Great Lakes satellite pictures
February 7th, 2009 at 2:36 am by Bill Steffen under Bill's Blog, Weather
These are satellite pictures taken Friday afternoon of the five Great Lakes (click to enlarge). Note that Lake Erie is the southernmost Great Lake, but also has the highest percentage of ice cover, due to the fact that it’s shallower than the other Great Lakes. There is a nice cloud/snow band coming off of Lake Ontario. Note the open water in the Finger Lakes of western New York. The two biggest of the Finger Lakes are nearly 40 miles long (never more than 3.5 miles wide) and they are both much deeper than Lake Erie. In fact, Seneca Lake is nearly three times deeper than Lake Erie! The cirrus clouds look wispy as they are coming across Lake Superior. Pick out the cities – you can tell forested areas (especially conifer forests) will show up darker than snowcovered corn or soybean fields. See what else you can find, and have a wonderful weekend.
First again!!
Bill, Satellite pictures are awesome!!
Can’t believe it! Let my dog out to go potty and it’s so warm!! 49 degrees here and it’s only 5:40 am! Good day to clean up the Jeep!
All have a good weekend!
Enjoy it, you deserve it after that horrible winter! It is warmer there than it is here in central Florida–42 degrees in Auburndale at 6:10 am.
WOW! Winds are very strong! Temp is in the mid 40s! My vehicle thermometer was reading 46 degrees during my drive this am. (M6 to 196)
When does Winter come back? Is it Wednesday into Thursday? Looks like temps will be above normal until then. Enjoy the warm days because I think Winter is coming back with some force by the end of next week. We will have to see though.
the thaw is amongst us…….awesome, no jackets required!
46*
47 here. Very strong winds.
I don’t know the temperature, but I did hear it raining earlier (or maybe it was just the very fast dripping of the snow off my roof!), and now I can hear the wind howling around the house with gusts every now and again.
I am amazed at the number of people still without power in kentucky, and the once again slow response from FEMA etc, in this catastrophic storm….Funny you do not hear much in the news about that?
Roughly 137,000 customers are still without electricity statewide — mostly in Western Kentucky, where the storm mangled transmission lines, according to a spokesman for the Kentucky Public Service Commission.
I agree Bob, I am also amazed as to how long it takes to repair our infrastructure after a storm it really shows how out of date some of our infrastructure is and god help us all if we have a real bad situation happen anywhere in our country.
SlimJim
Its a nice and warm AM like many other I am up to 46° with clouds and patches of blue sky and very windy…this should push that ice around on all of the Great Lakes and bring up some of that 39° water from down below. AND get rid of a lot of this snow on the ground we should have a lot of bare ground by early next week. As for the return of winter I think its going to get colder but for the most part I think the back of winter will have been broken where we will get cold but most of the snow will stay to our south at least until March…
SlimJim
BILL, HOW ABOUT TELLING HOW MUCH SNOW ENGLAND GOT THAT SHUT DOWN MOST OF LONDON? MY SON IS AT MOLESWORTH A.F.B. SAID ANYTHING OVER AN 1″ PUTS THEM IN A PANIC!! JUST LIKE SNOW IN NEW ORLEANS. ALSO THIS YEARS GLOBLE WARMING STARTING TODAY???
I know I am just taking up all the room here but some of the interesting things I see in the ice cover on the lakes are. 1. How little ice there is on lake Michigan (grand Traverse Bay is ice free)and Lake Ontario 2. how much ice there is on Lake Superior. 3. And looking at Lake Erie in the western part there looks to be a open spot right near where there is a power plant must be from the plants “cooling” system.
SlimJim
I’m already seeing melting around here! Woohoo! On a sad note, we just cancelled our Disney vacation. We would like to fly so we are going to save to go either in September of this year or March 2010. We are instead going to go to Frankenmuth that week and maybe to Manistee to Little River.
Holy Dog Poo Batman!
Looks like I have Doggy Duty Duty. The yard work starts early.
i think we could be well into the 50s maybe?!!
