April 12, 2023: High and Low Aerials

I received two sets of aerial photos yesterday afternoon. The first was taken by Tim Seitler from the cockpit of a Fast Air Canadair Challenger descending from Flight Level 430 on the way to landing in Winnipeg. (for those of you who aren’t aviation buffs, that’s a big business jet on the way down from about 43,000 feet.)

You can click on all of these photos to see them full-screen and you can then zoom in.

Let’s start with a look at the whole north end of the lake. Remember the plane is heading west, towards Winnipeg.

North half of Lake of the Woods.

The Alneau Peninsula is at the left edge of this shot, and the Eastern Peninsula with it’s distinctive circular formation is at the bottom, leading the eye up to the Barrier Islands. Bigstone Bay is at the right. Falcon Lake and West Hawk are at the top of the frame.

North of the Barrier Islands.

The Barrier Islands are at the lower left, Bigstone Bay at the right, where Heenan Point and Needle point stretch out towards each other.

What I think is most significant about these shots–and the pilot who took them said the same thing–is how much the snow cover has diminished. That’s a great help with some warm sunny days coming. Thanks to Tim Seitler for taking and sending these pictures.

Our second set is from friends at the company I used to work for. Andy Zabloski and Jacob Banderob were landing their MAG Canada King Air at their base in Kenora, so they got a good look at the part of the lake nearest the airport.

Treaty Island and Devil’s Gap.

This view looks north over Galt Island at Rogers, Treaty and Coney. Devil’s Gap is near the left edge, and Safety Bay’s open water is in the distance. The ice roads are closed now, but they’ll still lend extra strength to the adjacent sheets of ice,  a bit like rebar in concrete.

Keewatin Channel.

As they made a wide turn to head towards the Kenora runway, they looked at the open water in Keewatin Channel stretching into the Tangle.

Safety Bay and Rat Portage Bay.

Lastly, a look at the cluster of islands south of Keewatin Bridge, with modest amounts of open water in Safety Bay, left of centre. At the right, by the King Air’s wingtip, Rat Portage Bay still has shore to shore ice, but the snow cover is much reduced since a few days ago.

Thanks to Andy and Jacob for taking these.

Signs of spring: potholes. City crews were working on the ones by the Rec Centre yesterday, so I’m hoping they get to the ones by Safeway today.

 

April 11, 2023: First Estimate

I’ve been talking with Sean Cockrem, the guy who does the data analysis and fancy graphs for Ice Patrol.

Side note: Sean and I have been collaborating on Ice Patrol for several years now, but we met face to face for the first time last fall. He was passing through Kenora, so I joined Sean for a coffee at Ho Joe’s.

Sean sent me a short email today that basically answered all my questions.

But to slow things down for clarity, this is what it might have looked like if I had interviewed him.

Tim: I had tentatively nominated April 8th for Inflection Day*, but the Mean Daily Temperature fell just short, at -0.1ºC. What about the next day, Easter Sunday?

Sean: Looking back a few days now, we had a mean temperature of 5.7 on April 9th, followed by 5.4 on the 10th. The extended forecast does show that it gets cooler by Friday with subzero overnight temperatures for a few days. Next week shows to be daily highs ranging around 6-7 degrees, with lows hovering around zero.

Tim: Do those marginal temperatures mean we aren’t sure?

Sean: I think we are ok with calling the 9th as our inflection date for this year. Any cool weather and potential sub zero mean temps I think are now the exception going forward.

Tim: Okay, so Inflection Day marks the end of winter on your graphs, and the beginning of the thaw. How does it look?

Sean: This means we will finish winter with a freezing index of -1538**. The average freezing index of the last 33 winters was -1567 with the average inflection date being April 5th. So the winter of 22/23 was basically average in both temperature and duration.

Tim: So can we hope for an average thaw?

