Wind Lake

Wind Lake earns a C — middle-of-the-pack water quality, with one or two parameters dragging the average down from a stronger grade. Sub-grades cluster within a single letter of each other, which usually means the lake is in stable trophic balance rather than fighting one specific stressor.

Mesotrophic conditions dominate at Wind Lake: enough nutrients for a healthy fishery, not so much that algal blooms become a chronic problem. A maximum depth of 32 ft puts Wind Lake in the middle of Minnesota's depth distribution. The lake's 926 acres and 17.4 miles of shoreline put it in the mid-range bucket — large enough for varied use, small enough that watershed inputs reach the whole basin. Within Lake County's 142 graded lakes, Wind Lake ranks 90 — below the local median, though not at the bottom.

No invasive species are currently listed at Wind Lake — the lake remains off the Minnesota infested-waters roster. Walleye are documented at Wind Lake, one of 10 fish species on record for the lake. The lake lacks a documented public access point, so visitor use is limited. Monitoring depth is thin here: the LakeGrade rubric is applied to a small number of sample years, and the grade will be revised as more data accumulates.