This winter, one of our intrepid reporter found the answer to one of life's persistentquestions:How thick does lake ice need to be to support the weight of Godzilla?
Notsatisfied with answering that question alone, we sought to dig a little deeper. While we've experienced some frigid temperatures over the last week or so, we've yet to see a completely frozen Lake Champlain.
As we continue to wait, we thought it would be worth it to take this time to find out how long it would take an ice resurfacer, orZamboni, to cover the lake. We took inspiration from a 2019 article that posed the same question regarding Lake Superior.
Lake skaters: The risks and rewards of skating on a frozen Lake Champlain
As the 13th-largest lake in the country, and at one point the "sixth Great Lake,"it was only fair we did our own study onLake Champlain.
Here are some important facts we considered:
- Lake Champlain is 490 square miles
- An official National Hockey League (NHL)rink is 17,000 square feet (200 x 85 ft).
- An average Zamboni takes roughly 7 minutes to resurface an ice rink.
- There are 640 acres in 1 square mile.
- There are 43,560 square feet in 1 acre.
Lake Champlain: 490 * 640 = 313,600 acres.
Ice rink: 17,000/43,560 = 0.39 acres
1 frozen Lake Champlain: 804,102 ice rinks.
Accounting for the seven minutes it takes to resurface an ice rink, it would take 5,628,714 minutes to have a Zamboni cover the surface area of Lake Champlain.
If you break that down, that's3,908 days. That means it would take (give or take some breaks, refueling and replacing of our Zamboni) almost 11 years to resurface.
Case in point: This would be a feat of the decade.
Contact Ethan Bakuli at (802) 556-1804 or ebakuli@freepressmedia.com. Followhim on Twitter @BakuliEthan. This coverage is only possible with support from our readers. Sign up for a digital subscription.
