Not On My Bingo Card: Ice Fishing Can Lead To Dangerous Methane Fires

Ice fishing shanties on Harriman Reservoir near 
Wilmington, Vermont. Methane escaping through
a hole in the ice created by an auger is believed
to have contributed to a flash fire that burned
a father and his two daughters recently on the lake. 

We know how long term methane emissions can be dangerous. 

It's a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, so it's contributing to climate change in a serious way. 

But it turns out methane can pose a more immediate danger.  To, believe it or not, people out on frozen lakes enjoying a day of ice fishing. 

 A terrible incident happened in southern Vermont on February 1, proves the rare but dangerous phenomenon. 

A father and his two daughters went out onto frozen Harriman Reservoir in far southern Vermont for a day of ice fishing. A propane-fueled heating device of some sort warmed their ice shanty. 

Then, horror struck. 

A flash fire erupted inside the shanty, burning the dad and the two daughters. Police said there might have been a defect with the heater, but another factor might well have contributed. Methane bubbling up from rotting leaves at the bottom of Harriman Reservoir became trapped under the ice. 

The hole in the ice the family created inside the shanty allowed the methane to escape and build up inside that shanty. The heater then ignited it. 

The man and two girls were taken to a hospital in Brattleboro, Vermont, and then transferred to a Boston hospital for treatment.  Reports are the three are recovering, but we don't know how long that recovery will take. 

This apparently isn't the first time methane seeping from Harriman Reservoir has caused methane fires. Per the Brattleboro Reformer:

"Police contacted a witness who had provided the injured people a ride off the ice to a parked vehicle following the incident. They 'learned that this person had witnessed several instances where pockets of methane released through holes in the ice surface were ignited and burned, the (Wilmington, Vermont) news release states.

"During the investigation, police also received several phone calls from people providing information about other incidents involving flash burns of methane released through holes in the ice.

'These incidents were reportedly witnessed over the last several years during the ice fishing seasons,' the news release states. 'These incidents had not been reported to the Wilmington Police Department until after this tragic accident had occurred and an investigation was started."

Police said it's not worth it to drill a hole in the ice on Harriman Reservoir and wait to let methane disperse because shifting ice can keep methane billowing out of an ice hole.  Authorities advised people to not bring ignition sources near ice fishing holes and to be especially careful not to do so inside fishing shanties. 

I haven't figured out yet if the methane releases from Harriman Reservoir are unique to that body of water or whether it occurs elsewhere and if so, how often.

You do see methane bubbles frozen or encased in lake ice from time to time. Abraham Lake in Alberta, Canada sometimes draws tourists who want a view of some unique methane bubbles stacked in the ice covering the lake in late winter. 

Some stunning photos were also taken of methane bubbles frozen within the ice on Lake Baikal in Siberia back in 2022. The lake is the world's deepest, and has a large storehouse of methane due to rotting organic material at its bottom.  

I can't imagine that all lakes are ticking time bombs for ice fishing enthusiasts. But I guess you need to be extra careful while trying to stay warm in an ice shanty. You never know where methane lurks. 

I hope that family victimized by the Harriman Reservoir methane in southern Vermont have a speedy and full recovery.  

Despite Better Weather This Winter, Climate Change Is Changing The Face Of Vermont Winter Recreation

Ice fishing enthusiasts on Lake Champlain several 
years ago. Climate change has made many winter
sports and recreation seasons shorter and more
unreliable than in the past. 

By historical standards, this December in Vermont has been no great shakes in terms of winter weather.
 

But in at least parts of the state, perhaps the whole state, this was  the most wintry December since 2019, and a rare exception to the balmy Decembers of the past few decades.

That's not saying much. The record warmth and rain in  the final few days of 2024, spelled more trouble for a potentially beleaguered industry.  

We're talking ski areas, and especially outfits related to cross country skiing and snow shoeing, snowmobiling, ice fishing and outdoor skating. 

Traditional winter weather has returned now that it's January. It's cold, and some of the ski resorts got decent shot of snow in the past couple of days.  Even if this winter turns out to be the much colder and snowier than what we've gotten used to in the past couple of decades, it will probably be an outlier.  With climate change, strangely balmy winters are here to stay. 

Which makes us question the future of Vermont's storied winter sports and recreation industry.  At the very least that industry is changing. And  will continue to change. 

Our ski resorts' ever increasing reliance on snowmaking is well documented. This is especially true for smaller independent resorts,  Big conglomerates like Vail can weather a bad ski season in say, Colorado, because their other resorts elsewhere in the world might save the day with better snow.

Marketplace, with airs on National Public Radio, recently took a look at the Bolton Valley Ski Area in Vermont.

Bolton has heavily invested in snow making in recent years so it's ready to take advantage of any moments when it's cold enough to manufacture the flakes. Since the family that runs the resort bought it in 2017, they've invested $1 million in snowmaking, notes Marketplace. 

