Frigid Weather Drags On; Lakes Freezing Up

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 

 It's frigid again today here in Vermont and through the rest of the eastern United States as the worst siege of winter weather in years, maybe decades rolls on with little sign of a break. 

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.  

Lake Champlain Won't Freeze Over This Winter

In a satellite view taken January 31, if you look closely,
almost all of Lake Champlain was ice free.

 After that extreme, but incredibly brief cold snap Friday and Saturday. most of Lake Champlain remains ice free. 

It's been such a warm winter overall that a couple days of frigid weather didn't have much of an effect on ice cover. 

You can see it in the two satellite photos in this post.

The first photo was taken on January 31, before the cold wave hit. You have to look closely, but it looks like the only ice was in the bays and inlets, and in parts of the far northern end of the lake. 

The second photo in the post was taken this morning, February 7, in the morning before clouds rolled in. This of course was after the cold blast, and after a night that brought temperatures down into the single digits above zero around Lake Champlain.

Again, if you look closely, it appearsa large new patch of ice between the southern tip of Grand Isle and Colchester had formed. But there's a ton of open water nearly surrounding that ice. I have a feeling that strong south winds today will break up much of that apparent ice. 

Even if that doesn't happen, there's still large swaths of the lake that are still ice-free.

The lake could still theoretically freeze over this winter, and it would have to be between now and about the second week in March.  After mid-March, it's generally too warm, and the sun angle is too high for ice to form all that much.

In a satellite photo taken this morning, February 7, 
there appears to be more ice than on January 31, but
much of Lake Champlain is still free of ice 

It's highly unlikely the lake will freeze this year. Generally warm weather, with frequent thaws is expected at least into mid-February. 

 You need several weeks of daytimes in the teens and 20s and calm nights with lows in the single numbers above to anything below zero to get the lake to freeze.

Calm nights are key, too. One likely reason more of the lake didn't freeze Friday and Saturday during the subzero cold is because it was awfully windy. The wind stirred up waves, which breaks up ice that's beginning to form, and wells up a bit of comparatively warmer water from below the surface.

Lake Champlain doesn't freeze over as often as it used to, decades ago.  Last year, it came this close to freezing, but there was a tiny hole in the ice way out in the middle that did not disappear in a relatively warm February. 

The last time the lake froze was on March 8, 2019, and then only briefly, for a few days at most. 

Decades ago, before planes regularly flew over the lake, it was probably declared frozen over but there was still small areas of open water that nobody saw. So that's part of the reason why the lake "froze over" so often.

In recent decades, climate change has probably become an increasing influence. In the decade ending in 2020, the lake only froze over completely three times.

For comparison, in the decade ending 1980, it froze seven times.