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Ice in Lake Erie

By Scott Bachmeier •

GOES-16 Visible images with plots of Surface Wind barbs (white), Peak Wind gusts (cyan/yellow/red) and Ship Reports (orange) [click to play MP4 animation]

5-minute CONUS Sector GOES-16 (GOES-East) Visible images (above) showed ice across much of Lake Erie on 27th January 2025. The far western and far eastern parts of the lake were covered in fast ice — while the motion of drift ice within the central portion of the lake was being influenced by strong SW winds gusting to 30-40 kts (near the east end of Lake Erie, there was a peak wind gust of 51 kts at Niagara Falls KIAG at 1921 UTC). Lake Erie average ice cover had quickly risen above the historical average during the preceding week, as cold temperatures prevailed across much of the eastern US.

GOES-16 True Color RGB images from the CSPP GeoSphere site (below) provided better contrast between the lake ice and areas of open water.

GOES-16 True Color RGB images [click to play MP4 animation]

A closer look at GOES-16 True Color RGB images centered over the fast ice covering the far western part of the lake (below) revealed that some of that ice began to become detached from the shoreline later in the day, due to wind stress.

GOES-16 True Color RGB images centered over far western Lake Erie [click to play MP4 animation]

A closer look at GOES-16 True Color RGB images centered over the fast ice covering the far eastern part of the lake (below) displayed a large section of the western ice edge that was abruptly pushed eastward by strong winds late in the day. As that rapid deformation of the fast ice occurred, the pressure appeared to force a small segment of ice northward up the Niagara River.

GOES-16 True Color RGB images centered over far eastern Lake Erie [click to play MP4 animation]

RCM-1 and RCM-2 SAR Normalized Radar Cross Section imagery (source) at 1137 UTC and 2331 UTC (below) provided a detailed view of the intricate ice structure across the western portion of Lake Erie — in addition to linear channels created by icebreaker ships.

RCM-1 and RCM-2 SAR Normalized Radar Cross Section images at 1137 UTC and 2331 UTC on 27th January [click to enlarge]

A toggle between Sentinel-2 Optimized Natural Color RGB and Normalized Difference Water Index images (below) demonstrated that the NDWI product was more useful for highlighting ice leads as well was the linear channels created by icebreaker ships.

Sentinel-2 Optimized Natural Color RGB and Normalized Difference Water Index images on 27th January [click to enlarge]

Categories: Cryosphere, GOES-16, Other Satellites, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images, SAR