When does heavy snow keep you off the ice?

[Jim_MI]

In another thread here people are commenting that all the snow we are having now will make the ice unsafe and keep them off the lakes for awhile yet.  I understand that snow will insulate ice from the cold air and prevent or slow thickening of the ice down below.  I also understand that the liquid water at the bottom of the ice is > 32-deg, and therefore has the potential to melt ice from below if it is not freezing from above faster.  So, what wins out in this scenario?  If I was on 6" of  safe ice last week with 1" of snow, do I need to spud my way out to the same spot now that there is 12" of snow?

[Terasec]

problem is you dont know what the ice will be doing under it,
treat it as new ice,  and spud your way, regardless of what conditions were prior  to the snow

[wishing4winter]

Especially this year   crazy    ice thickness changes pretty quick    walking on good ice one minute   spud goes through pretty easy few steps later   

[Cwab_LX5]

always use a spud but any sort of snow does slaughter the ice ik for a fact if u have 4'' and below with over 4in ice its trashed snow melt ice a lot quicker than u think... the water below the ice is indeed above 32 and b/c warmth and cold traavels 10x quicker thru water than air it melts it very rapidly i think if u had 6" and only an inch of snow u should be fine but keep in mind how fast ice melts with snow.. ive had it where 2" clear ice got 10 inches of lake snow on it and lake snow is all fluff but the ice melted and the snow turned to slush so there was 5 inches of slush on the lake below 4 inches of ice and we had i temps in the single digets and lows in the 0 to negative for 5 consecutive days and absoultly no ice was made at all went back a week later and the lake still had slush no ice... with that foot of snow i would def. spud thru it i bet some melted

[scout 2]

If we have a lot of ice before a heavy snowfall I don't sweat the ice as much as the dam unmarked spearing holes. 2 Years ago I pulled a guy out of one that he stepped in and went down under the water scared the H out of me

[Fishurman63]

In another thread here people are commenting that all the snow we are having now will make the ice unsafe and keep them off the lakes for awhile yet.  I understand that snow will insulate ice from the cold air and prevent or slow thickening of the ice down below.  I also understand that the liquid water at the bottom of the ice is > 32-deg, and therefore has the potential to melt ice from below if it is not freezing from above faster.  So, what wins out in this scenario?  If I was on 6" of  safe ice last week with 1" of snow, do I need to spud my way out to the same spot now that there is 12" of snow?

  I always looked at it like this........if and when the spud goes thru the ice....if water comes up the hole it's a good idea to move back the way you came!

[fishinfool96]

Thin ice snow matters. When it gets thicker say 6in snow isn't going to bother it much. 3 or 4 in and a foot of snow is bad news. I drilled through over 12 inches today, with about 4 inches of snow on top. All more snow is going to do is make it harder to move around a lot. If I were further south I may be more concerned.

[187fish]

i just got home from fishing, snow almost kept me on the ice today. was 10" snow good times. all the fish were small