Syracuse.com - NOAA: Lake Ontario water levels are up, late spring thaw delays ice melt

[HuntingNY-News]

"The onset of the spring thaw will come later than last year."

This year's cold, snowy winter is being felt across most of the Great Lakes, which today are 91 percent covered with ice.

The exception is Lake Ontario, which is only about 43 percent frozen over. Apart from a later than expected spring than usual, lake experts aren't expecting any big problems this spring or summer with Ontario's water levels. There's always the possibility, though, of flooding due to ice jams on some of the lake's tributaries.

"It's nowhere near any record-setting situation on Lake Ontario," said Keith Kompoltowicz, chief of watershed hydrology for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Detroit.

Officials representing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab held a teleconference today after releasing the latest Great Lakes water level and ice data. They also gave six-month projections on how the spring thaw is expected to impact each of the Great Lakes.

Kompoltowicz said Lake Ontario is currently at 244.78 feet, a measurement of the lake's surface above sea level. He said that measurement is a little more than four inches above this time last year and "very near the long-term average."

He said he expects that measurement through May will be about two inches above last year's figure, but will fall about five to seven inches in June through August. This is the normal seasonal drop in the lake's water level.

He noted that Lake Ontario's water level is regulated through a dam system on the St. Lawrence River. 'Weekly determinations are made on the outflow," he said.

George Leshkevich, manager of the NOAA's Coast Great Lake program, said Lake Ontario normally does not have extensive ice cover. He said the record for that was back in 1979, when 86 percent of the lake was covered. He said researchers determine the percentage of ice cover on the Great Lakes using a combination of satellite and radar data.

Leshkevich said the majority of Lake Ontario's ice is on the eastern shore near the St. Lawrence River where the lake's depth is shallower. He said the reason Ontario doesn't freeze over is because it has a deep lake basin with a "high heat storage capacity. That coupled with the fact that is has a relatively smaller surface area (compared to the other lakes) and as a result is less likely to lose its heat."

When will the ice on Lake Ontario melt?

"It depends on the spring temperatures. You might see temperatures above freezing this weekend across the southern Great Lakes region, but it's expected to get back down to colder than average temperatures by the end of the month," Kompoltowicz said. "The onset of the spring thaw will come later than last year."

View the full article on The Syracuse Outdoors Blog