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1949
1949 Underground power cables are installed between Headquarters and the Rim Village. They last for the next 23 years. (See: August 16, 1972)
The Superintendent reports that: “It is important to finalize plans to move headquarters to South Boundary”. This move was planned for and talked about for years, but nothing definite was ever established.
February 13 1949 The Crater Lake freezes over for nearly three months. A long period of abnormally low temperatures forced the upper water strata of the lake down to freezing. Ice first appeared around the shorelines and gradually grew towards the center of the Lake. After the surface was solid, heavy snowfalls deposited four feet of snow on the 2 to 12 inches of ice.
March 14 1949 Dr. Ruhle, C.R. Fitzgerald, and at another time – Jim Kilburn (Park electrician, 3027 Muller Street, Redwood City, California 94061) and two others walk on the frozen Lake, over to Wizard Island. The only men to do so. The ice cracked and made grinding noises as the men were walking on it. Wayne Howell, Asst. Superintendent said the men were “nuts” for having walked on the frozen Lake and for having put themselves into such personal danger.
Jim Kilburn reported that in some places the ice was so thin, “water filled our footprints in the snow as we walked across the ice.”
The men had attempted to bring snowshoes with them, but the steep decent down the inner rim forced them to abandon the snowshoes. Some of the party returned the way they came, directly back to the Rim while one member of the expedition crossed Skell Channel and hugged the Western shore on his return route.
Once in a Lifetime
Unlike most mountain lakes in the West, Crater Lake’s surface seldom freezes during the cold winter months. Newspaper articles and early-day photographs give evidence that Crater Lake froze over at least twice in the 1920’s. During the past 50 years, Crater Lake has frozen over only one time. Abnormally cold temperatures in 1949 froze the lake for three months. While the lake was frozen, several groups of park employees walked to Wizard Island on two to twelve inch ice that cracked and rumbled. Watery slush filled their snowy footprints.
Although skim ice occasionally forms on Crater Lake during the winter, its resistance to surface freezing is due to the underlying heat reservoir remaining from summer heating. The sun warms the lake during the summer to a depth of 300 feet, often raising the surface temperatures into the high 50’s and low 60’s. In order for the lake to freeze during the winter, all the water above 300 feet must be cooled. When frigid air cools the surface water, it becomes denser and sinks, forcing up less dense warmer water, thus preventing ice formation.
Total cooling of the lake is prevented by mild winter temperatures. Relative warm Pacific winds rising over the Cascades during the winter release moisture that blankets Crater Lake with an average of 50 feet of snow. Snow usually covers the ground from October to July. Yet winter days are temperate. The Cascade Mountains are also an effective barrier against the cold Arctic air masses that move south from Canada. The high mountain ridges prevent the dense polar air from rising and settling inside Crater Lake’s rim. The lower valleys of Central Oregon experience four times as many days with temperatures below zero than Crater Lake.
The summer heat stored in this deep body of water and mild winter temperatures prevent yearly ice formation. Crater Lake does freeze – but only once in a lifetime. By Larry Smith
The Frozen Lake
By Franklin C. Potter, Ranger-Naturalist
The biggest news of the year from Crater lake is that its surface froze solid in the winter of 1949. The lake that pamphlets said would never freeze because it was too deep has frozen; and, moreover, stayed frozen for almost three months.
An examination of the winter weather reports since 1926 reveals that the lake had never frozen during that time. However, in The Providence Manual of Information, compiled by the ranger-naturalist staff of 1934, H. H. Waesche reported that the lake was frozen over for two days in 1924. He adds that E. I. Applegate “suspects” that it was frozen at times during the winter of 1897-98 when the temperature at Fort Klamath reached -42° F. Although the lake often has skim ice sometimes over its whole surface, its resistance to freezing is due to the heat reservoir in the immense volume of water.
During the past winter the mean temperatures were lower than ever recorded. December had a mean temperature of 19, January 18, and February 22. The extremes were -9 December, -14 in January, and -8 in February. Considering that only eight out of 17 past winters had weather below zero, it was a cold winter on Mount Mazama.
A limnological survey of Crater Lake revealed that temperature stratification of the lake occurs at about 200 feet. Below that depth the water remains perpetually at 38 degrees. In the upper 100 feet the water temperature varies from 32 to 67, depending upon external factors; the highest temperature is near shallow shores. One reason that the lake fails to warm under the summer sun is a lack of suspended material which would absorb heat and warm the surface water. Because water becomes denser as it cools to 38 in colder weather there is some turnover in the upper layer, the warmer water rising from below. As the surface is cooled below 38 it becomes less dense and the water below imparts heat toward the surface, retarding ice formation. Crater Lake, with its great depth, stores a large amount of heat, even in water of 38 degrees.
