Lake Winnebago Lake Flies 2013

I snapped this screen shot from my iphone of the radar over Lake Winnebago on May 20, 2013.  The "rain" that appears over Lake Winnebago is most likely a cloud of emerging lake flies.  This has been seen on radar before, so it's likely this is the same phenomenon.  The cloud to the southeast is actually rain.

Lake Winnebago Lake Flies on the radar

A Few Photos from this Winter.

The first real snow of the 2012-2013 winter season in Northeast Wisconsin brought snow that stuck to everything.   It was really unusual in that the snow stayed stuck for weeks because of cold weather that immediate followed the snow fall.

Moody Morning Lake Winnebago Panoramic

Willow

Snowy Marsh

Snowy Boathouse Wall

The Power of Ice

2010 ice shove on Lake Winnebago, Oshkosh WI

In Wisconsin we should know better, but we forget that ice is power.  Our lakes like to remind us of this, with crystalline beauty and crushing power of ice with wind at its back.  Winnebago was gouged out by the Green Bay Lobe of the Wisconsin Glacier.  That sheet of ice made the bathtub that is our lake, and as the ice sat there it dammed what we know as the Fox River and created glacial Lake Oshkosh which spread across the landscape.  As fine sediment dropped out of the water of that lake, it created a flat lake bed of clay and silt which is what Oshkosh and much of Winnebago County is.  My house is on the bottom of a lake.  When the glacier receded, Glacial Lake Oshkosh drained out the Fox River to Lake Michigan, and the deep basin filled up as Lake Winnebago, and so the landscape we know was formed. 

The ice on the lake this winter is barely a foot thick child of the mile high monster that carved out the lake, but it is still a force to be respected.  Water has the most peculiar of traits.  As it forms a solid by cooling it gets larger, unlike everything else we experience.  It only expands a little, but over the span of miles it adds up.  It also expands with tremendous force.  Think of the expansion of water into ice bursting through iron pipes.  Ice is a nearly unstoppable force to be reckoned with.       

Ice can be brutal, but to many it is a source of delight as it is danger.  Snowmobiling, ice fishing, walking, ice skating, hockey, or just running and sliding are a few of the activities to enjoy on the ice.  Ice provides everyone access to the lake.  Fishermen without boats are no longer confined to the shore, docks or bridges.  They can wander out onto the lakes with a bucket and the most simple of fishing gear.   Ice does not discriminate based on one’s economic standing.  Thin ice or cracks can swallow up an SUV or a person on foot just as easily, and every year someone goes down and all too often does not come back up. 

Little icebergs, Lake Winnebago Oshkosh, Wi

Like everything to do with lakes, ice is controversial.  For over a hundred years the water level of the Winnebago system is drawn down throughout the winter to make way for the snow smelt and spring rains.  This also has the perceived benefit of reducing ice damage.  While there may be some benefits to shore protection from ice expansion it does little to prevent damage from ice shoves.  Ice shoves on Lake Winnebago can climb uphill, reaching spectacular heights in no time with the right wind, and like miniature glaciers bulldoze everything in their path.  The dams that control water levels cannot physically draw the lake down far enough to prevent this damage, and if they could there would be severe damage to habitat that fish and wildlife depend on.   

On calm nights with the temperature dropping you can hear the ice boom as it contracts and cracks.  Walk along the shore of Menominee park if you are unsure of the ice on one of these nights and you can hear the power building.  The ice is restless.  The constant shifts of temperature changes, the sun, and the wind are always weakening the ice even as it gets thicker.  It can take months for ice to be thick enough to support the weight of a car, but in a few short weeks it degrades and piles up on shore.  Lake ice is something of a troubled teenager struggling to be noticed as it makes its way in the world in the shadow of a famous parent.  It throws tantrums, creates trouble, and then burns out, ends up in rehab, builds up to something delightful, and throws another tantrum.

Previously published in the Oshkosh Scene.  

Under a Frozen World

Slough off North Asylum Bay

The lakes and marshes become quiet in the winter when the ice covers the lakes and snow blankets the surrounding marshes, but life continues below ice and snow. 

Tunneling through the snow are a number of little mammals.  Mice, voles, and shrews enjoy the relative safety provided by their tunnels.  There they are free from the piercing eyes of hawks, but are still vulnerable to the ears and talons of great-horned owls and pouncing foxes.

On the lake bottoms are the flying insects of summer.  The billions of lake flies of spring are all there as the larva called bloodworms.  Keeping company with sediment, decaying plants, and rocks are the larvae of caddisflies, damselflies, dragonflies, and mayflies that will emerge from the lake and take flight in spring and summer.  All of these are food throughout the winter for bluegills, perch and other fish. 

Up the food chain there are reptiles we envision hibernating in the mud.  Some turtles and frogs are indeed buried in the mud, but others are piled up sitting on the lake bottom motionless or crawling along at a snail’s pace.  Common map turtles sit on the bottom or wedge themselves amongst rocks and logs.  When disturbed they retreat, and may reveal a northern leopard frog underneath, which will also swim away.  Hardly asleep, these map turtles require more oxygen than painted turtles buried in the sometimes anoxic mud.  The cold and relative inactivity allows them to take in all the oxygen they need from water.  Frogs and softshell turtles breathe through their skin, but softshells also take in oxygen through special adaptions in their throats.   

Frozen Lake Winnebago at Oshkosh

Mammals have no options but to breathe air.  The local aquatic members of the weasel family--river otter and mink--must maintain holes in the ice with their teeth to be able to gain access to the fish, frogs, turtles and other animals they eat.  Muskrats often use the same holes, but they try to stay concealed, and will never walk on ice and snow if they can avoid it.  Muskrats build huts, or lodges like beavers do, but muskrat homes are made of aquatic plant leaves, stems, and roots.  Here they sleep and eat, but they often swim far beyond the range of one breath to obtain the food they need.  For those foraging trips they build cave-like “push ups” for breathing.  They will also build small feeding huts, which are self-explanatory.  A sudden drop in water levels after the ice forms seals off all these structures from the muskrats’ food, forcing them onto ice and snow and into the jaws of coyotes.    

Winter is a harsh time for wildlife, but it can be easier under the ice and snow for those adapted to it.

Previously published in the Oshkosh Scene article.

Ice Returns

The ice has returned over the last few weeks.  Lurking under a pile of grass at the water’s edge of some slough or bay are some slivers of ice.  There they will hold out until the weather turns cold again.  First they will spread their cold fingers throughout the ditches, sloughs.  Next will be the bays and the leeward shores of the lakes.  Then on some cold, clear, calm night Lake Winnebago will be encased in a thin black prison that will thicken, gather snow, and then the well-insulated feet of ice fisherman and finally their Suburbans, Explorers, and F150s.  The marshes are lonely and quiet, the ice of the lakes is lonely too, but the ice grumbles and booms as the temperature changes and the wind blows.  On an angry night in late winter, the ice, weakened by the coming spring, will team up with the wind to invade the land, crushing docks, trees, sheds and everything in its path.  The ice will sit stacked up in shame at the water’s edge watching the sun overhead end its reign over lake and slough.  The ice will not be thought of again until those first frosts end summer, and in October and November, little slivers of ice hide under marsh grass and advance and retreat, advance and retreat...

Duck weeds and water meal locked in ice