AUBURN — It’s almost boating time.

Ice-out on Lake Auburn — a sign that spring is getting serious — was officially declared Wednesday.

Auburn Water District staff watched the last of it leave late Tuesday afternoon.

“It’s really breaking up, but there’s still ice,” said Lynne Richard, education outreach coordinator for the district.

Richard drove on Lake Shore Drive late Tuesday and saw some ice in the northern corner of the drive and Route 4. There wasn’t much. “It’s moving around with the wind. It’s the last hurrah.”

In the 10 to 15 minutes that Richard was driving near the lake, she noticed the ice was shrinking. “I think for sure it’ll be gone (Wednesday). If we get that rain, too, that will be it.”

The Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands has a definition of ice-out. It’s when “you can navigate unimpeded from one end of the water body to the other. There may still be ice in coves or along the shoreline in some areas, but when a person can traverse the entire water body without being stopped by ice floes, we will consider the ice to be out.”

The state has a list of ice-out dates for Maine lakes at https://tinyurl.com/peczfch.  

On that list, ice-outs were declared at Sebago Lake in Gray on Monday, and at Sabbathday Lake in New Gloucester and Crystal Lake in Gray on Friday, April 20.

An April 25 ice-out on Lake Auburn is a little late, which makes sense considering the cold spring, but it wasn’t that late, Richard said.

The trend in recent years has been a later iced-over lake in the winter, and an earlier ice-out in the spring. “There have been fewer days of ice,” he said.

Last year the ice-out on Lake Auburn was April 19.

In 2016 it was a record-breaking March 18, the earliest reported since record-keeping began in 1836.

The latest ice-out on Lake Auburn was on May 14 in 1874.

During an interview with the Sun Journal in 2017, Mary Jane Dillingham, who then was the water quality manager for the district, said her records showed that Lake Auburn’s ice-out usually happens in April. During the past 180 years, an April ice-out happened 141 times.

Now that the official ice-out call has been made, staff will scramble to get docks in and gates open to make way for boaters, Richard said.

“It will take us a few days,” he said. “We’ll be on it.”

Auburn Water District employees use a combination of muscle and finesse to wrestle the dock into place at the Auburn boat launch on Lake Auburn on Wednesday morning after official ice-out was called. (Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal)

Ice-out dates at Lake Auburn

2017: April 19

2016: March 18 (earliest on record)

2015: April 23

2014: April 23

2013: April 14

Latest ice-out on record: May 14, 1874