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chantillylace9 t1_iy7z2zq wrote

Reply to comment by Sometimes_Stutters in About 100 fishermen rescued after large chunk of ice breaks off in Minnesota lake by AmethystOrator

Minnesota is notorious for spring fed lakes so there are tons of weak spots on the ice, even during the coldest part of winter.

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Sometimes_Stutters t1_iy803p6 wrote

Minnesotan here. I don’t agree with this statement. Although the vast majority of lakes do have some spring water feed, it doesn’t usually create a weak spot in the ice. Typically lake ice weak spots are at water inflows and outflows from rivers, and these are almost always marked with stakes. The lakes are quite safe to travel on, especially when snow build-up occurs and only plowed roads are traveled by heavy equipment (and the plowed roads are always such that they avoid weak spots). That being said every year people do fall through, but that’s almost always operator error.

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chantillylace9 t1_iy80gnx wrote

Man not the two lakes I lived on, the springs kept holes in the ice year round.

One of the springs actually came up into our basement and travelled downhill to the lake to feed it. My mom turned it into a super cute little stream. But we sure got a ton of flooded basements!! It was a 100 year old farmhouse which was awesome but way too much work.

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fantasmoofrcc t1_iy8bbao wrote

Yeah, I don't know his reasoning. He can go close to the water intakes all he wants, someone else will have a rope to help. Upper and Lower Red lake is pretty darn big (not Superior big, mind you) at 37miles long. Wind would be a bigger factor than just spring feeds in this case.

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