New York Lake Ice In Dates and Freeze Over Records

Q: How do I know whether the ice is safe?

Contact your state agency and look at the water yourself. Every figure here is the day a lake closed over in a past winter. Ice strength varies across a single lake on a single day with depth, current, springs and snow cover, and a lake that has just closed over is at its most deceptive: it looks like a solid surface and it is a few days of new ice.

Q: Who publishes this winter's New York ice in dates?

NWS Burlington, Lake Champlain closing dates. The National Weather Service forecast office in Burlington keeps the Lake Champlain closing record and adds to it every winter, including the winters where the answer is that the lake did not close. No New York state agency publishes a statewide freeze list, so this is the one series that is genuinely current.

Q: Is ice in getting later in New York?

In this data, yes on 9 of the 9 New York records long enough to state a century trend. The largest is Schroon. Those figures are least squares lines fitted to the observations, the same simple description the ice phenology literature uses. They describe what the record did. They are not projections, and any single lake can swing three or four weeks between consecutive winters.

Q: Do New York lakes ever fail to freeze?

Yes. 4 of the 12 New York water bodies here have winters on record in which they never closed over, 51 winters in total. Those winters are kept in the data rather than dropped, because a winter with no ice is an observation, and treating it as missing would bias every average on this page toward an earlier freeze.

Q: How does ice in compare with ice out on the same New York lakes?

They are the two ends of one season and they have moved in opposite directions. New York lakes appear in both halves of this dataset, and where a lake carries a long enough record on both, the freeze has been arriving later while the thaw has been arriving earlier. The ice-out page for New York carries the thaw half of the same records, lake by lake, from the same source.

Typical ice in on Otsego

January 11

That is the median across 167 recorded winters from 1850 to 2019, the deepest freeze record in New York. Across the 12 New York water bodies on this page the typical closing runs from December 2 on Mirror to February 2 on Lake Champlain. Each of those is a median from a record of past winters, not a forecast or an observation of any lake now.

January 19

Otsego across its last 30 recorded winters

62 days

Between the earliest and latest typical freeze in the state

9 of 9

Records long enough to state a century trend that show a later freeze

51

Winters with no freeze at all, on 4 of these water bodies

Every New York water body, in the order they close

Each bar runs from that water body's earliest recorded closing to its latest, across the whole New York record. The solid dot is the median over every recorded winter and the ring is the median over the most recent 30. The scale starts near the earliest date in the set rather than at January 1, because these are dates a few weeks apart.

Where this winter’s dates come from

The National Weather Service forecast office in Burlington keeps the Lake Champlain closing record and adds to it every winter, including the winters where the answer is that the lake did not close. No New York state agency publishes a statewide freeze list, so this is the one series that is genuinely current.

NWS Burlington, Lake Champlain closing dates

Today against the record

How this point in the season has usually played out

Where today sits in the Otsego record

Today is earlier in the ice season than any closing in this record. The earliest Otsego ever closed over in 167 recorded winters was December 13, in 1917, which is 55 days from now on this year’s calendar.

The median across the whole record is January 11, which is 84 days from now on this year’s calendar. The record itself ends in 2019, so this is a comparison against past winters and not a statement about the current one.

This counts recorded winters, not this one; the current winter comes from the agency linked above.

Otsego, recorded closings by winter

1976 to 2019, 40 winters, median Jan 11

Taller means later in the season. The darker columns are the more recent half of the window. The dashed line is the median across the whole record, not just this window, and the vertical scale starts near the earliest date on the chart rather than at January 1 so that a three week shift stays visible. The source ships the most recent 40 observations here, so this window is the tail of a record that begins in 1850. 3 of these winters carry more than one closing, because the lake shut, a thaw opened it and it shut again, and the source keeps both rather than choosing.

Water body by water body

The deepest New York freeze records

Ordered by how much record is behind them. The median is across every recorded winter; the second figure is across the most recent 30, which is the fairer thing to compare against a lake you know today.

