Friday, March 24, 2023

Watch for ice-out yourself from space

 


My new friend, George, sent an e-mail telling how he calculates ice-out for Trout Lake, northeast of Red Lake. If he OKs it, I'll share his formula.

Meanwhile, he sent along a link to NASA's daily satellite images where you can watch ice-out for yourself. I include a screenshot of Thunder Bay from yesterday as an example. As you can see there is no ice in Lake Superior at all (it never froze last winter) and Thunder Bay is breaking up. Black Bay and Nipigon Bay to the east are still frozen.

The icebreaker Samuel Risley began work in Thunder Bay just a day or so ago.

That link to NASA is https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/

If you can't see today's image it might not be loaded yet but you can change the date and see yesterday's.

3 comments:

Ray G said...

Dan: That is great, we can almost watch as it happens. I was just about to ask of you for your estimate for ice out on Red Lake. Your estimates have been on mark most of the time

Ray

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing and I hope George shares his formula. You may also want to check out the Lake of the Woods Ice Patrol at https://icepatrol.wordpress.com. Tim Armstrong writes his blog with aerial photos and satellite images each year. It's a bit south of Trout lake or Red Lake but I find ice out there to be very close to Red Lake Ice Out. I fly in to a lake about 100 miles North and East of Red Lake on opening week so I'm always anxiously awaiting the good news that I can drive up.
Mike S

Dan Baughman said...

It's a bit early for me to start prognosticating. I usually wait until April 1. But looking at The Weather Network's 14-day forecast, it looks like the first week of April might be a degree or two cooler than normal. If that is what indeed happens, I would move the expected ice-out to May 10 instead of the average May 8. I will adjust my prediction as April temperatures play out.

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