Freeze pushes Great Lakes ice cover toward '79 record

[bananas]

Source: USA Today

The ice cover on the lakes increased from 79.7% to 88.4% just in the past week, putting the region close to the record of almost 95% set in February 1979, according to data compiled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor.

The extensive ice cover has had some interesting and positive effects, like shutting off lake-effect snow, making it sunnier in portions of states near the lakes and limiting evaporation, which could help boost lake levels.

And the ice cover could help delay the spring warm-up — good news for farmers as it helps keep certain crops, like fruit trees, dormant longer and less susceptible to freezing early in the growing season — Andresen said.

Conversely, it's bad news for the shipping industry, whose vessels can't go anywhere when the ports are frozen solid.

<snip>

Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2014/02/14/icy-great-lakes/5478697/

[Crowman1979]

1. Well at least pond skating and ice fishing can resume.

[snooper2]

16. and racing!

[onehandle]

2. Al Gore looks pretty stupid right now...

...is what Fox affiliates and the mothership itself are yukking it up about from coast to coast.

[PatrynXX]

8. oh yeah cold

can't be global warming. yeah Faux is stupid alas can't get thru the stupid people watching the stupid channel. the movie the day after tomorrow had it right just way exaggerated.

[lunasun]

11. Not as good as TDAT, but 2012 :Ice Age is in the same genre

We watched both while in sub zero /big snow this winter
78-80 was bad ones in Great Lakes area
NYT has article
the end of snow
I think last week
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/08/opinion/sunday/the-end-of-snow.html?_r=0

[sofa king]

26. Here's my response lately:

Cold air can be pushed around by warmer air. So what pushed all of this Arctic air out of the Arctic and onto us? It sure as hell wasn't colder air.

Sadly, conservatives are intellectually opaque to analogies, so this one won't work, but it's a shame that it does not:

When you open the freezer door of your refrigerator and feel a wisp of much cooler air pass over you, does that mean that opening the refrigerator door is cooling down your precious ice cream?

[Demeter]

3. I swear, we are going back to glaciers in Michigan like the last Ice Age

It's more than cold--it's unreal. And it's been getting worse each winter for the past 3-4 years.

[jwirr]

7. I think that could fit into the extreme weather which is climate change. Glaciers in one area,

warming in another. And everything else in between. This is a roller coaster.

[Loaded Liberal Dem]

4. Can we save it and ship it to the Arctic this summer?

[L0oniX]

5. Eventually we will drain it for our water demands. Ice problem solved?

[Botany]

6. The Great Lakes used to always freeze over ....

..... only in the last 20 or so years did the lakes stop freezing over. We used to
get lots of lake effect snow in late Nov. to early January from lake Erie until
the lake iced over and the winds no longer picked up extra moisture as they passed
over the Lake Erie. That moisture was then dumped off as snow in the snow belt.



http://076dd0a50e0c1255009e-bd4b8aabaca29897bc751dfaf75b290c.r40.cf1.rackcdn.com/images/files/000/006/085/original/original.0

[mathematic]

10. This is one of the top 10% coldest winters in the midwest and southeast

It'd be nice if people stopped pretending it used to always be like this. Particularly when they cite the late 70s, which were the coldest years on record, as somehow typical.

[Botany]

14. The Great Lakes used to consistently freeze over almost every year .....

.... in the late 1960s I knew some older Boy Scouts who walked from the
Presque Isle area of PA to Ontario. Shipping used to shut down over the
winter on the great lakes and only started again after "ice out."

[mathematic]

17. 40 year avg ice cover is 51.4%

While the modern record dataset only goes back to '73, those first few data points were between 35%-60%. However, ice cover is related to temperature and that data goes back 120 years. In the late 60s, only Dec/Jan 69/70 was comparable to this year. This year, it was the 6th coldest dec/jan in the last 120 years in the Great Lakes region (though slightly warmer historically around Lake Erie, around rank 20 out of 120).

Also, I'm not saying that your story is wrong. Lake Erie gets more frozen than the Great Lakes as a whole (it's been fully frozen 3 times in the last 40 years) and the freeze that you heard about might have just been local conditions.

All this data is on the NOAA website.

[Thor_MN]

15. Can't speak about forever, but this is what winter was like when I was young.

What has been atypical is how warm winters have been the last couple decades. We almost always cleared skating rinks on Lake Superior, Sometimes they were gone within a couple days/weeks, headed off to Wisconsin/Michigan, but we skated almost every winter on the Lake. Guess it depends on location and duration. If all one knows is recent winters, yeah, it's horribly cold. With a bit more experience, it's on the cold side of normal.

[mathematic]

18. It's actually on the cold side of cold, historically

This is part of my point. I don't know how old you are, but some people are remembering their youth in the 70s, combining that with their understanding of global warming, and concluding that the 70s (and perhaps colder) conditions were typical even further back. They were not. The late 70s was the coldest period on record. MN had it's 5th coldest Dec/Jan in the last 120 years this year.