Sean: My rule of thumb is that we need 1 thawing index for every -10 of freezing index, which means we will need a thaw index of about 154 this year to thaw the ice. With all this data I’ve reviewed over the years, we typically average a thaw index of 6 per day during the stretch between inflection and ice out. So using that average, that puts our ice out date right around May 4th or 5th. Disclaimer, there are a lot of high level generalizations being made in this initial forecast. Elon Musk could decide to block out the sun which would lead to eternal night, and a fresh winter. In any case, now the forecasting begins.

Tim: The first five days of May are the most common days for ice-out, so that makes sense if our winter was sort of typical. Alright, I’m looking forward to  your first graphs. Thanks, Sean.

 

*Inflection Day (or Inflection Date)  is when the temperature starts being above freezing more than it is below, or more precisely, when the Mean Daily Temperature is goes above freezing on a lasting basis.

**Sean tracks a Cumulative Freezing Index each winter. Every day with a Mean Daily Temperature below freezing contributes to a greater negative number. If the first day below freezing has an MDT of -1ºC, and the next day has an MDT of -2ºC, the Cumulative Freezing Index goes to -3. Keep that up for the whole winter, and you generally end up with numbers in the -1000 to -2000 range.

The CFI gives us a general idea of how cold the winter was, and a vague idea of how much ice might have formed.

 

 

 

 

April 10, 2023: Fresh Aerials

Aaron Brown sent me some pictures taken on a morning flight from Winnipeg to Toronto. This series looks south, so south is at the top and north is at the bottom.

You can click on these pictures to see them full screen.

Downtown Kenora.

In this first photo, although downtown Kenora is at the bottom left, I’m more interested by what’s going on at the top right. Open water now reaches from the Keewatin Channel as far as Shragges Island. There’s still only a small patch  open at Devil’s Gap.

Keewatin.

This second picture shows the state of Safety Bay, which is still less than half open. Darlington Bay looks pretty solid, while part of Rat Portage Bay seems to be softening.

Poplar Bay and Rat Portage Bay.

At the bottom, you can see how the water’s opening up around Mackies Island and Cameron Island. Still looks strong around the Yacht Club.

From the Manitou to Treaty Island.

This shows from the Manitou at the top left to Treaty Island at the bottom right. The only significant open water seems to be around Channel Island.

The Alneau Peninsula and the Barrier Islands.

In this last shot, the Alneau Peninsula is at the top, and that patch of bad ice below the centre is at the Devil’s Elbow. Scotty Island is at the bottom left.

Thanks, Aaron!

Signs of spring: more gulls, more geese. The Tunnel Island hiking trails are still an icy mess, but I found some patches of mud. I finally got all the snow and ice off the walk beside my house, and in the back yard, snow is giving way to deer droppings.

In summary, we have lots of ice everywhere, but our current warm weather will be making a difference every day.

April 9, 2023: Satellite… Sunday?

Yesterday, Sentinel Hub was down, so I couldn’t check for recent Sentinel images.

The site’s working today, so here are a couple of images. Sentinel didn’t pass over us yesterday, so these are from April 7, the same day as the MODIS images I posted yesterday.

First let’s look at the whole lake. I’ll stick to their short-wave infrared views.

Sentinel 2 image of Lake of the Woods from April 7, 2023 in short-wave infra-red.

At this scale, things look about the same as the MODIS image.

But let’s take a closer look at the north end of the lake.

A closer look at the Sentinel 2 image above, showing more of the Winnipeg River, and excluding the south half of the Lake of the Woods.

At this scale we can see quite a lot of water on the Winnipeg River. There are stretches as far as Whitedog. Of more interest to Lake Dwellers,  open water seems to be expanding near Keewatin, and there’s more down by Big Narrows now, too.

If you’d like to take a closer look at the image above, here’s a link to it at Sentinel Hub.  Once you’re actually on their interactive website, you can use the + & – minus buttons to zoom in even tighter, and you can drag the image around with your cursor and stuff.

There’s also a pop-out menu near the top left that lets you change filters to view different wavelengths and artificial colour renditions, as well as natural colour.

