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Bitter cold has Lake Erie 90 percent frozen

Erie Times-News
| Wednesday, January 17, 2018 1:30 p.m.
Michele King, 26, looks out over frozen Lake Erie, Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2018, in Cleveland. Dangerously cold temperatures have gripped wide swaths of the U.S. from Texas to New England. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak)
Lake Erie's effect on northwestern Pennsylvania is a lot different today than just three weeks ago.

The lake was 90 percent ice covered as of Tuesday, according to data from the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory with the National Weather Service.

The total ice cover was recorded Tuesday at 7 a.m. The ice cover recorded for all Great Lakes was measured at 32.1 percent. Lake Erie is the most ice-covered of the five lakes.

When Lake Erie is ice covered, the chance of lake-effect snow is greatly diminished. Cold air masses aloft have less chance to absorb lake water via evaporation from an ice-covered lake and then drop it in the form of snowfall, as happened during the record-setting snowfall during Christmas week.

“The lake-effect snow would be diminished with an ice cover on the lake and because the moisture flux is diminished, but there still is a moisture flux through the ice and any cracks that develop,” said Tom King, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Cleveland.

A year ago, Lake Erie was 13 percent ice covered. On Jan. 16, 2016, it had just 7.7 percent ice coverage.

According to information from the U.S. National Ice Center, ice is around 9 inches to 10 inches thick around Erie, and around 7 to 8 inches thick near Cleveland.

“There is a little bit of open water on the far eastern end of Lake Erie,” King said. “The ice in the western end of the lake is more solid and significant. It's shallower in the western end, so that's typical. There's a lot of shore ice near Erie.”

Ice cover has fluctuated a bit in the first weeks of the new year because of a string of higher temperatures that caused a bit of melt, according to the research laboratory. Ice cover was measured at 87 percent on Jan. 7, then dipped to 60 percent on Friday. It has been steadily increasing daily since.

The high temperature is again expected to be above freezing for at least six straight days starting Friday, according to the weather service forecast. The high temperature will be around 46 degrees Sunday and Monday.

“We could get breakups by strong winds and/or warmer temperatures because those are the two things that tend to disrupt the ice on the lake,” King said. “Is it going to significantly change the ice coverage? Probably not.”


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