Names are reproduced exactly as the source database records them, which is often a shortened form: a lake filed as “Detroit” or “Otsego” is Detroit Lake or Otsego Lake to everyone who lives on it. The names stay as recorded, because United States lakes split unpredictably between “Lake X” and “X Lake”; the subtitle on each card carries the water body type and the state.

Otsego

Lake in New York · 167 recorded winters, 1850 to 20193 winters open

Jan 11

typical ice in

Jan 19

last 30 recorded winters

Dec 13

earliest, 1917

Feb 25

latest, 1932

Across the whole record the closing date has moved 7 days later per century across the record.

Its ice out has moved 5 days earlier per century across the record, so adding the two lines together this lake’s ice season is about 12 days shorter per century.

3 winters on record it never closed over at all, most recently the one ending in 2017. Those winters are counted separately from the 167 dates above.

Mean closing date per decade. Only decades with four or more observations appear, and the scale starts near the shortest bar rather than at January 1 so that small differences stay visible rather than collapsing into one length.

Lake Champlain

Lake in New York · 160 recorded winters, 1816 to 201942 winters open

Feb 2

typical ice in

Feb 11

last 30 recorded winters

Jan 7

earliest, 1868

Mar 26

latest, 1894

Across the whole record the closing date has moved 9 days later per century across the record.

42 winters on record it never closed over at all, most recently the one ending in 2018. Those winters are counted separately from the 160 dates above.

Mean closing date per decade. Only decades with four or more observations appear, and the scale starts near the shortest bar rather than at January 1 so that small differences stay visible rather than collapsing into one length.

Cazenovia

Lake in New York · 155 recorded winters, 1842 to 2017

Dec 16

typical ice in

Dec 21

last 30 recorded winters

Nov 25

earliest, 1869

Jan 18

latest, 1998

Across the whole record the closing date has moved 8 days later per century across the record.

Its ice out has moved 4 days earlier per century across the record, so adding the two lines together this lake’s ice season is about 12 days shorter per century.

Mean closing date per decade. Only decades with four or more observations appear, and the scale starts near the shortest bar rather than at January 1 so that small differences stay visible rather than collapsing into one length.

Mirror

Lake in New York · 107 recorded winters, 1880 to 2019

Dec 2

typical ice in

Dec 4

last 30 recorded winters

Nov 15

earliest, 1939

Jan 4

latest, 2016

Across the whole record the closing date has moved 10 days later per century across the record.

Its ice out has moved 5 days earlier per century across the record, so adding the two lines together this lake’s ice season is about 15 days shorter per century.

Mean closing date per decade. Only decades with four or more observations appear, and the scale starts near the shortest bar rather than at January 1 so that small differences stay visible rather than collapsing into one length.

A wall of shelf ice rising above a lake surface strewn with broken plates of new ice and patches of dark open water, under a blue sky with high cloud — Shelf ice standing above a field of broken new plates, with open water still showing between them. This is the state a lake is in for days or weeks before anybody writes a closing date against it, and it is why two observers standing on the same shore can pick two different days. “Ice along Lake Superior” — National Park Service, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore — Public domain

