Climate Change | Clary Lake Association

Many thanks to my friend Ross Swain for promoting this webinar. Ross runs Ellis Pond Sidekicks, a private Facebook group for people interested in Ellis Pond in Roxbury Maine. It’s a great group even if you don’t know where Ellis Pond is 🙂

A week from today Ellis Pond Sidekicks is sponsoring a free Zoom webinar presented by Scott Williams, a renowned lake scientist who has been involved in water quality issues at Roxbury Pond for over 30 years and state lake water issues for over 50 years. The webinar is called “Maine Lakes in the Era of a Warming Climate.” You don’t need to be a member of Ellis Pond Sidekicks to attend. The webinar will be on Friday, April 19 at 6:30pm. If you want to check it out you’ll need to register at this link. After you register, you’ll receive an email confirmation that includes a link to the webinar. The webinar isn’t going to be recorded.

I’ve known Scott Williams for many year and I consider him a personal friend and a valuable teacher, and I’m really looking forward to this webinar.

We have declared ice out on Friday, March 8, 2024. Our records go back to 2001 and this is the earliest date we’ve recorded. The previous record was March 13, 2016. There’s still a little skim ice down in the marsh by the boat launch (likely a result of overnight freezing temperatures) and a few loose floes still in the cove on the south shore in front of David Giampetruzzi’s camp (it’s always the last to go) but the lake itself was effectively and substantially free of ice by the end of the day Friday. The picture above and at left was taken Thursday afternoon.

Ice out occurred earlier than any of our ice out contest guesses so technically nobody was “closest without going over.” In such a situation, rather than saying “Sorry, no winner this year” we feel justified in changing the rule to simply “closest” and “next closest” for first and second place which makes Gayle Knight with her guess of March 10th the first place winner of a $25 Jefferson Scoop gift certificate. Some of you will recall that also Gayle won the contest last year. We’re not quite sure how she managed to win our ice out contest two years in a row… she’s either cheating or she’s very lucky. She claims she just really really likes ice cream. We’ll go with that explanation 🙂

Much to his chagrin, Tristan Tabor of Lake Stewards of Maine has come in second with his guess of March 11th. I’ll be mailing him the second place prize, a laminated copy of our Clary Lake Depth Map (pictured at left). Tristan is the Water Quality Program Director, Technical Director, Aquatic Scientist at Lake Stewards of Maine and is a great guy. I can honestly say he is NOT HAPPY to have won any prize at all in our ice out contest, let alone second prize. He is concerned as we all should be at the implications that a warming climate will have on lake water quality.

Clear Evidence of a Warming Climate

Normally, for statistical analysis of climate data one wants data covering as long a period of time as possible. Our ice in and ice out records only go back 24 years to 2001 but even over that short period of time we’re still able to detect a warming trend in our climate, as this chart of ice in and ice out dates shows. You can detect that the average of ice in dates (represented by the straight red line) trends upward ever so slightly, indicating that ice in is on average occurring a little later every year. Likewise, the average of ice out dates (represented by the straight blue line) trends downward ever so slightly indicating that ice out is on average occurring a little earlier every year. However, the number of ice free days (the straight yellow line) is very clearly rising since it’s reflecting both later ice in and earlier ice out dates i.e., it’s being stretched in both directions:

So this brings our 2024 ice out contest to a close. Many thanks to everyone who participated.