Hi,
With bugs on ice in the Alps and Northern Europe reported in FS2020, Asobo attempted to fix it making ice appears on water boddies at a minimum of 72 cm (28 inches) of snow dept in the area, as mentionned in a Developer Stream in Spring 2024. While it can help in some regions, it worsen the representation of real-world freezing conditions in Northeastern America and Canada, at least.
During winter, lakes commonly freeze as far south as:
States like Iowa, Illinois, and parts of Pennsylvania and Ohio see regular lake freezing.
This is a map of current freezing situation (down to orange areas) :
Source: Widespread loss of lake ice around the Northern Hemisphere in a warming world | Nature Climate Change
Where I live (North 46.80’), we get ice on lakes in end of November to early December to mid-April. This is a picture of CSP8, Lake Sept-Iles water aerodrome on December 15 2024 with ice since two weeks and 4 inches thick:
Now January 28th, we have 24 inches of thick ice on the lake but about 15-20 cm (5 inches) of snow on the ground, so… no ice in the sim, and will wait a long time before getting 72 cm. While I haven’t found ice up to N 51 degrees (see Manicouagan reservoir below, North of CMN5), ice should be way down South in New-England states.
It is also true for State of Maine where I go often to see family in law (around Augusta, KAUG) at Christmas and they usualy have a few inches of ice since at that time.
Canada has been developed in part on bush flying with ski during winter, going lake to lake, and still has a strong culture of ski equiped planes. This is sad that we cannot use them in the sim. It also prevent us to create realistic sceneries with ice fishing, snowmobiles, skaters, etc. Life is active on frozen lakes.
As you know, lake freezing primarily depends on sustained low air temperatures rather than snow accumulation. For a more realistic sim, lake freezing should primarily depend on air temperature trends over time. In the energy efficiency sector, use of «degree day » is widespread to follow trend of temperature over time and energy requirement for buildings. It could be a better way to calculate where ice should appears. Even a simple map/data collection telling where ice should be over time (months) would be better than the current situation in the sim for Northeast US and Canada (and maybe the rest of North-America).
Winter without frozen lakes is just not winter.
