Lake Minnetonka is nearly ice-free, which likely means that 2016 will go down in the record books as the second earliest ice-out on the lake.
Only a few of winter's remnants remained on the metro area's largest lake as of Wednesday evening.
"We're getting close, thanks to today's wind," according to an advisory released Wednesday. The Freshwater Society and the Hennepin County Water Patrol monitor the shrinking ice sheet and will issue the ice-out declaration when all of the lake's bays and channels are safely accessible by watercraft.
It's Minnesota's own harbinger of spring.
The earliest recorded ice-out was March 11, 1878, compared to the median date of April 14. Last year, the lake was ice-free on April 5. In 2013, it took until May 2 for winter to relinquish its hold on the lake.
Mary Lynn Smith