Every record

All 12 New York water bodies with a freeze record

Water body	Record	Typical ice in	Last 30 winters	Earliest	Latest	Change per century	Winters open
Mirror	1880 to 2019 (107)	Dec 2	Dec 4	Nov 15 1939	Jan 4 2016	+10.1 days	0
Loon	1931 to 2004 (49)	Dec 11	Dec 12	Nov 23 1969	Jan 13 1983	record too short	0
Genegantslet	1962 to 2003 (42)	Dec 12	Dec 14	Nov 26 1996	Dec 30 1984	record too short	0
Cazenovia	1842 to 2017 (155)	Dec 16	Dec 21	Nov 25 1869	Jan 18 1998	+8 days	0
Placid	1919 to 2004 (84)	Dec 16	Dec 17	Nov 29 1925	Jan 15 2002	+5.7 days	0
Brant	1944 to 2004 (56)	Dec 19	Dec 20	Nov 28 1974	Jan 8 2002	record too short	0
Mohonk	1890 to 2004 (68)	Dec 21	Dec 22	Nov 28 1903	Jan 19 1890	+6.4 days	0
Oneida	1866 to 2019 (77)	Dec 22	Dec 27	Nov 27 1880	Feb 5 1896	+6.7 days	1
Schroon	1912 to 2004 (62)	Dec 22	Dec 29	Dec 4 1945	Jan 16 1992	+12.6 days	0
Otsego	1850 to 2019 (167)	Jan 11	Jan 19	Dec 13 1917	Feb 25 1932	+6.8 days	3
George	1908 to 2019 (103)	Jan 18	Jan 22	Dec 23 1989	Mar 1 1932	+2.1 days	5
Lake Champlain	1816 to 2019 (160)	Feb 2	Feb 11	Jan 7 1868	Mar 26 1894	+8.6 days	42

Dates are day of year, rendered on a common non leap calendar so the same stored value always reads the same way. Freeze dates are stored on a winter axis, where a January closing sorts after a December one instead of jumping back to the start of the year; the labels above are ordinary calendar dates. “Change per century” is a least squares line through the observations, shown only where a record spans 80 years or more, because a century figure extrapolated from a 40 year window describes the decades that happened to be sampled rather than the lake. “Winters open” counts the winters the source marks as never closing over, which are observations rather than gaps and are not included in the record counts.

Both ends of the season

How much shorter the New York ice season has got

8 New York water bodies carry a least squares slope on both the freeze and the thaw, which is the only way to see the season from both ends at once. Adding one lake’s own freeze line to its own thaw line, the widest here is Schroon at 20.8 days shorter per century.

That is addition on two numbers the source data already publishes for that lake: a description of what one lake’s own record did across the years somebody was watching it, not a model and not a projection of what the next decade will do.

Freeze arriving later
Thaw arriving earlier

Each bar is one New York lake's own freeze line added to its own thaw line, both fitted by least squares to that lake's observations and both already published in the source data. Only records spanning 80 years or more on both variables appear, which is why not every water body in the table above is here.

Reading the record

What the New York freeze record shows

Of the 9 New York freeze records long enough to state a century trend, 9 show the closing date arriving later. Those are least squares lines fitted to observations, the same simple description the ice phenology literature uses. They describe what each record did. Any single lake can swing three or four weeks between consecutive winters, and several here have.

A typical ice in date is a median drawn from a record: the middle of a distribution whose ends, on these New York records, sit 78 days apart on Lake Champlain alone. It describes past winters, not the current one.

Lake Champlain did not close over at all in 42 winters on record, which is 21 percent of the winters in its span, and the eight most recent of those ended in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2016, 2017, 2018. The source records those winters rather than leaving them blank, and this page keeps them, because dropping them and averaging only the winters the water did close would bias the record toward an earlier freeze. In New York that is the single most important thing the freeze record has to say.

Definitions vary by lake and by observer here, which is normal for records this old. The National Weather Service says of its own Champlain series that the dates are for informational and non scientific purposes and that for many older winters it is impossible to determine whether the lake was ever completely ice covered. Several of the smaller New York series were re-dated by a later compiler to mean first freeze rather than final closing, and the database records that as a note against the lake.

A record whose most interesting entries are blank. Champlain has 160 recorded closing dates and 42 winters in which the lake never closed at all. Those 42 are the point rather than the gap. They cluster heavily in the last four decades, and a compiler who deleted them and averaged only the winters the lake did close would produce a tidier series that said the opposite of what happened.

The field stations kept the rest. Otsego since 1850, Cazenovia since 1842 and Mirror since 1880 were kept by university field stations and lakeside observers rather than by any agency, which is why they run so deep and why several of them stop abruptly in the middle of a decade when one person stopped writing.

