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You must not get out and fish much during the winter.
caretaking for three islands in the Adirondacks.
Today was mostly sunny and I would guess it hit 70 degrees on the shore of the lake I was working on. My employee and I decided to try to catch some smelt, most likely for the last time. The ice was hard and very textured due to the rain and sun. As we got on the ice, we realized that it was warmer out there than on shore. A lot warmer. Like 20 degrees warmer. It felt like a sauna. It was hard to believe. Has anyone else ever experienced this?
You don't happen to have a dog named Chance?
You are right. I am only on the ice 4-5 times a week between ice fishing and caretaking for three islands in the Adirondacks. What I am talking about is something out of the ordinary - that I have not experienced being on the ice on nearly a daily basis. I think this was a perfect, sun angle, ice conditions, temperature, wind storm that does not happen that often. It felt like I just stepped off a plane in Arizona in the middle of July.
I believe what is happening is a combination of three things occuring at the same time. (1) Sunlight does not heat air directly, but it can heat particles within the air like water vapor and dust ect... (2) The granulated texture of late ice can act as a diffuser of light in many directions, where as a flat sheet of ice will act more like a flat mirror and tend to reflect light in a single direction. (3) The higher angle of the sun in late winter allows for more of the reflected light stay closer to the surface of the ice. So my theory is simply that the incoming sunlight is diffused along the surface of the ice in late winter more so than at other times of the year. This more concentrated diffused light is then passing through a layer of air that contains more water particles then at other times of the year. Therefore, able to transfer more sunlight into heat. On a windless day we can sometimes see a slight fog forming over the ice. There is probably a way to photograph this phenomena in a way that would make it appear as if the fog were glowing.