Another visit to the Lakeshore Nature Preserve today, and as I looked out over the lake I could see that the northern 1/3 was still moving water. I wondered how late this is in the winter for Mendota to still be wet, so I checked the UW's Climatology website to find out. They have compiled data on Madison's lake ice since 1852, and so the median freeze date over that stretch for Mendota is December 20th. Excitingly, to maintain consistent data, they try to use the same methods used by researchers in the 1800s to determine when Lake Mendota is considered "frozen." According to those methods, Mendota was frozen on January 2 this year (12 days later than the median), because that was the first full day that a boat could not be rowed from Picnic Point, seen above, to Maple Bluff across the lake, which is a route that the early Climate profs used to take a case of beer to their friends. I kid you not!
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