iceboating.net Minnesota Ice Sailing Association

during good ice making conditions?

is there some old saying that the old-timers know?

but here's a cool site from the army corp of engineers..

Accumulated Freezing Degree Day
Data for the Upper Midwest
http://www.mvp-wc.usace.army.mil/ice/afdd/

it tells you what the theoretical ice should be, but more important there is an equation to how fast ice growths..

the stephan formula..
thickness = C * (AFDD)^0.5
AFDD = Acumulated Fahr Degree Day
and FDD = ( 32 - daily-avg-temp )
and C is a coefficent between 0.4-0.6, depending

this pdf explains all..
http://www.crrel.usace.army.mil/techpub/CRREL_Reports/reports/TN04-3.pdf

looking at st cloud, mn data we see for Average lake with snow:
5.7in we had about 4" up in brainerd. not to bad..

of course looking at minnepolis,
we have a 70 AFFD, which is 5.0 inches.. and we don't have that..

but from the equation above it looks like we need some 15 deg days for 4 days to get 4-5 inches..