Ice motion in the Great Lakes

By Scott Bachmeier • 14 February 2018

GOES-16 "Red" Visible (0.64 µm) images, with hourly plots of surface wind barbs in cyan and wind gusts (kn0ts) in red (click to play Animated GIF)

GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images, with hourly plots of surface wind barbs in cyan and wind gusts (knots) in red (click to play Animated GIF | MP4 also available)

GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images showed ice motion in the western Great Lakes (above) and the central/eastern Great Lakes (below) on 14 February 2018. A flow of southwesterly winds at the surface was helping to move the lake ice toward the northeast. With increasing winds and a return of warmer air, the ice coverage of Lake Superior, Lake Michigan and Lake Huron had decreased slightly from their seasonal peaks a few days earlier — while the ice coverage for Lake Erie remained neared its seasonal peak. The total ice coverage for the Great Lakes as a whole was 57.9% on this day.

GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images, with hourly plots of surface wind barbs in cyan and wind gusts (knots) in red (click to play Animated GIF | MP4 also available)

Closer views of southern Lake Michigan and southern Lake Huron are shown below. In Lake Huron, small ice floes can be seen breaking away from the land fast ice.

GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images, with hourly plots of surface wind barbs in cyan and wind gusts (knots) in red (click to play Animated GIF | MP4 also available)

GOES-16 “Red” Visible (0.64 µm) images, with hourly plots of surface wind barbs in cyan and wind gusts (knots) in red (click to play Animated GIF | MP4 also available)

250-meter resolution Terra and Aqua MODIS True-color Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images from the MODIS Today site (below) provided more detailed views of the ice floes in southern Lake Michigan, southern Lake Huron and western Lake Erie. The Aqua satellite overpass was about 90 minutes later than that of Terra.