Cold helping Great Lakes
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DETROIT -- The headaches and hassles that have come with a colder than normal start to the winter could pay off for Great Lakes residents several months down the road.
Waterways in Michigan and other states around the region are icing up earlier than usual, and many areas are seeing above average snowfall -- conditions that could result in higher lake levels in the spring and summer. Frozen water and deep stores of snow typically lead to large amounts of runoff in the spring -- runoff that causes water levels in the Great Lakes to rise.
And to many, the Great Lakes need a boost. For most of the last decade, lake levels have been below their historical averages, resulting in lost fishing grounds and changing shorelines.
But if the early cold season is an indication, that could change by summer.
"The bays, canals and marinas on Lake St. Clair are frozen over," said Lieutenant Brian Barlog with the Marine Division of the Macomb County Sheriff's Office. "We've got a good 2 to 4 inches of ice, but there is still a lot of unsafe, open water on the lake."
Ice fisherman Tom Thomson, 31, of Shelby Township, Mich., said this year he started angling a few days earlier than usual.
"Where I fish on the lake typically freezes over in mid-to-late December," he said. "It seems to have frozen over a little bit earlier this year."
According to researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, the cold end to 2010 is the result of two factors:
• La Nina, in which Pacific Ocean temperatures dip below normal by up to 5 degrees.
• North Atlantic oscillation, in which changing pressures at sea level result in changes in winds blowing west.
"Individually, each of these factors can produce colder temperatures than normal in a region," said Jia Wang, an ice climatologist and physical oceanographer at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor. "This year, they've come together."
Dr. Wang said the combination of factors will likely lead to heavy ice and a dense snowpack this year. But it is still early yet, and other indicators are less promising.
Precipitation levels in the Great Lakes so far this month are below average. Lake Superior has had only 40 percent of its typical precipitation, while Lakes Michigan and Huron have seen 66 percent and Lake Erie 93 percent. The only lake with above-average precipitation is Ontario, at 173 percent.
First Published December 27, 2010 12:00 am
