Lake Pepin Remains Clogged With Ice

The warmer weather has cleared the thick ice from sections of Lake Pepin, but it remains close to two-feet thick in some areas. A team from the U.S Army Corps of Engineers was back on the lake on Wednesday for another round of measurements and found the ice is still 22-inches thick north of Wabasha at the foot of the lake. The report shows nearly half of that is softer “white” ice, but the Corps of Engineers team found 19-inches of the harder “blue ice” a couple miles to the north, while the lake is completely free of ice a couple miles north of Lake City. At this point, it remains unclear when the first river tow will attempt to smash through the remaining ice and open the 2014 shipping season on the upper Mississippi River.