Satellite view of Lake Superior in mid December with the surrounding land under snow, the open lake dark, and pale new ice showing in the shallow western bays — Lake Superior on December 15, with the first ice of that winter forming in the shallow western bays while the deep middle stays open. Depth is what sets a freeze date: a shallow bay gives up its summer heat in weeks and the deep middle can take all winter or never manage it. “Lake Superior (MODIS 2018-12-20)” — MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC — Public domain

Provenance

Where these New York numbers came from

The observations

1,130 recorded closings across 12 New York water bodies, from 1816 to 2019. Only records with 40 or more usable observations are included, and every derived figure is computed from them.

Benson, B., Magnuson, J. and Sharma, S. (2000). Global Lake and River Ice Phenology Database. (G01377, Version 1). Boulder, Colorado USA. National Snow and Ice Data Center. https://doi.org/10.7265/N5W66HP8 Accessed 2026-08-24.

Lake George has failed to close over in five recorded winters and four of the five are 2002 and later, on a record that begins in 1908.

Common questions

New York lake ice in FAQ

When do lakes usually freeze over in New York?

It depends on the lake, so this page gives a figure for each one instead of a single state number. Otsego has the deepest record in New York at 167 recorded winters and typically closed over around January 11, or January 19 across its most recent 30 recorded winters. Across the 12 New York water bodies here the typical date runs from December 2 on Mirror to February 2 on Lake Champlain. Every one of those is a median drawn from past winters and none of them describes this one.

How do I know whether the ice is safe?

Who publishes this winter's New York ice in dates?

What exactly counts as ice in on a New York lake?

Definitions vary by lake and by observer here, which is normal for records this old. The National Weather Service says of its own Champlain series that the dates are for informational and non scientific purposes and that for many older winters it is impossible to determine whether the lake was ever completely ice covered. Several of the smaller New York series were re-dated by a later compiler to mean first freeze rather than final closing, and the database records that as a note against the lake. That matters most when you compare two lakes against each other and least when you compare one lake against its own past, which is what every figure on this page is built for.

How far back do New York freeze records go?

The oldest freeze observation in New York in this dataset is from 1816 and the most recent is from 2019. Across the state this page covers 12 water bodies with at least 40 recorded winters each, 7 of which span a century or more, and 1,130 individual freeze dates in total. Almost none of it was collected for science. It was kept by field stations, fisheries staff, harbour masters, newspapers and individuals for practical reasons, and became a climate record afterwards.

Is ice in getting later in New York?

Do New York lakes ever fail to freeze?

How does ice in compare with ice out on the same New York lakes?

Satellite view of snow covered northern New York in mid January, with the darker Adirondack uplands in the centre and the long narrow shape of Lake Champlain running dark and open down the right hand side — Northern New York from orbit on January 20, deep in winter, with snow across the whole scene. The long dark ribbon on the right is Lake Champlain, still open. Its median closing date is early February and in more than a fifth of recorded winters it never closed at all. “Winter in the Adirondacks (MODIS 2022-01-22)” — MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC — Public domain

The other end of the season

Ice in, ice out, and the rest of the New York winter

New York ice inWhen 12 New York water bodies have typically closed over, from 1,130 recorded winters. You are on it.

New York ice outThe spring half of the same records, lake by lake, from the same source. Together they are the length of the New York ice season.

Every state with a freeze recordThe national picture, the ice season closing from both ends, and every state with a freeze record.New York winter outlookWhat NOAA expects from the season that puts the ice on in the first place.New York first snowThe other autumn threshold, on the same calendar and from a different federal record.

Ice in dates are historical observations compiled by the National Snow and Ice Data Center. They describe past winters only: a median freeze date is a record of winters that have already happened, and says nothing about the ice on any lake today. For current ice and for anything involving going out on it, contact New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. National picture: every state with a lake freeze record → The thaw half: New York lake ice out dates.
Hero image: “Winter in the Adirondacks (MODIS 2022-01-22)” — MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC — Public domain