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Historical record · New York

Lake Ice Out and Ice In Dates in New York

New York holds several of the deepest lake ice records in North America. Oneida Lake has been observed since 1827, Cazenovia since 1839 and Otsego since 1843, and most New York lakes here carry both the freeze and the thaw.

22
Lakes with a record
40 or more recorded years each
3,155
Observations
individual dates written down
1816
Oldest observation
Lake Champlain
8
Century long records
spanning 100 years or more

Dates from past winters. For today’s ice, ask the agency that manages the water.

Where this year’s dates come from

No single New York agency publishes a statewide ice-out product. The one long series that is still current is the National Weather Service record of when Lake Champlain closes over, kept in Burlington since 1816 and updated every winter.

NWS Burlington, Lake Champlain closing dates

Today against the record

How this date has usually played out

Where today sits in the record for Otsego

40 of 40 of the most recent recorded years had already seen ice out on Otsego by this date.

The median across the whole record is April 14, which is 178 days ago on this year’s calendar. The record itself runs to 2019, 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.

Lake by lake

The deepest New York records

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”.

Otsego

Lake in New York · 174 recorded years, 1843 to 2019

Apr 14
median ice out
Apr 11
last 30 recorded years
Feb 28
earliest, 1991
May 7
latest, 1875

Across the whole record, ice out has moved 5 days earlier per century across the record.

Freeze over has moved 7 days later per century across the record, median Jan 11.

3 winters on record it did not freeze across at all, most recently 2017.

1840sApr 131850sApr 141860sApr 161870sApr 231880sApr 201890sApr 111900sApr 101910sApr 121920sApr 81930sApr 121940sApr 81950sApr 101960sApr 171970sApr 141980sApr 71990sApr 42000sApr 112010sApr 9

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.

Cazenovia

Lake in New York · 162 recorded years, 1839 to 2019

Apr 8
median ice out
Apr 6
last 30 recorded years
Feb 28
earliest, 1880
Apr 30
latest, 1873

Across the whole record, ice out has moved 4 days earlier per century across the record.

Freeze over has moved 8 days later per century across the record, median Dec 16.

1840sApr 91850sApr 121860sApr 121870sApr 141880sApr 81910sApr 61920sApr 31930sApr 101940sApr 61950sApr 81960sApr 101970sApr 101980sApr 11990sApr 42000sApr 32010sApr 2

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.

Oneida

Lake in New York · 185 recorded years, 1827 to 2019

Apr 7
median ice out
Apr 4
last 30 recorded years
Feb 22
earliest, 2012
Apr 29
latest, 1856

Across the whole record, ice out has moved 5 days earlier per century across the record.

Freeze over has moved 7 days later per century across the record, median Dec 22.

One winter on record, 2002, it did not freeze across at all.

1830sApr 121840sApr 111850sApr 121860sApr 141870sApr 131880sApr 101890sApr 81900sMar 311910sApr 71920sApr 41930sApr 71940sApr 51950sApr 61960sApr 91970sApr 41980sApr 11990sApr 52000sApr 42010sMar 29

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.

Mirror

Lake in New York · 117 recorded years, 1882 to 2019

Apr 23
median ice out
Apr 22
last 30 recorded years
Mar 24
earliest, 2012
May 13
latest, 1971

Across the whole record, ice out has moved 5 days earlier per century across the record.

Freeze over has moved 10 days later per century across the record, median Dec 2.

1900sApr 261910sApr 231920sApr 221930sApr 251940sApr 161950sApr 231960sApr 241970sApr 291980sApr 191990sApr 202000sApr 202010sApr 17

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.

A person in a red jacket standing on brown grass at the foot of a wall of shattered lake ice piled far higher than they are
An ice shove on Lake Winnebago in Wisconsin, with a person on the bank for scale. Wind on a rotting spring sheet can drive it ashore in minutes and stack it well above head height, which is one reason a tidy single ice out date hides a genuinely messy few days. “Ice shove - Lake Winnebago, Oshkosh, WI USA - March 2025” by Jm mortellwi, CC BY-SA 4.0
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Every lake