This past winter a long period of abnormally low temperatures forced the upper water strata down to 32 degrees and the surface even lower. Heat absorption from the lake by the air was faster than convection of heat from the depths. Ice first appeared around the shoreline and gradually grew towards the center of the lake.
After the surface was solid heavy snowfalls deposited four feet of snow on the two inches to one foot of ice. Now that it is known that the lake can freeze under certain conditions, another delicate environmental balance is added to those which determine the character of the mountain and the lake.
Walking on Crater Lake
Herald and News
Klamath Falls, Oregon
February 21, 2006
By LEE JUILLERAT
Not many people walk on water, especially on Crater Lake.
But Duane “Do-We” Fitzgerald did.
It was March 14, 1949, when Fitzgerald, Crater Lake National Park’s acting chief ranger, and George Ruhle, the park’s chief naturalist, climbed down the caldera walls and walked across the frozen lake to Wizard Island.
“I knew that come summer we were going to get questions about how deep the ice was,” recalls the 91-year-old Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald, who has lived in Corvallis since the early 1950s, remembers the day and reason for the never-duplicated walk: “People had heard the lake was frozen, and it was the first time that it ever had as far as we knew.”
Historically, Crater Lake does not freeze because of its depth – it is nearly 2,000 feet at its deepest point.
But during the winter of 1948-49, a combination of occurrences, including temperatures that stayed below zero for several days, allowed the upper levels of the lake to freeze. It’s the only known time the lake has been completely frozen. (Since 1924)
Ruhle wrote about the walk in the September 1949 issue of the park newsletter, “Nature Notes.”
“… the lake not only was completely covered by a sheet of ice, but this ice was strong enough to support a significant blanket of snow. For over three months, from mid-February to mid-May, park visitors beheld a white expanse in place of the sapphire sea so justly famous.”
Ruhle’s story, which was reproduced in the 2002 issue of the Shaw Historical Library Journal, “The Mountain With a Hole in the Top: Reflections on Crater Lake,” has been told before.
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The Freezing of the Lake has more to do with stillness of the water, rather than extreme cold temperature.
By Dr. Owen Hoffman (former CRLA park ranger-naturalist and lake researcher (1966-68)
Actually, the reason why Crater Lake seldom ever freezes over is due to several factors, only one of which is its great depth. It has to do with physics.
As long as there is wind, the water of the Lake is mixed. Colder water at the Lake’s surface is continuously being replaced with somewhat warmer (4 degrees Celsius) from below. The annual heat budget for the Lake poured into the lake during annual solar irradiation is enormous.
Other factors to keep the Lake from freezing are:
(a) During the summer months there is a lack of cloud cover, allowing bright sunshine to input a tremendous amount of thermal energy, there is also a relative lack of wind during the cooler evenings;
(b) Daytime breezes keep the water in circulation, allowing the entire lake to store the summer solar input, with warmer surface temperatures occurring in the shallows and in late July and August;
(c) In winter, high winter winds keep the lake’s nearly constant 4 degree C waters in constant circulation, preventing the formation of a winter thermocline and keeping the temperature at the lake’s surface well above freezing.
For the lake to completely freeze over, a prolonged period of cold and calm is required to build a winter thermocline, which will eventually cause the water at the surface to reach zero degrees C. Once ice forms and completely covers the lake, the winter thermocline is protected from the mixing energy of the wind and the water temperature beneath the ice remains at zero degrees C.
However, for ice to last over a longer period of time, there also needs to be sufficient snow and cloud cover to prevent the winter sun from penetrating the otherwise transparent ice, warming the surface water and melting the ice from below.
May 15 1949 Elva G. Varnum is appointed the Park’s ninth postmaster, a job she held for 20 years.
June 14 1949 Lodge concession begins daily bus service to Medford.
July 1 1949 A private school is organized for the school age children living in the Park.
September 29 1949 Fatal auto accident, with one injured critically.
November 1949 Elmer I. Applegate, 82, grandson of famed Oregon pioneer, Lindsay Applegate, dies. Dr. Applegate established the herbarium at Crater Lake and conducted the first major studies of the Park’s flora. Elmer held honorary degrees from Stanford and other schools because of his contribution to the field of botany. His papers and collections were left to Stanford.
Season 1949 Visitation: 255,610 (Online says: 330,829)
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