Every winter, as the temperatures drop, the Great Lakes develop ice. Some years, ice covers most of the lake, other years, it is hard to find any ice.
Our Great Lake in Northeast Ohio, at 210 feet, at the deepest part, makes Lake Erie the shallowest of the five lakes and is usually the first on the ice bandwagon. The western basin is the shallowest part of the lake, with an average depth of less than 30 feet. This half of the lake tends to ice over first.
The winter of 2024/2025 got a slow start to the ice coverage on Lake Erie. In December, the max was 3% coverage for the whole lake. That changed once we got into January.
On Jan. 1, there was 0% ice coverage, but by Jan. 31, Lake Erie jumped to 75% ice coverage, with a peak of 87% during the month.
As of writing this, the peak in 2025 is 92%. This is the highest since 2022 when we saw a peak of 93.8%.
Lake Erie has seen 100% ice coverage three times since 1973, when records began. Twice in the 70s (1978 and 1979) and once in the 90s (1996). The highest in the 21st century so far was 98.1% in 2015.
The lowest peak was in 1998, with only 5.4% ice coverage.
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