Fascinating Huge Crack Opens In Lake Erie As Water Keeps Freezing

Satellite view of the large crack that developed Sunday
on the ice covering almost all of Lake Erie.

 Lake watchers got really fascinated with Lake Erie on Sunday. 

In just a matter of hours Sunday, a huge crack opened across the mostly frozen lake.

Satellite loops caught it. So did passengers on planes flying over Lake Erie. And people who live on bluffs in Cleveland looking out over the lake. 

The crack quickly widened on Sunday to about 80 miles long starting near Port Burwell in Canada to around Cleveland, Ohio. It's fascinating to watch the split appear on satellite loops.

Before this weekend, Lake Erie was about 95 percent frozen.  Strong northwest winds on Saturday   The northwest winds also piled up  chunks of Lake Erie ice up to 20 feet deep on its southeastern shore.  That movement probably weakened the ice in the middle of the lake.

Then on Sunday, light northeast winds helped  la"unzip" the crack southwestward across the lake.  The crack is another demonstration that a frozen lake isn't necessarily safe to walk or drive on. 

A person with the handle Rebsjoy on Threads
took this photo Sunday of the Lake Erie ice cracks 
while aboard a plane crossing over the lake

Lake Erie freezes more readily than the other Great Lakes because it's the shallowest of the five. Since it's shallow, you get less upwelling of slightly warmer water from the depths. 

Still, if Lake Erie freezes over entirely this week, it'll be only the fourth time since 1973 that has happened. 

Overall, the five Great Lakes were 53 percent frozen over as of yesterday. The least frozen of the lakes is Ontario. It was only 26 percent frozen. 

As weather patterns shift, there is other ice news to report. After quite a cold spell, record high temperatures were hitting central Nebraska today. Ice on the Platte River has broken up, leading to ice jams and flooding. 

As of this writing, around 2 p.m. today, I don't yet have word yet on whether Lake Champlain has entirely frozen over. The National Weather Service office in South Burlington will make the call. 

Even if it is frozen, Lake Champlain is not necessarily safe to walk on. 

Earlier this month, five skaters had to be rescued from the lake when the ice they were on broke off and started floating into a then-open section of the lake. 

Wild Weather Over The Past Few Weeks. Some Videos To Prove It. And A Stolen BMW Gets Entombed In Ice

 Since late December, there's been some wild weather in different parts of the nation. Given we're solidly in a social media, everything is caught on camera era. 

There's been epic blizzards, and even more epic storms along the shores of Lake Erie.

One of the most puzzling pieces of all this was an apparently stolen BMW with Delaware plates that was left with its windows open, in a Lake Erie lakefront parking lot in Hamburg, New York. 

The ferocious storms at the end of December sent freezing waves crashing into it, coating the interior with ice. 

I don't know if the car is still there, or whether anybody has figured out what the deal is with it. 

The car, embalmed in ice and snow, was finally removed from the parking lot on the night of January 2-3.  It is very likely totaled. 

So, now we bring you some of the video reel highlights of these late December/early January storms.. 

 First, we take you to Marquette, Michigan. On December 29, a wild blizzard, augmented by lake effect off Lake Superior, slammed the city. As always the ever-reliable Storm Chaser Aaron Rigsby came through with the scenes. 

As always, click on this link to view the blizzard chaos, of if you see the image below, click on that.

That late December storm really hit Buffalo, New York. Next video shows waves crashing into the shore with developing blizzard conditions. The blue car with the window rolled down was that stolen BMW. It ended up filling up with water, ice and snow. Click on this link to view, or if  you see the image below click on that. 

The craziest video of this bunch is from surfer Ben Gravy, who decided a horrible blizzard and enormous waves on Lake Superior. The water temperature was 36 degrees, and the air temperature was 3 below. Not including a wind chill that had to be in the 20s below at least.

Click on this link to watch these insane surfers, or if you see the image below, click on that. 

Next up, Juneau, Alaska, which received more than 80 inches of snow in December. The snow was enough to sink boats and threaten roofs in the city.   I might have a new post on Juneau as more snow, then rain is now causing more havoc there. For now, we have storm chaser Jordan Hall and MyRadar Weather News with these images of Juneau. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that. 

Hurricane Iota Headed Toward Cat 5; Big Blow In Great Lakes, Northeast

Strong winds collapse the wall of this building in Wheeling,,
West Virginia Sunday. Photo via Twitter, @whgbravest

 Wow, it's rare for a hurricane to blow up as fast as Hurricane Iota has as it bears down on Nicaragua.

Overnight, it became a Category 4 monster with top sustained winds of 145 mph.  Worse, and incredibly, there are no signs that its rapid intensification is about to wane. 

There's no upper level winds to interfere with the storm. Intense lightning surrounds the eye, an indication of strengthening. 

Hurricane hunter planes saw the central pressure of the Hurricane Iota drop a full 10 millibars in a little more than an hour. I know I'm getting into the science weeds when I say that, but suffice it to say the National Hurricane Center, not an organization you'd expect much breathlessness from, was pretty damn impressed.

I won't get into a repeat of what I said yesterday, but suffice it to say this will be a terrible humanitarian disaster for Nicaragua, given they were slammed with Hurricane Eta earlier this month too.

