Tuesday, November 19, 2019 at 11:37AM
Mill Pond near Mineville NY. Picture by Diana Hanks
We have had five skating days in the last week, curtsey of an early cold snap. Two people have gotten wet. One was at a narrow place on a narrow creek feeding a pond in north western NY. The other breakthrough occurred on an on a snow covered pond that had an isolated refrozen new-ice hole with half an inch of ice on it.
Thursday, September 26, 2019 at 09:55PM For the past 7 years I have collected a list of fatal ice accidents on North American lakes and rivers. Over this period, on average, there has been less than one fatality per year from Alaska and northern Canada. This year there were 14 from Alaska and four from Northern Canada. Most of those were on rivers. Rivers are an important winter transportation. All of them were on vehicles, mostly snowmobiles with a couple ATVs and a small tractor.
There were no fatal accidents in January and February. There was one in November, three in December and the rest in March, April and early May. This suggests that the ice was unexpectedly dodgy in the shoulder months.
It also looks like the southern edge of the ice belt moved about 200 miles north this year. We had no accidents in places like Georgia and Missouri.
