Great Lakes ice

The recent cold is making the Great Lakes ice cover grow rapidly. An MLive meterologist reports that all of the Great Lakes have seen the amount of ice grow in the past week, but Lake Michigan’s ice cover has almost doubled in the last seven days. The amount of ice currently is still behind last winter at this time, but is catching up quickly. The entire Great Lakes now are 77 percent covered in ice, according to the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory. This compares to 47 percent a week ago, and 81 percent last winter at this time. Lake Superior has 74 percent ice, and was only 42 percent covered just seven days ago. Last year Lake Superior was 91 percent covered with ice. The ice on Lake Michigan has gone up 88 percent since last week and now ice covers 52 percent of the big lake. That’s well behind last year, when 81 percent of Lake Michigan was covered with ice. Officially Lake Huron has 79 percent ice. One week ago it was 62 percent ice. However, last year Lake Huron had 91 percent ice cover. Lake Erie is at about 95 percent ice compared to 92 percent last year while Lake Ontario is just under 42 percent ice cover compared to only 23 percent a year ago.  (MRN)