Lake Erie Now Frozen Over

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Take a picture of Lake Erie now, and you'll get a freeze frame.

For the first time in 14 years, the 241-mile-long lake is virtually frozen over from one end to the other.

Earlier this week, the Erie Times-News reported that the lake was 90 to 95 percent frozen. The relentless cold completed the job.

Gary Garnet, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Cleveland, said Friday that the lake is completely frozen over, for all intents and purposes.

He qualified that by saying satellite images show a small patch off Dunkirk, N.Y., with water and chunks of floating ice. He said that's one of the deepest parts of the lake and would be one of the last places to freeze.

The maximum depth of the lake is 210 feet, and the average depth is 62 feet, according to the Great Lakes Information Network, a project of the Great Lakes Commission.

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There are also some cracks in the ice, which shift due to high winds, he said.

"But for general purposes, the lake is covered right now,'' Garnet said.

The ice cover will mean fewer lake-effect snowstorms, or at least less intense ones. Lake- effect snowstorms occur when cold air passes over warmer bodies of water, building up clouds and dumping snow downwind.

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Edinboro and other snowbelt areas are typically hit the hardest.

"It doesn't completely shut off the snow machine, but it does greatly reduce it,'' Garnet said.

That's because there can be what Garnet called "minimum moisture transfer'' through the ice and the cracks.

Another factor is that Lake Huron is mostly open and Erie can get dumped on from lake-effect storms generated by that lake, according to the weather service.

The lake last completely froze over in February during the winter of 1995-96, said George Leshkevich, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich.

Meanwhile, Lake Erie's ice should only thicken this season because the cold pattern will persist, Garnet said.

Scattered light snow is predicted through next week. "But we don't see any monster lake-effect storms on the horizon,'' he said.

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More pics and their story at Brooke and Freeland.