Gerri, It doesn’t happen often, so far twice I remember in my soon to be 68 years, but temperature in north MS have hit down around -15 def. F with no real damage to fish in farm ponds, most of which are no deeper than that. It only last a week or 10 days as best I remember so longer might be a problem. I was surprised during my winter visit to MN to learn ponds up there freeze solid in the winter.
A guy I know icefished the local reservoir today, said ice thickness was 16"-18".
Hey dave for us southerners how thick does ice usually get? I am assuming that 16" is alot? I know here in Ft Worth we have had ice covering ponds more than once this winter, and that in it’s self is unusual.
It varies. A typical year, locally, will see ice of 8"-12" thick. 16"-18" is pretty thick for Iowa, but I imagine its not unusual at all for Minnesota & Wisconsin.
At 2.5", you can walk on it but its kind of iffy and you really have to be careful. At 4", its safe for fishermen, as long as they aren’t standing around in a group. When the ice gets 8"-10" thick, folks start driving their cars and trucks on it.
That is nuts, I’m not sure I could bring myself to do it.
If the weather trend around here continues, we’ll have warm water in a couple of days. It’s supposed to be cold on Thursday, but then back to the 50s and 60s for Friday and beyond.
Did the recent rains and mud slides do anything for fill reservoirs and streams are did it just wash thru too fast to really help the overall situation. Here in the OK and TX western plains we are also hurting for rain bad, and we’re still getting fires alongside roads from people tossing their butts out without thinking.