The resort has had other trouble with likely climate change-related issues this year. The access road to the resort was essentially wiped out by flash floods in July. Repairs to the road barely finished before the ski season started.

CROSS COUNTRY SKIING

The Bolton ski area has a relatively high base elevation, at about 2,000 feet, so they're more likely to see snow than rain, compared to places in the valleys. Which brings us to businesses like cross country ski centers. 

Last winter's record warmth and lack of snow meant that Vermont's 26 ski touring centers had about 50 percent fewer visitors than the prior winter, which also fell well short of a banner year. 

New Hampshire Public Radio last March ran a piece about how cross country skiing, particularly school competitions in the sport, are having a tough time in the Green Mountain State. Says NHPR:

"Kate Hale, a postdoc studying show hydrology at the University of Vermont, says the winter season is shrinking in Vermont due to climate change. 

'Snow on is occurring almost two weeks later on average in the year and snow off is now occurring about a week earlier in the spring,' Hale says. 

On top of the shrinking length of the season, Hale said that Vermont is seeing an increasing amount of rain-on-snow events."

Kind of like what's going on this weekend and early in the week.  You finally manage to get a snowpack, albeit a thin one, but still enough to cross country ski. Then it's suddenly 50 degrees and raining so you have to start over again with the snow. 

Hale told NHPR that Vermont/s snowpack depth has declined about 13 percent between 1965 and 2022.

That really takes a toll in cross country teams that are based in the warmest, lowest parts of Vermont, like the Champlain Valley.

Last year, the South Burlington cross country team had to take buses up to the higher elevation Sleepy Hollow Ski Center in higher elevation Huntington. But the travel time interferes with homework and sleep for team members, so that's not great, either. 

As the Waterbury Roundabout/Barre Times Argus noted in September, the longer summers and shorter, less snowy winters are changing the face of outdoor recreation in Vermont, as people gravitate toward hiking and mountain biking and away from snowshoeing and cross country skiing. 

SNOWMOBILES

 Vermont Public Radio's podcast Brave Little State last March had an eye opening look at snowmobiling in Vermont. 

In 2001, the Vermont Association of Snow Travelers did an economic impact study of snowmobiling in the Green Mountain State.  Reports Brave Little State:

"That study estimated that snowmobilers that year spend about $511 million on gas, food, lodging and snowmobiles - including parts and service. That figure also includes vehicle registration and VAST membership fees, which go right back into the organization."

Turns out that 2001 study was done near the heyday of snowmobiling in Vermont. Since then, VAST is now selling  half the number of annual trail passes than it did a couple decades ago. The Vermont Agency of Transportation says the number of snowmobile registrations is down by half. 

Meanwhile, the cost of gas, insurance and trail maintenance is going up. Especially since the snow has become so unreliable in Vermont due to our warmer winters. 

On top of all that, floods in the summer of 2023 caused $4 million in damage to VAST trailers. Additional flooding caused more damage in 2024,

Cindy Locke, executive director of VAST, told Brave Little State: "Will we survive this? I don't know. You know, I don't know if snowmobiling will survive, you know, winters without snow. I know they won't. Like we won't survive after  just a few, if we have brown winters." 

 ICE FISHING

On Lake Champlain, what had been in the past reliable annual ice events have been interrupted and canceled by warm weather in recent years. 

Last year, The Pond Hockey Classic on Malletts Bay in Colchester was canceled.  A major Lake Champlain winter ice fishing derby was canceled for the second winter in a row due to thin or nonexistent ice. 

A 2020 study indicates below freezing periods have declined by nearly three weeks since 1960.  That has shortened or in some cases eliminated the period of time in winter when lake ice is relatively safe for ice fishing. 

Which isn't good, since tourism based on ice fishing amounts to expenditures of $147 million per year, according to information from the University of Vermont.

THIS WINTER

I don't know what the rest of this winter will bring. December brought mixed results, with some decent snow cover at times, but also some pretty intense thaws. Overall this winter is almost guaranteed to be colder than last winter, as 2023-24 was the warmest one on record.

Snowfall so far this winter has been unimpressive. You can get decent snows with slightly warmer than average winters, so it's not like the odd winter in Vermont can't bring deep snows. 

But that seems to be gradually getting less and less likely as the climate change years go by. The face of winter outdoor sports in Vermont is changing, and in many cases fading. Athletic types are going to need to get used to embracing warmer weather sports. 

 

Worst Lake Ice In Vermont In Memory Leads To More Climate Change Fears

Ice fishermen on Lake Champlain near South Hero, Vermont
several years ago. Warming winters are making 
Vermont lakes increasingly dangerous and 
messing with traditions that date back centuries. 

