As a lot of you know, we've gotten a lot of snow here in the northeast. Been wanting to go ice fishing, but looked at the weather next week and saw that it was gonna warm up. If there's snow on the ice, would the snow have to melt before the ice thaws, or would they both melt at the same time?

I live in CNY. Oneida has finally got some ice but there was some snow on it saturday. We are going to be having warm weather and possibly rain. It's going to melt the snow and make that into more ice. With Temps still dropping into low 30's during the night it's going to help the ice conditions.  Hope this helps

I think you need to have temps above freezing during the day, and then drop below freezing, and then you're making ice?  Is that right?

Anyway Bigbasscav, you know how much ice in Big Bay?  Might have to make a road trip and fish with my buddy out there.

Snow is insulation on the ice. If there is a lot of snow on the ice, it won't "make" ice very well no matter how cold it gets, and in reverse, the ice will not melt very fast under the snow until the snow is gone..............however ice under melting snow is unsafe IMHO. What usually happens is the snow melts, and then re-freezes on top of the ice into a chippy, crappy layer of what we call "white ice"...............this stuff is garbage and totally unsafe to be on unless it's on TOP of a good layer of 4"+ clear solid "black ice"

1 hour ago, ww2farmer said:

Snow is insulation on the ice. If there is a lot of snow on the ice, it won't "make" ice very well no matter how cold it gets, and in reverse, the ice will not melt very fast under the snow until the snow is gone..............however ice under melting snow is unsafe IMHO. What usually happens is the snow melts, and then re-freezes on top of the ice into a chippy, crappy layer of what we call "white ice"...............this stuff is garbage and totally unsafe to be on unless it's on TOP of a good layer of 4"+ clear solid "black ice"

This is spot on. Ice is unsafe in my area. It did not have enough time to properly freeze and anyone that tries to fish it is a disaster waiting to happen. I'm keeping my ice fishing gear in the shed for now. Don't mess with Mother Nature. 

19 hours ago, J Francho said:

I think you need to have temps above freezing during the day, and then drop below freezing, and then you're making ice?  Is that right?

Anyway Bigbasscav, you know how much ice in Big Bay?  Might have to make a road trip and fish with my buddy out there.

That's what I was saying I might have worded it wrong. Like today is supposed to be low 40's with some rain then drop into the twenty's at night creating more Ice. As far as big bay goes there were guys out Saturday morning I fished out of Cleveland for walleye we had any where from 4 to 6 inches I did how ever find one soft spot that the spud  went through make me pucker  up a little but for the most part it was safe ice 

Thanks for the info!