Awesome picture

The National Weather Service in Buffalo has an amazing feature on their website showing the evolution of ice on Lake Erie over the winter using satellite images. They can only capture images when there are no clouds, so as one would imagine, getting a satellite image is pretty tough in these parts. The latest image, taken on March 4, is fascinating to me. You can clearly see that Lake Erie is completely frozen over (with the exception of some open water hugging the shoreline off of Canada). Lake St.Clair and Lake Huron are also ice covered. Lake Ontario, however, is not. That is because Lake Ontario is an extremely deep lake (Lake Erie is the shallowest) and does not freeze over very often, if ever.

Some other cool things to note on this image are the smaller frozen lakes and rivers dotting the landscape. You can clearly pick out Pymatuning Reservoir, as well as Chautauqua Lake and the Allegheny Reservoir. Also, note the sediment pouring into Lake Ontario from the Niagara River. Call me a nerd if you'd like, but I find this image utterly fascinating!

Also, if anyone thought that this winter was especially cold, you're not alone. In fact, the globe cooled more last year than at any time since 1950. There was a very good article in the Boston Globe today about how the media is choosing not to talk about the bitter cold winter of 2008-2009. But they examine how, if it were the exact opposite (a record warm winter), the media would be all over it. A very interesting read indeed...check it out.