[Botany]

19. I have a degree in ecology / botany, I grew up in N.W. PA and Ohio*, and I

.... have a very good understanding of global climate change .... I never said that
this winter was not colder then normal or that the circumpolar outbreak(s) (they have
been calling it a polar vortex) can not be part of global climate change. These
circumpolar outbreaks MIGHT be in part because of a shift in the jet stream because
we have melted much of the arctic ice pack and more solar energy is going into
the ocean instead of being reflected away because of a change in the albedo of
the region.

I remember in the 1960s and early 1970s that we would have very snowy winters
until Lake Erie iced over and stopped being a source of moisture that the winds picked up
by going over the unfrozen lake. The water temps. were higher then the air temps
so this was a perfect model to get lots of lake effect snow.

Now not this winter but the last 20 or 30 winters the Great Lakes freezing over
of large areas has become much more rare.** Even lake Superior has seen changes
because of global warming ..... Lake S. is very cold and has been pretty constant
in it's temps every since the last ice age but scientists have recorded 73 degree F
surface water around Duluth, MN a few summers ago.


* snow belt country

** although it was common for large areas of ice packs on the Great Lakes to break
loose because of "pressure ridges" and or winds.



Great Lakes icebreaker

BTW I am off to X country ski on a local river in central OH that I almost never would have been
able to do in most winters.

[Yo_Mama]

21. Yes, the same for me

I think people are reacting as if this is "extreme" weather just because they don't know what winter used to be like.

Snow tires and/or chains went on in the fall, and didn't come off until spring in more northern states, including the midAtlantic states.

It's easy to get used to milder winters, so I am not intending to snark, but this is far more "normal" than what a lot of younger people have experienced in their lifetimes.

Compare, for example, this 1913 NYC graph to this 2013 NYC graph:



Weather is naturally highly variable, as you can tell from the NYC temp record page:


http://www.climatestations.com/new-york-city-2/

[mopinko]

9. lake michigan apparently has good skating here in chicago.

i don't remember ever hearing anything about such a thing.
ice fishing, yes, skating? shit, we have to freeze the rink in millennium park half the winter.

[sufrommich]

12. Does anybody know if this effects lake levels at all?

The Great Lake levels are really low.

[OnlinePoker]

13. Lake levels really low - Except for Michigan/Huron, not really

Superior is only down 2", St. Clair down 7", Erie down 3", and Ontario up 1". Huron/Michigan are down 13". A lot of this can be attributed to dredging in the St. Clair river which allows more water to flow from H/M to the lower Great Lakes.
http://www.lre.usace.army.mil/Missions/GreatLakesInformation/GreatLakesWaterLevels/WaterLevelForecast/WeeklyGreatLakesWaterLevels.aspx

As for how this will effect the lakes, Corps of Engineers is forecasting averages on most of the lakes with the exception of Michigan/Huron to be within a couple of inches of normal this summer (see Daily Levels Web Page linked in the site above).

[NickB79]

20. It should help a bit

Once frozen over, water can't keep evaporating out so it should help retain moisture.

I remember driving from St. Paul to Winona, MN one bitterly cold winter day along the Mississippi, and the amount of moisture coming off the river made it look like the entire thing was boiling. It was a beautiful sight.

[Benton D Struckcheon]

22. FYI, a site for ice coverage

http://www.natice.noaa.gov/ims/

If you look at the Alaska and Europe pics, you'll see that they look like they've been relatively warm: parts of southern Alaska are snow free, and most of western Europe has no snow; the whole area around Sochi is also snow free, looks like (the athletes have been grumbling about that warmth). So we're cold, but they're not, apparently.

[CatholicEdHead]

23. Live view from the Sheboygan, WI Yacht Club on Lake Michigan

http://syc.axiscam.net:8080/view/index.shtml

The view does not go very far, mostly into the bay, which in the past only froze halfway out to the piers, now it goes way beyond the edge of the two piers and halfway into the lake this year.

[A HERETIC I AM]

24. Kick because I just saw this...Pics;

Last edited Tue Feb 18, 2014, 01:51 AM - Edit history (1)

This is a rather dramatic photo for those not familiar with the region. Wind and wave action tends to pile the ice up near the shore. This picture shows such a piling up. The surface of the lake is probably a good 25 to 30' below the peak in this pic.;



As Bananas mentioned in the OP, This is both good and bad, as it has been reported in recent years that the levels of the lakes, Superior in particular, were getting near record lows. The snowfall in the upper Midwest watershed that feeds the upper lakes is a good thing. The total ice cover however can produce bad circumstances such as ice dams and other hazards.

Fascinating, nonetheless

http://www.buzzfeed.com/passantino/the-great-lakes-are-nearly-frozen-over-for-the-first-time-in

[Psephos]

25. great pics; thanks n/t