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| Screen grab from the WCAX Echo Center web cam from this morning. There's a lot of ice on Lake Champlain now. If you look carefully you can still see open water far offshore |
A historic nor'easter and cold wave in the Southeast was just cranking up toward full speed this morning.
Up here in Vermont, nothing exciting. Just unrelenting, tiring cold.
LAKE CHAMPLAIN
Lake Champlain is rapidly freezing up. This week, the huge expanse of open water we saw at the start o the week is now a relatively small hole of open water way out in the middle.
On Wednesday, the lake was pretty much frozen just to the Burlington breakwater, which is about 1,000 feet offshore. By Thursday, the ice went all the way out to Juniper Island, which is three miles offshore from Burlington.
Shelburne Bay had some open water Wednesday. By Thursday the bay was entirely iced over.
The cold weather yesterday and today obviously manufactured even more ice. Still, it will take awhile for the middle of the lake to freeze over because it's more exposed to the wind. Also, it's the deepest part of the lake, so relatively warmer water would upwell from below, which would at least delay a freeze over.
WCAX noted that in all but one winter with a January weather like this year's the lake froze over completely if February's temperatures were below normal.
Spoiler: February's temperatures will be below normal as we see no real sign of a let up in the cold through the middle of the month. Sure, some days will be only a little cooler than average. But other days will be bitterly cold, at least as forecast look now.
It Lake Champlain entirely freezes over this winter, it would be the first time since 2019 that it's happened. The lake has only frozen over eight times since 2000.
GREAT LAKES
The Great Lakes are freezing over, too, Lake Erie was 95 percent frozen as of yesterday. That will mostly shut down the lake effect snows in and south of Buffalo for the season. (Even when Lake Erie is frozen, some moisture gets through the ice, so there could still be some light lake effect in towns south Buffalo, like Dunkirk and Hamburg.
Lake Erie is much shallower than the other Great Lakes, which is why it freezes over so readily.
Deep Lake Ontario had the least ice, but it was still 23 percent frozen over. About a quarter of both Lake Michigan and Lake Superior had iced over. A little more than half of Lake Huron was frozen.
The ice on those lakes will continue to expand, as no thaws are headed toward the Great Lakes.
VERMONT FORECAST
No thaws are coming to Vermont, either.
Oh sure, today will be hotter than yesterday. But not by much. The high temperature in Burlington yesterday was 7 degrees. The forecast high today is 12. After another subzero night tonight, Sunday's temperatures will be similar to today's
Vermont is still set up for a "heat wave" this coming week. It now looks like every day for most places in the Green Mountain State should reach the low to mid 20s. Overnight lows will be within a few degrees either side of zero. That's just a little colder than average.
But signs point toward the deep chill returning by next weekend. Lo ng range forecast have us below zero again for at least a few days starting about a week from now.
Between now and next weekend, we'll have very little if any snow. Cold waves like this are dry, so it's hard to get any substantial snowfalls in this weather pattern.
Oh, sure, we'll have some flurries from time to time, but it'll never amount to much. We had some flurries this morning. That was actually produced by moisture from all the way up in the Labrador Sea. The air flow has been coming from that direction overnight and this morning.
Those flurries could continue here and there for the rest of the day.
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