Ice motion and growth in southern Lake Michigan
5-minute CONUS Sector GOES-19 (Preliminary/Non-operational) True Color RGB images — created using Geo2Grid (below) displayed ice in southwestern/southern Lake Michigan that was being driven away from the coastlines of Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana by gusty NW winds on 14th January 2025.GOES-16 (GOES-East) Visible images (below) included plots of surface and buoy reports — which showed wind gusts in the 25-30 knot range at several sites near the Lake Michigan coast.
The presence of lake ice off the southwestern/southern coast of Lake Michigan was confirmed by a Water Temperature analysis (above) and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data (below). Lake ice in SAR imagery exhibits high backscatter values, represented by the yellow to red colors normally associated with higher wind speeds. A longer sequence of GOES-19 True Color RGB images during the daytime hours on 13/14/15 January (below) revealed a gradual growth in nearshore ice across southwestern/southern Lake Michigan during that 3-day period, as cold air remained in place across that area. A Landsat-9 Natural Color RGB image at 1635 UTC on 16th January (below) showed a high-resolution view of Lake Michigan ice (pale shades of cyan) off the coast near Chicago.