Cold Waters and High Waves on the Great Lakes

Today station 45004 on Lake Superior is still reporting water temperature of just 38F. The normal for late July is in the mid 50s.

On Lake Michigan, 33 knot north winds produced 11.4 foot waves at the Michigan City, IN buoy yesterday morning. The large waves produced enough upwelling to drop the water temperature to 58.8 F at the southern Lake Michigan buoy. Water temperatures were around 61 before the big waves hit, which is already about 10 degrees below normal.

Ice On Lake Superior On May 31

The last day there was ice on Lake Superior was Saturday, May 31st:

Winter Continues In The Great Lakes

It has now been over a month since the vernal equinox, and the Great Lakes are still 39.9% ice covered:

Most of the Great Lakes area was over 8 degrees F below normal in March and slightly below normal so far in April:

In Michigan, Detroit and Flint have now had the snowiest season on record. On April 15th, Detroit had 3.2" of snow, putting the total for the 2013-2014 season at 94.9". The previous record of 93.6" goes all the way back to the 1880-1881 season.

Great Lakes Ice Cover Update

Yesterday (March 26) the Great Lakes were still 74.3% ice covered:

At this time last year, the Great Lakes were almost ice free:

Even after the cold winter of 2011, only Lake Eerie had significant ice:

The last time ice cover was anything close to this year was 2009:

Ice covered about the same areas in 2009 as this year, but ice concentration was lower in 2009.

Temperatures have been 8 to 12 degrees below normal across the Great Lakes during the last 30 days:

Great Lakes Ice Cover

It appears that ice cover on the Great Lakes reached its maximum extent on Thursday, March 6th at 92.19%:

This is the greatest extent since 1979 when ice cover reached 94.76%.

Arctic Sea Ice Expansion

During the month of November, arctic sea ice extent expanded much more rapidly than the normal seasonal increase, especially in the Bering Sea. This can be seen clearly here. This is now the third year in row this has happened in almost exactly the same way and at the same time of year.Arctic sea ice extent anomaly - each line represents 1 million square km
Data from http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/

It was also about three years ago that the sun went into a very quiet mode (see this page) and weather patterns have been different ever since. The greatly expanded sea ice in the Bering Sea increases the temperature gradient between it and the warm North Pacific Current and has been no doubt contributing to the unusually strong polar jet stream. Just yesterday, a 960 mb storm hit buoy 46035 in the Bering Sea with sustained 56.3 knot winds with gusts to 68.0 and waves of 38.4 feet. The effect downstream from all that energy includes record snowfall in the Pacific Northwest, and an ongoing winter storm for Southern Arizona and New Mexico and southwestern Texas which produced 52 mph sustained winds at Guadalupe Pass. Western Europe has also been hit with a number of Atlantic storms causing flooding and wind damage including one as strong as 953 mb on Nov. 21st which produced 44 foot waves just west of the British Isles.