Ice movement on Lake Erie
GOES-12 (top panels) vs GOES-13 (bottom panels) visible channel images
McIDAS images of GOES-12 and GOES-13 visible channel data (above) showed the slow eastward movement of ice across Lake Erie on 19 February 2010. Though not particularly strong, the westerly winds across the region were likely a factor in the ice movement. The improvement in GOES-13 Image Navigation and Registration (INR) is immediately obvious, with significantly less image-to-image “wobble” compared to GOES-12 — this enables the ice motion to be tracked more accurately. Note: GOES-13 is scheduled to replace GOES-12 as the operational GOES-East satellite on 14 April 2010.
A closer view using 250-meter resolution Terra and Aqua MODIS true color images from the SSEC MODIS Today site (below, viewed using Google Earth) revealed that there was still some land-fast ice along the far southern shore of Lake Erie, but most of the ice field was indeed moving eastward during the 103 minutes separating the times of the Terra satellite overpass (16:34 UTC) and the Aqua satellite overpass (18:17 UTC).
Terra and Aqua MODIS true color images (viewed using Google Earth)
An AWIPS image of the MODIS Sea Surface Temperature (SST) product (below) indicated that the water temperatures in the ice-free portions of Lake Erie were in the 32-33º F range (violet color enhancement).
MODIS Sea Surface Temperature product