Ice, Ice, Ice

Here’s an arresting picture: a false-colored image the Great Lakes from space, taken on February 19 by a satellite called Aqua, which studies the Earth’s hydrosphere. Worth every bit of the tax money it took to put it into space, and then some.

The notes for the image say that “according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL), ice cover on North America’s Great Lakes peaked at 88.42% on February 12-13 – a percentage not recorded since 1994. The ice extent has surpassed 80% just five times in four decades. The average maximum ice extent since 1973 is just over 50%.

“On the day this image was captured, according to NOAA GLERL, the ice concentration covering the great lakes were as follows: Superior, 91.76%; Michigan, 60.35%, Huron 94.63%, Erie, 92.79%, Ontario 20.78% and Lake Saint Claire, 98.78%, making for a total ice concentration of 80.29%.

“The extreme freezing of the lakes is an unusual sight for residents, and has brought tourists flocking to certain locations, such as the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, where Lake Superior’s thick ice has thousands trekking about 1 mile across the lake to visit spectacular frozen ice caves.”

I’d read elsewhere about the ice caves on Lake Superior. If driving up to northern Wisconsin weren’t such an ordeal in February, it’d be worth going that far to see.

The thought of something as mighty as Lake Superior freezing over boggles the mind. Even in warmer months, at 3 quadrillion gallons that lake is awe-inspiring.

March Enters Like a Dirty Snowball

March arrived with more snow. Only three or four new inches, enough to whiten up the ugly grey mounts near the streets, but not enough to impede anyone’s forward motion. I thought about taking a picture from my back door, but what’s the point? It still looks exactly like this.

If it still looks like that around April 1, or especially May 1, we’d do well to worry that another Year Without a Summer is in the offing. But no really large volcanoes anywhere have blown recently, so it doesn’t seem likely.

Lilly got another one of these in the mail on Saturday.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I don’t want to put them on my car bumper, so they go on the refrigerator.