As you know, we had a a bit of a false start to the ice-in this year, and then finally settled on a date of Jan 18. Subsequent to that decision, a few days later, there were a couple of reports of possible open water on the main lake. It is uncertain whether this was water over ice or an actual open ice sighting. There is a good chance it was open water, as the temperatures had risen above freezing.
Anyway, we will stick with the Jan 18 date, and consider this second report an anomaly, or perhaps our first multiple freeze event.
As I’ve mentioned before, the Great Lakes look at percent ice cover, and then capture the date that this percentage is the highest for the year. This then gets tracked year over year. As of January 30, they were reporting only an 8% coverage compared to a yearly average of 30% at this point in the winter. https://glicetracker.github.io/
The very interesting thing about this graph is that the coverage this year has actually declined from a peak of 18% on January 22! So, our experience with decreasing ice at least is tracking what is happening elsewhere.
Chandos Lake Science 2 