All 22 New York water bodies with a long record

LakeRecordMedian ice outLast 30 yearsEarliestLatestChange per century
Otsego1843 to 2019 (174)Apr 14Apr 11Feb 28 1991May 7 1875-5.3 days
Cazenovia1839 to 2019 (162)Apr 8Apr 6Feb 28 1880Apr 30 1873-4.4 days
Oneida1827 to 2019 (185)Apr 7Apr 4Feb 22 2012Apr 29 1856-5.1 days
Mirror1882 to 2019 (117)Apr 23Apr 22Mar 24 2012May 13 1971-4.9 days
George1908 to 2019 (107)Apr 12Apr 12Feb 26 2017May 3 1940-4.8 days
Schroon1873 to 2017 (128)Apr 21Apr 18Mar 14 2017May 10 1876-8.2 days
Placid1920 to 2005 (86)Apr 29Apr 28Mar 30 1946May 17 1972-1.4 days
Brant1893 to 2020 (109)Apr 19Apr 17Mar 22 2012May 7 1971-5.4 days
Lake Champlain1816 to 2019 (160)freeze over record only, median Feb 2
Mohonk1873 to 2005 (77)Apr 7Apr 4Mar 9 2002May 2 1873-9.1 days
Loon1914 to 2005 (74)Apr 3Mar 31Mar 9 2002Apr 26 1960-6 days
Genegantslet1942 to 2005 (64)Apr 14Apr 8Mar 8 1954Apr 29 1956record too short
Buffalo Harbor to Long Point1905 to 1996 (92)Apr 26Apr 26Feb 23 1983Jun 1 1936-11.5 days
Saranac Lower1907 to 2005 (86)Apr 24Apr 23Mar 28 1907May 13 1972-2.4 days
Chautauqua North1924 to 2005 (76)Apr 1Mar 30Mar 2 1966Apr 19 1940-5.3 days
Chautauqua South1924 to 2005 (76)Apr 1Mar 28Feb 27 1998Apr 19 1940-7.1 days
Bonaparte1931 to 2005 (75)Apr 13Apr 9Mar 12 1973May 5 1971record too short
St. Regis Lower1909 to 2005 (73)Apr 23Apr 21Mar 2 1911May 12 1972+0.1 days
Chateaguay (lower)1933 to 2005 (71)Apr 20Apr 20Mar 28 1945May 10 1971record too short
Sylvia1938 to 2005 (68)Apr 11Apr 6Mar 9 2002May 1 1971record too short
Star1939 to 2005 (67)Apr 18Apr 15Mar 15 1973May 11 1971record too short
Titus1947 to 2005 (58)Apr 19Apr 18Mar 27 1973May 11 1971record 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.

False colour satellite view of Minnesota in spring, with ice covered lakes showing as pale cyan and lakes that have already opened showing as black, against green and tan land
Spring thaw over Minnesota, in false colour. Ice still on a lake reads pale cyan; a lake that has already opened reads black. You can watch ice out happen across a whole state in a single frame, which is how agencies now sanity check reports that used to come only from people standing on a shore. “Spring Thaw in Minnesota (MODIS 2025-04-30)” — MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC — Public domain
What the record says

What the New York record shows

Of the 15 New York lakes with a record long enough to state a century trend, 14 show ice out moving earlier. The median shift across those lakes is -5.3 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.

12 of these New York water bodies also carry a freeze over record. Freeze up is the harder half to observe and there is far less of it nationally, which is a shame, because in this dataset it moves more than ice out does.

4 of them have winters on record in which the water never froze across at all. Those years are kept in the data rather than dropped, because a winter with no ice is an observation and treating it as a gap would quietly bias every average toward an earlier thaw.

Definitions vary by lake and by observer in New York, 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 years it is impossible to determine whether the lake was ever completely ice covered.

Lake Champlain shares a border and a record. Champlain lies between New York and Vermont, and the freeze-over record kept at Burlington is the longest lake ice series either state has. The database this page is built on files it under New York, so that is where it appears here.

Field stations did the keeping. Several of the longest New York series come from university field stations rather than agencies, which is why they run so deep and why some of them stop abruptly when a compiler retired.

Satellite view of the Great Lakes with the northern land still under snow, the lakes themselves dark open water, and pale green sediment plumes in the shallow western basin of Lake Erie
The Great Lakes with snow still lying on the land north of them and no ice left on the water. On a lake this size, freezing over and opening are not single moments: shallow bays close first, the deep middle may never freeze at all in a mild winter, and the date somebody writes down is a judgement call. “Spring Thaw across the Great Lakes (MODIS)” — MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC — Public domain
Provenance

Where these New York numbers came from

The observations

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 Champlain has failed to close over in more than a fifth of the winters on record, and almost all of those failures are recent.

Common questions

New York lake ice FAQ

A wooden dock running out over still lake water in winter with snow on the boards and bare hills behind
New York water. Ice out is the day this becomes possible again, and in most of these records it is the day somebody decided a boat could cross. “Dock on Lake George, Lake George, New York (winter)” by Tyler A. McNeil, CC BY-SA 4.0
The rest of the New York year

Plan the rest of your New York calendar

New York lake ice inThe autumn half of the same records: when these lakes have typically frozen over. Together the two are the length of the ice season.Every state with a lake ice recordThe national picture: every state with a lake ice record and the deepest series in the country.New York winter outlookWhat NOAA expects from the season that puts the ice on.New York fall foliageThe other end of the year on the same water.

More Northeast states with lake ice records

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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 New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. National picture: every state with a lake ice record →
Hero image: “Dock on Lake George, Lake George, New York (winter)” by Tyler A. McNeil, CC BY-SA 4.0