Thursday January 30 Great Lakes Ice
A friend sent me this article from MLive. I reverses a trend that had been going on for a few years, less and less ice cover on the big lakes meant that sunshine did not bounce off the ice; it entered the open water, warming it up, and increasing evaporation and lake effect snow. The evaporation was a big reason the lake levels had been going down. But apparently this monster cold weather as spiked the amount of ice cover a whole lot during January (62% of all Great Lakes surface is now ice). More ice, more sun bounces off ice, less lake effect snow,less evaporation, more winter sunshine and more cold. I’m scratching my head about this. Check out the article. Here are the first few lines; link to the whole piece is just below.
Enjoy the sun; take care about frostbite.
john sj
p.s. UDM’s board of trustees meets this afternoon and tomorrow so I won’t be posting tomorrow.
pps. Here’s a short poem.
Enough
Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.
This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again
until now.
David Whyte, Where Many Rivers Meet
ppps. Here’s the M-Live article:
“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 Michigan’s 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.”
http://www.mlive.com/weather/index.ssf/2014/01/michigans_great_lakes_rapidly.html