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just more global warming problems. .

Steve

Well-known member
With no end in sight, the winter of 2014 rages on, ushering in frigid Arctic air and dumping record-breaking snow and ice on much of the nation. This season, ice coverage on Lake Superior has exceeded other measurements in recent history.

"By the long shot this is the most ice we've had on Lake Superior in 20 years," Associate Professor Jay Austin of the Large Lakes Observatory in Duluth, Minn., said.

During a typical winter, 30 to 40 percent of the Great Lakes are covered by ice, according to AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Brett Anderson.

However, this winter 80 to 90 percent of the Great Lakes are covered in ice. As of Thursday, Feb. 13, 2014, Lake Superior was classified as 90 percent covered.

The last time the ice coverage was even close to this winter's percentage was the winter of 1993/94.

Unlike a pond, the depth of the Great Lakes prevent it from being a completely frozen sheet of ice, but instead the ice atop the lakes can actually move with the wind, according to Austin. Due to the ability of the ice to move around, the thickness of the ice across the lakes vary and therefore researchers do not know how thick the ice is in all portions of the lake.

So, this makes it hard for scientists to define what freezing over entirely means.

Depending on who you ask, Lake Superior already has frozen over, Austin stated. However, with two to three weeks to go until the typical peak of ice coverage in mid-March, the Lakes will only freeze even more.

Other than the ice jam worries, the ice coverage on the Great Lakes, specifically on Lake Superior, is mounting concerns for the region's climate.

"With all of this ice, all the sunlight that hits the surface of the lake is going to get bounced back out into space, so it's going to take longer to get warmer this spring and summer," Austin said.

"The lake is going to just start warming this year when it will start cooling off for next year."

hope that ice age can hold off long enough for the global warming to kick back in,... :shock: :? :???:

According to an analysis by NOAA's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, ice covered 88.4 percent of the Great Lakes on February 13.

Let's compare the current ice cover to the mid-February ice cover in the two standard-bearing years mentioned above:

Feb. 12, 1979: 83.2%
Feb. 14, 1994: 87.3%

So, we're pacing ahead of both 1979 and 1994.
 

Steve

Well-known member
Brutal winter may see Lake Superior freeze over for first time in decades

Hell may not freeze over, but experts say Lake Superior could this winter, for the first time this century.
 
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