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Ice in southern Lake Michigan

By Scott Bachmeier •

1-minute GOES-19 True Color RGB images, from 1349-1629 UTC on 20 January [click to play MP4 animation]

1-minute Mesoscale Domain Sector GOES-19 (GOES-East) True Color RGB images from the CSPP GeoSphere site (below) showed ice that had formed in far southern Lake Michigan (within the nearshore waters of Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana) on 20 January 2026.

1-minute GOES-19 Visible images with plots of surface winds and surface air temperatures (below) depicted the cold air temperatures — from single digits below 0ºF to single digits above 0ºF — that were present near the Lake Michigan coast shortly after sunrise. Along the eastern coast of the lake, surface air temperatures were in the 10-16ºF range, and lake effect cloud bands were producing snowfall in far southwestern Lower Michigan.

1-minute GOES-19 Visible images, with hourly plots of surface wind barbs and 20-minute plots of surface air temperature, from 1336-1745 UTC on 20 January [click to play MP4 animation]

The GOES-19 Visible image at 1510 UTC (below) included an overlay of Metop-C ASCAT wind barbs — which showed westerly winds of 20-25 kts that were causing the ice to slowly drift away from the coast.

GOES-19 Visible image at 1510 UTC on 20 January, with an overlay of Metop-C ASCAT wind barbs [click to enlarge]

A toggle between the 1500 UTC GOES-19 Visible image with and without an overlay of the 1500 UTC GOES-19 Sea Surface Temperature (SST) derived product (below) indicated that SST values were as warm as 3.54ºC in the open waters just east of the sea ice.

GOES-19 Visible image at 1500 UTC, with/without an overlay of the GOES-19 Sea Surface Temperature derived product [click to enlarge]

A 30-meter resolution Landsat-8 Natural Color RGB image visualized using RealEarth (below) provided a more detailed view of the lake ice in the vicinity of Chicago.

Landsat-8 Natural Color RGB image at 1628 UTC on 20 January [click to enlarge]

On the following day, ice analyses from the Canadian Ice Service (below) showed that the Ice Concentration along the southern shoreline of Lake Michigan was 9/10 to 10/10 (red) and the Ice Stage was “New Lake Ice” (pink).

Ice Concentration analysis on 21 January [click to enlarge]

Ice Stage analysis on 21 January [click to enlarge]

Categories: Cryosphere, GOES-19, Landsat, Metop, RealEarth, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images, Satellite winds, Winter weather