NWS…
WE HAVE
BEEN CONSERVATIVE ON TEMPERATURES DUE TO THE SNOWPACK IN PLACE AND
DUE TO THE EXTENSIVE CLOUD COVER EXPECTED. THE SNOWPACK IS NOT
HOLDING THE MILD AIR BACK A LOT…AND TEMPS THIS MORNING ARE ALREADY
APPROACHING PREVIOUSLY EXPECTED MAX TEMPS. AS WINDS BECOME WRLY THIS
AFTERNOON ACROSS THE COLD LAKE…THIS MAY HOLD TEMPS BACK A BIT. WE
HAVE INCREASED TEMPS A COUPLE NOTCHES FOR NOW…AND IT MAY STILL NOT
BE ENOUGH.
I was thinking the same thing Jeff. About six weeks worth from two big dogs. Yuck.
Breezy here, but nothing special. Winds have been gusting over 50 in Holland, and I’m sure they are stronger than that at Spyglass.
Snow is going fast.
Snowcover’s effect on holding down temps is way overrated. Time and time again over the last few years we’ve seen that if the warm air is coming with a strong S or SW wind, the snow hardly slows it down at all.
Good Day,
Cool pics. But what is this long unheard word toward the end of the long term forcast from NWS… Could it be?
.LONG TERM…(400 AM EST SAT FEB 7 2009)
(MONDAY THROUGH FRIDAY)
THE MAIN CHALLENGE IN THE LONG TERM DEALS WITH THE POTENTIAL
STRONGER STORM FOR THE MIDDLE OF NEXT WEEK. CONFIDENCE IS
INCREASING THAT AN INTENSIFYING LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM WILL TRACK
THROUGH LOWER MI ON WEDNESDAY. MODELS ARE IN BETTER AGREEMENT ON
THIS SCENARIO. THE MODELS ALSO SUPPORT RAIN FOR THE BULK OF THE
EVENT ON WEDNESDAY. WILL THEREFORE RAISE POPS ON WEDNESDAY. IF THE
GFS IS RIGHT…WINDS MAY PUSH INTO HEADLINE CRITERIA. I DID RAISE
WIND VALUES ON WEDNESDAY. THIS SYSTEM COULD PRODUCE HEAVIER RAIN.
WILL NEED TO MONITOR THE THUNDER POTENTIAL.
FOR MON NIGHT AS DEWPOINTS AT THE SURFACE CLIMB INTO THE 30S…WE
SHOULD SEE SOME LIGHT RAIN AND FOG.
Steelie
12Z GFS would sure have a lot of wind and rain with it.
4 straight hours of sustained winds over 30 mph and gusts from 40-55 mph in Holland.
No wind advisory?
michael g, have to agree. The wind in Holland has been incredible. Woke me up a few times last night some of the gusts were so strong.
Same here roxywp–woke up 2 times to the roar of the wind, tree limbs banging the side of the house. I drove over a few small branches in the road this morning, I bet right along the lakeshore there were quite a few more.
Stepped outside around 11am, really nice out there for a change.
I know its not official and means very little in the long run but I have made it up to 50° for the warmest so far this year. Still windy here with the sun in and out. If not the the snow left and the water and the wind it would be a real nice day.
SlimJim
Congrats on hitting 50*F, Slim!!! I’m at 47*F over this way! Snow is going fast…
50* here too Slim Jim. About an hour ago when the sun was out. Down to 48* now with more clouds.
what is the record high for this day? We just hit 51 about 20 miles west of Lansing!
I am at 51.7 degrees..what a glorious day!
Flint and Saginaw have broken records. I don’t know what the record highs are in Lansing or GRR. I’ll look it up…49*F here and sunny
Record highs for GRR – 51*F. Lansing – 54*F.
I believe the GR record is 51* in 1925? 1 more degree to go?
Grand Rapids has tied the record high of 51*F at the 2pm hour. Maybe they can surpass it in the next hour!!
I love this!! I know we will have more winter at some point but this has given me a great taste of SPRING! It’s a nice break. Yea!!
52* here..sunny sunny SUNNY! mmmmmmmmmmmmm
WHAT A GREAT DAY TODAY!!
48F at my place and sunny!! I cracked my window about 2 inches to get some fresh air in here, still 81F in my room though.
This week looks awesome. Spring Tease, or a late January Thaw? Could this mean winter will stick around longer than normal? We’ll have to see, Dec/Jan were both cold & snowy this is a nice break =)
12Z GFS has an interesting looking snowstorm headed for us next weekend, and then POOF, six hours later the energy is all off of the east coast.
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