Almost Frozen, photo by suesue2.
Sue says that Stony Creek Lake (at the Huron-Clinton Stony Creek Metropark is not quite ready for ice skating or ice fishing.
“Just because a lake or stream is frozen doesn’t mean the ice is safe,” said Lt. Creig Grey, marine safety and education supervisor for the DNR Law Enforcement Division. “Ice fishing has its own set of safety rules that if not followed, can cause a day of fishing to end in tragedy.”
According to Grey, you can’t always tell the strength of ice simply by its look, its thickness, the temperature or whether or not it is covered with snow. New ice, he said, generally is much stronger than old ice; a couple of inches of new clear ice may be strong enough to support you, though a foot of old, air-bubbled ice will not.
“Clear ice that has a bluish tint is the strongest,” Grey said. “Ice formed by melted and refrozen snow appears milky, is very porous and very weak.”
Michigan in Pictures 
To share a personal story, two days ago a guy was out on Lake Leelanau with a “spud” – a big iron bar with a chisel-like end used to pound a hole in the ice to gauge thickness. He wound back and drove it into the ice … and then it shot out of his hand and straight to the bottom as the ice proved quite a bit thinner or softer than he thought it was.
Needless to say, “careful haste” describes his exit from the lake!
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Beautiful photo.
On the serious side, a frozen lake is only safe for ducks and geese.
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