Great Lakes Ice GrowingFebruary 13th, 2014 at 3:22 am by Bill Steffen under Bill's Blog, Weather
Click on the images to enlarge. The first image is the maximum ice extent each winter (from GLERL). We’re currently at 87% ice cover on the Great Lakes. We had a maximum of just 12.9% in 2012 and 38.4% last year. The highest years were 1979 with 94.7% and 1994 with 90.7%. While the ice coverage is largely a function of temperature, there are other factors, like wind that can break up ice and to a small extent even icebreaking ships. In 1994, we had a cold winter, but a mid-February warm-up with highs in G.R. starting on 2/14/94 of 40, 37, 39, 51, 53, 55, 53 and 36 before we went back below freezing for the rest of the month. BTW, the summer of 1994 was ever-so-slightly cooler than average, due to August being cool and wet. Here’s the 1979 max on 2/19. After 2/19, temperatures were milder on average. In 1979, it never got warmer than 90 during that summer. It did hit 90 exactly five times. We had 4 days between 82 and 88 from May 7-10, then it didn’t make 80 again until the first week of June and we didn’t make 90 that summer until July 12th. July was drier than average and August was wetter than average that year.
The image on the right is from Beth Goz. She was flying from Chicago to Grand Rapids and snapped this picture of the ice on Lake Michigan on Feb. 7th. You can see lots of open water between the ice floes and in the distance, more open water where the lake-effect clouds are forming. Here’s another pic. of the south end of Lake Michigan taken last Monday.
We are gaining daylight at a rapid clip. We have now gained one hour and three minutes of daylight in the evening since the 2nd week of December and we continue to gain daylight at the rate of about 2 1/2 minutes per day.
Tuesday and Wednesday were the first back-to-back dry (no precipitation) days in G.R. since Dec. 1-2. February 1-11 was the coldest for those 11 days in the contiguous U.S. since 1989. Feb. 1-12 was 11.3° colder than average in G.R. and 13.7° colder than average in Holland and Kalamazoo.
The models give us a chance of a period of light snow (maybe 1/2″) tonight and again Saturday night and they continue to give us a mix, including the possibility of a period of freezing rain on Monday. The GFS-plot has more precipitation for Monday (0.45″) than the European (0.23″). It could be a freezing rain to rain to snow event. The GFS-plot takes the temp. in G.R. to 37 next Weds., 44 Thurs., 38 Fri. and 36 on Sat. then below freezing the rest of the month. The European has highs of 42 Weds., 53 Thurs., 43 Fri. and 40 on Sat. Needless to say, a pattern chance next week.