Burleigh McCoy

That's very true in Madison.

In many places downtown, people can always see one of the two lakes surrounding the city.

It's just part of everyday life there.

And a lot of people take advantage of that.

In one of the lakes, there's this bay where in the winter, dozens if not hundreds of people are ice fishing every day.

I mean, this is a place that embraces winter.

When I was at the Frozen Assets Festival, we walked by people eating snow cones.

It was 10 degrees outside.

Though at Lake Mendota, it's not every year anymore.

Hillary told me that Lake Mendota does freeze over every year.

There's even a contest where people guess what day that'll happen.

But two years ago, the ice didn't form thick enough in time for the festival.

At the same time, better for people to be on solid ground, you know?

Yeah, and that made me wonder about safety on Lake Ice and how it might be changing.

So I went to another expert.

I'll let him introduce himself.

Justin is part of the Lake Rescue Team, a group of firefighters who, among other things, are professionally trained to dive and rescue people who have fallen through the ice.

I joined them on one of their training exercises.

Nice.

So we went to Lake Monona, which is also right in town, to a spot where a river flows into the lake, which basically means there's always open water in that area.