This is the first time in the record books that there were two major hurricanes in the Atlantic in November.  This hurricane season really is for the books, and seemingly unending.  A major hurricane is one that achieves Category 3 status or higher, with winds of at least 111 mph.  As you can see, Hurricane Iota certainly exceeds that. 

BIG BLOW LAKES, NORTHEAST

The dynamic storm system in the Northeast and Ontario, Canada was really something, too.  The storm developed a squall line of thunderstorms that ripped from Ohio, through New York and Pennsylvania, and on into New Jersey and southern New England. 

NOAA's Storm Prediction Center recorded a whopping 465 reports of wind damage with these thunderstorms. A woman in Ohio was killed by a falling tree, according to the Weather Channel.

The strong southwest winds running the length of Lake Erie literally tilted that body of water. On the western end, near Toledo, Ohio, water levels dropped by six feet. But they increased on the other end, at Buffalo, New York by seven feet, causing a lot of lakeshore flooding.

In Ontario, winds gusted to 73 mph in Toronto, causing lots of damage and sending debris flying through downtown as stuff from a high rise construction site blew around. This storm really overperformed. 

Vermont, thankfully, missed the worst of this. We just had some gusty showers come through last night. The highest wind gusts reported in Vermont were 49 mph in Underhill and at the Morrisville-Stowe airport.

As we mentioned yesterday, it will be windy and trending colder today into Wednesday with mountain snow showers around. Highs by Wednesday will only be in the 20s, but will rebound quickly after that to slightly warmer than average highs in the 40s to near 50 by next weekend. 

Back To Reality In Vermont. Meanwhile Grave Nicaragua Danger From New Hurricane

Cloudy, windy November skies over St. Albans, Vermont
a couple years ago. We're in the thick of overcast stick
season now and we'll see a lot of that in the coming days.

We've certainly gotten back to reality here in Vermont after last week's glorious, sunny record November warmth. 

The past few days have been cloudy and rather chilly, at least comparatively speaking. And it's about to get colder.  And more windy. It IS November in Vermont, after all. You really need to expect this. Sorry.

As I write this mid-morning Sunday, the wind is just beginning to blow outside my house in St. Albans, Vermont.  November is usually quite a windy month, and today will help cement that reputation.

Gusts will go past 40 mph in many locations, especially in the Champlain Valley. There might be a little light precipitation, mostly rain, but maybe some mix in the mountains and Northeast Kingdom.  But the bulk of the rain will hold off until later this afternoon.

It's not just us that are getting some good wind gusts.  There have been a lot of wind warnings and advisories from coast to coast the past few days. 

Today a huge area around the Great Lakes and Ohio and Tennessee valleys are under wind advisories or high wind warnings. 

Things will be particularly bad along Lakes Erie and Ontario in New York and Ontario. Winds gusting past 60 mph will shove already high lake water onto west and south facing shores in New York and Ontario, which is sure to set off flooding and a lot of erosion.

Storm surges on the eastern end of Lake Erie are expected to be as high as seven feet, and wave heights on the lake could reach 25 feet. This will probably be among the worst storms on record for that lake. 

Again, this is pretty typical of November, the exceptional power of the Lake Erie storm notwithstanding. It's a stormy month, and the Great Lakes are a particular epicenter for November tempests.  I bring this up every year, but I have to mention the real life storm and shipwreck in the song "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald" happened in mid-November in the Great Lakes. 

Most of these November storms have cold fronts that bring in increasingly heavy tastes of winter air and this will be no exception. 

Temperatures will decline Monday through Wednesday, and by then, high temperatures will only reach the 20s. It'll be the coldest day since around the first of March.  There won't be much snow with this, but a few inches worth of snow showers could pile up in the mountains.

It's still a little early for hard core winter, so that type of cold won't last. Highs will be in the near seasonal low to mid 40s by the end of the week.  

Again, none of this is odd for Vermont, but it does come as a slap in the face after last week.

HURRICANE IOTA

What I described above is absolutely trivial compared to what is going on, and what is about to go down in Nicaragua and Honduras.  

Satellite view of Hurricane Iota quickly ramping
up east of Nicaragua this morning. It poses a 
terrible threat to that nation by tomorrow.

Earlier this month, those two nations were hit by Category 4 Hurricane Eta, with devastating results. High winds and especially devastating floods killed dozens and left towns and rural areas in ruins.

It's bad enough to be hit by a storm like that.  It's inconceivable to be hit by a second storm of similar strength a couple weeks later.

But that appears to be in the cards.

Hurricane Iota is strengthening explosively in the western Caribbean Sea.

It went from not really a big deal Saturday morning to a monster with sustained winds of 90 mph this morning. It continues to power up massively and is forecast to be a Category 4 hurricane with sustained winds of 140 mph by Monday.

At that point, Hurricane Iota will be approaching Nicaragua and Honduras in roughly the same spot Eta hit  The region is incredibly vulnerable because of the devastation from Eta, so this really looks like a worse case scenario . 

If I'm dreading this from my safe home in Vermont, imagine how people in Nicaragua and Honduras feel.