The Washington Post this last week had an article focusing on Lake Morey in Fairlee, Vermont. The lake has a popular resort that draws people from all over to skate on the picturesque lake in the winter. 

Lake Morey is, or at least was, the type of lake that always froze over by sometimes in late December or early January. It's not that big, and it's location north of White River Junction assured plenty of cold enough weather to ice Lake Morey over pretty efficiently. 

Not this year. 

The Washington Post sets the scene:

"Far out in the middle of the lake, Mark Avery could still see dark ripples of open water. Nearer to shore, the ice was about three inches thick. He prayed it would hold him and a snowblower

It was January 26. Each day that month, Avery had watched in disbelief as Lake Morey failed to freeze over. His family had owned the resort on the lake's southern shore since 1972. When he was a kid, early ice was a constant. 'Death and taxes and frozen ice by early January' as he put it."

Such a warm winter seriously disrupting a winter resort in rural Vermont is terrible. Even worse are the three deaths so far this winter in Vermont from ice fishing enthusiasts caught on weirdly thin ice.

Despite some cold weather that just came in late this week, we can mostly put a fork in ice fishing and pond skating season. Normal temperatures have begun their inexorable rise into spring. The sun angle is increasing, encouraging ice melt even if the temperature in the shade is below freezing.  

Even if March proves to be on the cold side, I imagine lake ice, especially on Lake Champlain, will remain unsafe. 

 I'm sure most ice fishing fans can grudgingly take one bad season, but the chances that the ice will be unsafe in any given winter is increasing

At least as measured in Burlington, this winter was the third warmest on record. That means all of the top five warmest winters have been since 2002.  There's definitely a trend here.  

According to the Lake Champlain Committee, indigenous people centuries ago fished on ice, creating wind blocks from evergreen branches.  

The Committee predicts that for perhaps the next decade or perhaps two, Lake Champlain will only freeze over on average once every four years. By 2050 and after, it would be down to one in ten years. 

For whatever reason, New England is warming faster than almost every other part of United States and winters are warming up twice as fast as the other seasons. 

That continues a decades long trend toward less ice on Lake Champlain, and other bodies of water in Vermont for that matter. 

I was struck by the fact that the three ice fisher deaths on Lake Champlain this winter involved rather elderly men. The ages of the three who died were 62, 71 and 88.

Old habits don't go away so easily. I don't want to read too much into this, but I wonder if, after decades of "knowing" the ice was safe by mid-winter, the three men couldn't quite fathom that the ice was now dangerous. 

Ice fishermen call it a day on a cold late afternoon
on Lake Champlain near South Hero several years ago,
Warming winters brought on by climate change
are making scenes like this less frequent. 

I'm not blaming the victims, for sure. It's hard to get your head around the fact that something that's been the same all your life for many decades no longer is. 

Back at Lake Morey, the Washington Post tells us some of the desperate, perhaps dangerous lengths Avery went toward salvaging his resort's ice fishing season: 

"By late January, he faced a choice. The ice was still too thin to support the heavier equipment the hotel had always used to clear the skating trail. But if Avery didn't get out and care a path through the layer of snow, the trail - already weeks late - might not happen at all. 

So Avery stepped onto the surface, pushing a garden-variety snowblower, the kind you'd use on your driveway. He listened hard for cracking noises and tensed to run. He had a pair of ice picks draped around his neck in case he fell in." 

Other Vermonters who don't have a great a stake in the health of winter lake ice have mixed views on these warm winters. Myself included. 

Sure, I don't like shivering in subzero morning after below zero morning. Above freezing afternoons are much more pleasant to deal with. I also don't like paying the heating bill from harsh winters. On the other hand,  it just feels weird and disconcerting to walk across my snow-free, unfrozen and still kind of green lawn in January. 

Such warm winter mess with everything from wildlife to the Vermont economy, as Mark Avery knows all too well.

The ski industry is Vermont's big money maker these days, but ice fishing is a much longer standing Green Mountain State tradition.

The big ski resorts can buffer the effects of climate change with their expensive snow making machines, made ever more elaborate and effective seemingly every year. 

It's the small scale stuff, like local cross country ski trails, or the Lake Morey ice skating trails. The ice trails there finally opened in early February, after a two-day deep freeze, but subsequent thaws often made the skating poor. 

Avery thinks the traditional skating season on the lake, which lasted on average seven weeks, will soon be half that. As it already is this odd winter. 

He's adding things like concerts to the hotel on the lake, to draw or keep people who can't skate because it's too warm.

The quick subzero cold wave on February 3 and 4, which really lasted less than two days, reminded Avery - and me -  of the old days when winter actually stung. When I lived in a place that, at least in the winter, the air made my face hurt, as the social media meme tells us. 

 As we go forward, we will have fewer and fewer of those flashbacks to the Arctic winters of yore. Which means the economic and societal traditions of a Vermont winter will also continue to fade.