Massachusetts has three lakes with long ice-out records, and two of them are ponds in the Blue Hills south of Boston that have been watched since 1886. They are the earliest ice-out dates in this whole dataset, typically mid March.
Dates from past winters. For today’s ice, ask the agency that manages the water.
Massachusetts publishes no statewide ice-out list. The three long records here come from the USGS New England compilation, and two of the three stop before 2010.
40 of 40 of the most recent recorded years had already seen ice out on Houghtons (hoosicwhisick) Pond by this date.
The median across the whole record is March 23, which is 165 days from now on this year’s calendar. The record itself runs to 2018, so this is a comparison against history and not a statement about the current season.
This counts recorded years, not this year; the current season comes from the agency linked above.
Ordered by how much record there is behind them. The median is across every recorded year; the second figure is across the most recent 30 recorded years, 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 “George” is Detroit Lake or Lake George to everyone who lives on it. The names stay as recorded, because United States lakes split unpredictably between “Lake X” and “X Lake”.
Lake in Massachusetts · 133 recorded years, 1886 to 2018
Across the whole record, ice out has moved 13 days earlier per century across the record.
Mean date per decade. Only decades with four or more observations are shown, and the scale starts near the shortest bar rather than at January 1, so small differences stay visible.
Lake in Massachusetts · 123 recorded years, 1886 to 2008record ends 2008
Across the whole record, ice out has moved 17 days earlier per century across the record.
Mean date per decade. Only decades with four or more observations are shown, and the scale starts near the shortest bar rather than at January 1, so small differences stay visible.
Lake in Massachusetts · 74 recorded years, 1925 to 1998record ends 1998
The record spans 73 years, under the 80 year span needed to state a century trend.
Mean date per decade. Only decades with four or more observations are shown, and the scale starts near the shortest bar rather than at January 1, so small differences stay visible.
| Lake | Record | Median ice out | Last 30 years | Earliest | Latest | Change per century |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Houghtons (hoosicwhisick) Pond | 1886 to 2018 (133) | Mar 23 | Mar 14 | Feb 22 1981 | Apr 14 1926 | -12.6 days |
| Ponkapoag Pond | 1886 to 2008 (123) | Mar 18 | Mar 8 | Feb 1 1953 | Apr 10 1926 | -17 days |
| Pontoosuc Lake | 1925 to 1998 (74) | Apr 12 | Apr 10 | Mar 26 1995 | May 1 1940 | record too short |
Dates are day of year, rendered on a common non leap calendar so the same stored value always reads the same way. “Change per century” is a least squares line through the observations, shown only where a record spans 80 years or more; a century figure extrapolated from a 40 year window describes the decades that happened to be sampled rather than the lake. Where a record ends before 2010 the card says so; a great many of these series stopped when a particular person stopped keeping them.
Of the 2 Massachusetts lakes with a record long enough to state a century trend, 2 show ice out moving earlier. The median shift across those lakes is -12.6 days per century. That is a description of a line fitted to observations, not a forecast, and any single lake can and does swing three or four weeks between consecutive years.
The southern edge of the record. These are the southernmost long ice-out records in the country. Ponkapoag Pond typically opened in the third week of March a century ago and now opens in the first, which makes it the fastest moving record in the dataset.
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.
Which is worth knowing, because it means those series can be checked against a federal document rather than taken on trust. It also carries the observer names for every lake, which is the part of this record that is really a social history.
Hodgkins, G.A., 2010, Historical ice-out dates for 29 lakes in New England, 1807 to 2008: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2010-1214, 32 p. https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2010/1214/
Houghtons Pond and Ponkapoag Pond sit about a mile apart in the Blue Hills Reservation, and their records start in the same year, 1886.
Ice out and ice in dates are historical observations compiled by the National Snow and Ice Data Center and, for the New England lakes, by the U.S. Geological Survey. They describe past years only, and a past year says nothing about the ice on a lake today. For current ice and for anything involving going out on it, contact Massachusetts Department of Fish and Game. National picture: every state with a lake ice record →
Hero image: “Gfp-wisconsin-madison-ice-over-the-lake” — Yinan Chen — Public domain