Lake Superior sets a new record for winter ice cover, other lakes are icing up fast.
Lake Superior is 92 percent frozen on the surface, breaking a 20-year-old record of 91 percent set on Feb. 5, 1994. Temperatures continue well below freezing. Have a look at this graph:
As far as all the lakes go, here is the plot of historical maximums:
![IceCoverAvg1973_2013[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/icecoveravg1973_20131.jpg?quality=83)
The number to break is 94.7, set in 1979, which is also a year of some of the worst winter weather ever in the USA, and coincidentally, the peak year year when Arctic sea ice trends were begun via satellite measurements. Right now we are at 78.5%. Just a week ago the ice cover was 66 percent.
Source image (click for update) http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/res/glcfs/glcfs.php?lake=l&ext=ice&type=N&hr=00
UPDATE: this graph from the Canadian Ice Service shows how much above the median the Great lakes have been:
![20140203180000_CVCSWCTGL_0007500871[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/20140203180000_cvcswctgl_00075008711.gif)
This graph shows by year, 2014 is now in third place:
![20140203180000_CVCHDCTGL_0007500868[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/20140203180000_cvchdctgl_00075008681.gif)
References:
Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory
http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/data/ice/
Modis Imagery:
http://coastwatch.glerl.noaa.gov/modis/modis.php?region=g&page=1
Canadian Ice Service:
http://iceweb1.cis.ec.gc.ca/Prod20/page2.xhtml?CanID=11080&lang=en
Four million cubic feet of water falls 50 m every minute from Lake Erie into Lake Ontario. Not sure what effect it would have on surface ice but Niagara Falls represents the highest flow rate of any falls in the world (Wiki).
Thanks for the responses,
I did mention two wrong things. Time of decrease , was not coldest part of night but onset of evening at 1900 GMT and [meant] to say 1979 not 2009.
Just really seems odd with even the Northern part of lake Michigan [increased] in concentration when almost all of Lake Superior fell starting the same hour.
Canada Ice service shows almost all of lake Superior at 9-10/10 coverage except for a few small areas that are 7/8-10/10 coverage on 2/8.
Something happened for sure, was it a Glitch, intentional tampering to make it look like less ice after news articles [soared] or was the data put into the ice model that is supposed to show actual coverage wrong and just a mistake?
Did Lake Superior break the 1994 record of 91% on 2/05 at 92% and what is the exact ice coverage/concentration # as of today?
[Does] someone have any other links?
Thanks
Its about time. First time this level of coverage since 1998.
@chris
Do they have a motive? Yes
Do they have the capability and opportunity? Yes
Is what happened illogical? Yes. It was way too cold for the lake to lose that much when it was essentially frozen over and is in a strong ice forming modality (below 40F).
As I have been saying for 10 days we are in an epic freeze, with obvious records of unusual cold … and the agencies that only promote the AGW will try to hide it. We do need a flyover or flyovers as this is something that can be done outside of just reading the data interpretations they put out there. We have weather and time on our side because the cold will continue for at least 10 days.
On Feb 5th the Canadian Ice Service did something similar by suddenly changing the map legends of their ice coverage maps to human descriptions from quantified ice fractions. The most logical conclusion is that we are already getting biased data/maps as compared to earlier decades … and that we are in fact already in a very anomalous winter.
@chris
So, the Canadian Ice Service is showing substantially less ice, and substantially more open water, in Lake Ontario on Feb. 9th as compared to Feb. 8th. It would appear that these agencies want to say certain things about Lake Superior, Lake Michigan and Lake Ontario … so the amount of freeze overs don’t look as historic as they are going to be.
@Anthony
If you or one of the skeptical scientists with ph.d. here would do a flyover at the end of ice season, or 10 days from now it could be a great public service, and a major publicity generator. Doing a video that could easily go viral. I would suggest going from Chicago to southwestern Mich. than back over to Milwaukee. Then, of course Lake Sup. will be very frozen, but not as dramatic as Lake Michigan freezing over. We could also see just how accurate and straightforward their maps of ice coverage are, or aren’t. As I say, could be a great publicity generator, and is definitely a public service.
I would do it but I am in Volcano, Hawaii, where the weather, and the volcano, are truly WARM!
