Introducing the WUWT Great Lakes Ice Reference Page

Very smart. I was using the few links provided prior this reference page to fiddle with the Great Lakes Ice Products…. Now shazzam… all here!.
Very clever of you and timely. Now I know what you’ve been up to.
One thing. An ice cover total calculator is absent and each of the lake’s discrete plots don’t report an hourly value so I can’t do the sums myself… hourly. Sounds like job for Willis. ie image processing, pixel counting. Don’t get me wrong. Great page. More of a complaint about the source data.

Thanks for the page – it’s nice to scroll down vs clicking on multiple pages to get the info.
Paul – in looking at the source data, it seems that the lake pages are updated at 0, 6, 12, 18 hours (GMT). The gray-scale summary page seems to be produced once a day. For example, the 3/5 summary showing all of the lakes is noted as being as of 3/5 at 18:00 GMT. But, the fine print states that it was updated on 3/6 at 00:33:17GMT.
I haven’t been able to find anything that we can use to estimate the interim numbers. But, the new number for ice coverage should be larger, since the Ontario coverage has increased from 39.5% on 3/5 18:00GMT to 49.9% coverage as of 3/6 18:00 GMT. All of the other lakes had minor increases of .1 – .7%.
I’m a Michigander by birth but living in the warmer south. Just have to worry about twisters and earthquakes!

As a matter of interest, does anyone know why Lake Ontario isn’t iced over like the other Great Lakes?
Thanks,
Pete

You can always rely upon AP to make a warm silk purse from a frigid sow’s ear. If the subject of possible record ice cover is (cough) “inconvenient”, change it to a discussion of “water levels”…

Snow, ice cover will boost Great Lakes levels
By JOHN FLESHER
AP Environmental Writer
Mar 5, 11:07 PM EST
[snip]
Great Lakes levels dropped sharply in the late 1990s and have remained mostly below normal since. Scientists blame a warming climate, which promotes evaporation and limits ice cover, and occasional dry spells.

There is a fun website that I’ve been following for years, here:
http://duluthshippingnews.com/
They are very proud of their port (as they should be).
I check it every day.
It’s at the west end of Lake Superior.

@Pete.
The reasons why Lake Ontario doesn’t freeze over are varied and speculative.
1. It is the last Great Lake in the chain;
2. It has a lower elevation compared to the other lakes;
3. Niagara Falls empties into it (the largest volume falls in the world);
4. Lots of cities on the lake (Hamilton, Toronto, Buffalo) so perhaps some human footprint;
5. It’s a deep lake with a low surface area to volume ratio – so harder to cool / warm.

Thank you, JTF, for “yet another” piece of good work, and to Our Host for providing the page to put it on. This site is probably the best aggregator of hard climate info there is as a result, and very much appreciated. Kudos to you both.

I am sure this is all of great interest to North American readers, but be wary of accusations of cherry-picking which events you cover. What would you write if SkS started regular updates on a particular heatwave somewhere in the world?