NO ICE - 19 MARCH, 2023
It’s 19 March and the Great Lakes have no ice ! As a North Coaster this is alarming, ice formation has been way below average this year, with 90% of the Great lakes being ice-free — and no ice at all on Lake Erie whose average ice coverage for the past 50 years has always been 60%. Lake Erie typically freezes over the quickest and has the most ice cover because it's the shallowest of the five Great Lakes.
But communities along Ohio's north coast, including Cleveland, Lorain, Sandusky, Port Clinton, and Toledo have all seen considerably less ice forming on Lake Erie in recent years down to around only 40 %.
Without ice dangerous waves and lake-effect snowstorms form add up to heavy snowfall ashore.
At the end of November, the more than 6 feet of snow that fell on Lake Erie's Buffalo, New York, was followed a few weeks later on Dec. 23, when 4 more feet of snow covered the city and surrounding areas again. The storm was blamed for over 60 deaths in New Yorks' Erie, and Niagara counties, which sit on both, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, respectively.
In some places in Northeast Ohio, Novembers temperatures dropped from nearly 40 degrees above zero down to below zero, with wind chills fueled by hurricane-force winds dragging the temperature down to minus 30/35 below zero. This storm was the first time in almost a decade that the Cleveland Weather Forecast Office issued a blizzard warning, during stormy winter months, ice cover tempers wave actions, so when there is low ice cover, waves can be much larger, leading to lakeshore flooding and erosion.
That happened in January 2020 along Lake Michigan’s southwestern shoreline, when record high lake levels mixed with winds whipped up 15-foot waves that flooded shorelines everywhere creating a stat of emergency for Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha counties.
While less ice may “seem” like a good thing for the lakes’ shipping industry, the waves can create dangerous conditions, and loss.
Around 65% of the last 25 years, have had less and less ice, with the steepest declines being in the north (Lake Superior, northern Lake Michigan and Huron), but this ease of navigation comes with a down side, there is a year-to-year variability with ice cover spiking in years like 2014, 2015 and 2019 where the lakes were almost completely iced over, a downturn in ice coverage has cascading effects on the lakes’ ecosystems.
Lake whitefish, a mainstay in the Great Lakes’ fishing industry and an important food source for other fish like walleye Pike, are one of the many Great Lakes fish varieties that are affected, lake whitefish spawn in the fall in nearshore areas, leaving the eggs to incubate over the winter months. When ice isn’t there, strong winds and waves can stir up the sediment, wash the eggs ashore reducing the number of fish that are hatched in the spring,
Walleye and yellow perch also need extended winters, If they don’t get enough time to overwinter in cold water, their eggs will be a lot smaller, making it harder for them to survive.
Even so, Lake Erie's 2022 walleye and yellow perch populations in the central and western basins were above average. Yellow perch hatches in the central basin wre below average, however.
Declining ice cover on the lakes is also impacting migrating dabbling ducks, a group of ducks that include mallards, who leave the Great Lakes in the fall and winter, if the ducks spend more time on the lake waters it increases the foraging pressure on coastal inland wetlands.
Warming lakes and a loss of ice cover over time also are coupled with more extreme rainfall, likely inciting more harmful algae blooms, that largely form from agricultural runoff, creating thick, green toxic mats on the lake surface that harm humans, fish, and pets.
Lakes Erie and Michigan have been plagued with these blooms every summer, and have now cropped up on Lake Superior for the first time, raising alarm, and even the deep, very cold Lake Superior has experienced significant algae blooms since 2018.
My belief is over-population adds to the sewerage effluent the lakes now have to process, making changes tied to population -not- climate change.
Take a tour of my other North Coast articles on this website: *to see my other (12) posts about the lakes, use the top right “Search” link to cut and paste these dates:
21 JANUARY, 2022
18 FEBRUARY, 2020
2 MAY, 2019
1 APRIL,2019
18 MARCH, 2019
5 MARCH, 2019
27 FEBRUARY, 2019
ENJOY !