[fatlazyless]

From my experience with chopping ice with an ice chopper, it seems like ice is stronger at 10-degrees than at 25-degrees. With prolonged cold temps it gets tougher to chop and sort of has an elastic, bounce-back quality as it floats on the lake water when you smack it with an ice chopper and a 2-lb mason's hammer.

So, below 20-degrees for a stretch of time, the ice seems to get very strong? As the temps hover at 25-30, the ice gets easier to break with the chopper and big hammer.

It's not like 32-degrees is the on-off temp for liquid water/strong ice as the ice becomes stronger as the temps go colder and prolonged cold makes it hold together better and be more resistant to the chopper. Once the temps warm above 30 in late March, a large 12" thick piece of lake ice that's threatening a stored sailboat at the waters edge can be split with a chopper and a big hammer. The ice sort of looses its strength from within and that wouldn't work in January or February.

Here's my FLL-Theory on Ice: the strength of lake ice fluctuates from weak to strong to weak with the weekly average temperature, until spring gets here and the whole sheet of ice just totally discombobulates! The colder it gets, the stronger it gets, down to zero degrees, or something!