Here in Southern Wisconsin (about 50 miles inland from Milwaukee) we’ve had 141 hours over freezing and 300 hours below zero since Dec 1st. Everything else is between zero and 32. The average high for us is 27 degrees in Jan with an average low of 10. This has been a really cold winter for us.
Darn that global warming!
Hey, hey, hey … they are showing Lake Michigan even closer to freeze over today. Huron, Superior, and Erie … ice fields galore no open water …. http://iceweb1.cis.ec.gc.ca/Prod20/page3.xhtml Yeeeeks, this is fun!
Yes, Lake Michigan is going down…
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/prods/NAIS25WCT/20140211180000_NAIS25WCT_0007512577.pdf
Here is what NOAA put out earlier today on Lake Michigan. It is getting quite close, and it will be plenty cold at least thru Sunday:
http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/res/glcfs/micethk-00.gif
NOAA GLERL just posted the 2/12/2014 Great Lakes Ice Cover number, 88.4%. ( http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/res/glcfs/glcfs.php?lake=l&ext=ice&type=N&hr=00 )
This should be a new record for measured ice cover. According to the Canadian Ice Service the previous high measured value was ~86-87%. ( http://bit.ly/1jmi2YG ) Note that the gray area in the bar chart is “interpolated”/adjusted data, not measured.
Well, Lake Michigan was going down (icing over nicely), but the “authorities that be” changed their instrumentation or interpretation factors. It has lost ice all over the place during continuous temperatures that are well below freezing! And quite a significant amount after the Canadian Ice Service (CIS) showed it icing up and closing up. They have also changed their ice maps so that Lake Superior and Lake Ontario have less ice. Lake Ontario and Lake Michigan are way different now as far as considering “percentage of ice” with these new maps. GL ice coverage percentage as a whole is suddenly showing much LOWER during verz cold weather and after all lakes had really started closing up and turned over.
This during a Feb. which is way below normal temps, and no above freezing temps. WE NEED SOMEONE TO FLYOVER THE PERTINENT LAKES & VIDEO. Tues-Fri it will reach some daytime highs above freezing for the first time … then looks cold again. Below this text are the links to NOAA and CIS. NOAA has also suddenly put “Under Development” on some very pertinent maps. Their whole plan is obviously to obfuscate the whole thing and put whatever fraction/percentage of GL and Lake Michigan coverage they deem necessary.
The only map that has retained some increase in Lake Michigan ice this past week looks like it is showing a white streak where an ice breaker is going around the thinnest ice in Lake Michigan to make sure it doesn’t freeze up. This is in NOAA:
http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/res/glcfs/micethk+01.gif
CIS previous to today had Lake Michigan almost all 9-10/10ths (red), and closing up fast in the middle. Now they show it a wide array of fractions:
http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/res/glcfs/micethk+01.gif
I can just imagine how regulars here must feel now about arctic sea ice interpretations, etc. The “scientific method” is still intact, but science in the western world is being controlled by people that think obfuscating and misrepresenting to the citizens and other scientists is ok. If we go into a prolonged cold spell, as some scientists think, it will wreak havoc due to this negligence.
Well, heavens to Betsy! There is a map showing Lake Michigan ice thickness .. with the whole lake frozen over this morning. NOAA has put out this map, today, on Feb 16:
http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/res/glcfs/micethk+01.gif
And yes, there is an ice breaker channel showing up. So, they were going around the perimeter with ice breakers on the thinnest ice regions in previous days. Who knows what percent ice cover this gets translated to in the media, but it is obvious they are showing a completely frozen over Lake Michigan with various thicknesses of the ice cover on this latest map.
This will probably be interpreted as 80% ice cover or something in the media … crazy world we live in. Canadian Ice Service latest map of ice coverage (yesterday) as I said in last post has suddenly become completely different fractions of ice cover from previous days and gradual freezeover buildup: http://iceweb1.cis.ec.gc.ca/Prod20/page3.xhtml
So it seems that despite the rationalizations the warmists can give ordinary people will look out of their ice glazed windows and conclude that AGW is a crock.
And they would be right even if the arguments they give may be open to refutation by warmists; after all real scientists refute the warmists fantasies repeatedly
So the day of the delusion of AGW looks to be over, hopefully sooner rather than later