually, the chart shows ice out happening earlier over 40 years from 1970s to today. I don't see any reference to temperature. As people on the lake know, there are variables other than just temperature that determine ice-in and ice-out days. Wind being another major one.

Puh-lease...
 

I stand corrected, there was no reference to temperature. Rather than "warming", I should have said "warming effects". For we all know that there is a huge volume of data elsewhere that show our climate has warmed over the past 40 years, and that trend is well illustrated by the chart.

Wind speed, precipitation, sunshine, and other factors that have not shown steady trends over the decades would be likely causes of the sharp year-to-year variability. That's another reason why the smoothing is helpful.

And the ice conditions referenced above look like this today...

Hi BT.Can you provide that direct link to those daily sat pics?Thanks.

The above is correct. You then click on the northeast pic (pics are taken at different times of the day as the satellite passes by) Then select 250m and you'll get a pretty high resolution pic you can zoom in on. Typically those are the pics I post here. Pic is usually available between noon and 1pm depending on DST or EST

BT

Thanks guys. For some reason I'm not getting any pic at all, just an outline of the states.

per Blue Thunder post above
 

Pic is usually available between noon and 1pm depending on DST or EST

I'm getting it now. Thanks