The Great Lakes have reached 62 percent ice coverage due to extreme cold, and in the weeks ahead that can have a triple-barreled consequence on Michigans weather: More cold. Less lake-effect snow. More sun. The coverage is growing rapidly. The ice area more than doubled in just one recent week, from 22 percent coverage on Jan. 15 to 48 percent by Jan. 22. From Jan. 22 to Jan. 28 the average Great Lakes ice grew another 14 percent. Lake Superior is 69 percent covered in ice. Lake Michigan has 46 percent ice cover, while Lake Huron is 71 percent ice covered. Lake Erie is almost totally covered with ice, at 96 percent. Lake Ontario has 26 percent ice cover. George Leshkevich, physical scientist at NOAAs Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, says the oddity this year is how early in the winter this amount of ice cover has formed. The 62 percent ice cover already ranks this year as 17th in maximum ice coverage in the last 40 years. 1994 had the highest ice cover at 94.8 percent. Dry arctic air has taken over much of the Great Lakes region, allowing for clearing skies over land, and even over parts of the lakes. That gave us a high resolution satellite photo posted Tuesday Jan. 28, 2014 by the Space Science and Engineering Center. The photo shows a large area of ice formed on the west side of Lake Michigan, off the shore of northern Indiana through the Chicago area, and up the Wisconsin shoreline. mlive/weather/index.ssf/2014/01/michigans_great_lakes_rapidly.html
Posted on: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 14:17:37 +0000
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