{"id":64213,"date":"2025-04-17T19:05:52","date_gmt":"2025-04-17T19:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/?p=64213"},"modified":"2025-04-17T21:06:53","modified_gmt":"2025-04-17T21:06:53","slug":"ice-clings-to-life-in-the-lower-great-lakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/archives\/64213","title":{"rendered":"Ice clings to life in the lower Great Lakes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
VIIRS True-Color imagery, 1639 UTC on 17 April 2025 (Click to enlarge)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

True-color imagery over Lakes Erie\/Ontario shows a white patch backed into extreme eastern Lake Erie, and also in Lake Ontario at the mouth of the Niagara River. White patches also exist over inland portions of New York, between Fredonia and Houghton. Are these white regions clouds or snow? Visible imagery, (I01 imagery at 0.64 \u00b5m) shown below in a toggle with near-infrared imagery at 1.61 (I03 VIIRS data), shows highly reflective regions in the visible that are absorbing (rather than reflecting) energy at 1.61 \u00b5m. The snow over western New York between Fredonia and Houghton is dark in the I03 imagery — and the reflective signal over Lakes Erie and Ontario south of Buffalo and at the mouth of the Niagara River is much diminished or missing altogether. This is likely ice, or snow on top of ice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
I01 (0.64 \u00b5m) and I03 (1.61 \u00b5m) over western New York and adjacent Great Lakes, 1638 UTC on 17 April 2025 (Click to enlarge)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

VIIRS False-Color imagery (in reality, the Day Land Cloud RGB<\/a>), shows the cyan color expected with ice features in that small corner of Lake Erie, over the remnant snow over western New York and also in the outflow from the Niagara River.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
VIIRS “False-Color” imagery, 1639 UTC on 17 April 2025 (Click to enlarge)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A screengrab from the webcam at Fort Niagara on Lake Ontario (here<\/a>) shows the near-shore ice (revealed by the webcam to be drifting to the east).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Screencapture of the Fort Niagara webcam from 1826 UTC on 17 April 2025 (Click to enlarge)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n

True Color imagery from the 1755 UTC overpass over all the Great Lakes, below, shows that ice is confined to the small patch over eastern Lake Erie, over parts of the North Channel of Lake Huron, extreme eastern Lake Superior where that lake drains into the St Mary’s River, and some of the bays along the western Lake Superior shore, such as Black Bay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
VIIRS True Color imagery, 1755 UTC on 17 April 2025 (Click to enlarge)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n

One of the reasons ice is flowing down the Niagara River: The Buffalo Ice Boom has been removed (press release<\/a>). A screen capture from a Buffalo webcam showing the Niagara River<\/a> is below, and I thank Michael Fries, MIC at WFO BUF for this information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Webcam imagery at Exit 14 of I-190 showing the ice-clogged Niagara River<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to Rick DiMaio for initially alerting us to this feature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

True-color imagery over Lakes Erie\/Ontario shows a white patch backed into extreme eastern Lake Erie, and also in Lake Ontario at the mouth of the Niagara River. White patches also exist over inland portions of New York, between Fredonia and Houghton. Are these white regions clouds or snow? Visible imagery, (I01 imagery at 0.64 \u00b5m) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":64214,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-viirs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64213"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64233,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64213\/revisions\/64233"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}