I’ve been talking to Sean Cockrem, the guy who combs through the data and makes graphs for Ice Patrol. Although yesterday’s afternoon temperatures reached 9.1ºC, the morning low had been -9.3ºC, and the daily mean temperature fell just shy of zero, at -0.1ºC. So close, but yesterday was not inflection day. We tentatively agree that today might be, because both the short-term and long-term forecasts are looking pretty good.

If you’ve contributed aerial photos, drone shots or helpful shoreline pics to Ice Patrol in the past, I’ll be reaching out to you by email soon to ask if you can help this year.  But if I miss you, or you’re interested in contributing for the first time, use the comment form to get in touch with me. The most important thing is that you cannot send pictures via the comments form. It’s strictly text. But if you post a comment, I can get back to you by email and we can transfer pictures that way.

I think it’s time to get this party started!

April 8, 2023: First Aerials plus Satellite Saturday

I’ll get to the satellite images in a moment, but first a couple of nice aerial photos from Jared Cantor.

You can click on these pictures to see them full-screen, and you can zoom in on the enlarged version.

Looking north at the north half of Lake of the Woods: Big Narrows is at the left, and the Alneau Peninsula fills the lower right. Kenora is the grey patch in the distance.

Here’s a second shot that takes a slightly closer look.

It’s hard to tell if that grey patch near Kenora is open water or bare ice. Probably a bit of each.

Jared took these pictures on a flight from Toronto to Winnipeg yesterday. After checking that the skies were clear over Kenora, he booked a window seat on the right side of the plane so that he could take photographs for us. Thanks, Jared!

Errata: in my last post, I wrote that Winnipeg got around 4cm of snow from that Colorado Low, but I had looked up the wrong date. They actually got around 20-25cm, almost as much as Kenora. Thanks to Michelle for pointing out my mistake.

Now on to the satellite stuff. Here’s the latest from NASA’s MODIS satellites.

This is Aqua’s image from yesterday, in false colour.

MODIS image of Lake of the Woods from Aqua satellite, April 7, 2023, in false colour.

Still not much open water to see, except for little patches of black at the headwaters of the Winnipeg River, and in the Keewatin Channel area.

I can’t get through to Sentinel Hub this afternoon, so I don’t know if they got a good shot lately.*

*It’s been one of those days at Ice Patrol. In addition to Sentinel being unavailable, WordPress made another change to how I work today. They want bloggers like me to use their ‘easier’ block editor, but I have ten years of experience with the classic editor, and I can do fancy stuff like those floating photo accreditations with it. Today they tucked the classic editor away in a hidden corner, sending me on my own little Easter Egg Hunt before I could get to work on today’s post.

In the meantime, lets hop in the wayback machine and see what the lake looked like this time last year.

MODIS image of Lake of the Woods from Terra satellite, April 8, 2022 in false colour.

This week last year there was more open water on the Winnipeg River, and also at Big Narrows and Whitefish Narrows.

Does that mean we’re running late this year? Not necessarily. Last year we had a very late inflection date of April 27, and a late ice-out in mid-May. This year we’re probably going to hit our inflection date earlier–perhaps any day now–and after this weeks warm spell, temperatures are expected to remain at or above normal for a while. An average high this time of year is about 8ºC with overnight lows mild at around -2ºC. That means our temperatures should be mostly above freezing as we head for the third week in April. If that comes to pass, we can catch up to last year, and hopefully pass it.

The wild card is our recent snowfall. A heavy layer of fresh snow is a wonderful insulator, and also pretty good at reflecting the sun’s warm rays. We need to get rid of that snow cover to make good progress.

Which brings us to lake conditions. Although the ice roads are officially closed, I noticed quite a bit of traffic today. I spoke to one fellow who had just driven ashore at the MNR landing in Kenora this morning. He felt that the ice roads he’d been on still seemed good (he’s talking surface conditions, not ice thickness, so don’t go getting all brave on us.) However, he said the landings are getting worse, especially the ones that face south, where the shorelines get afternoon sun. He expected things to worsen a lot today and tomorrow.

As to ice thickness, I did receive a few reports from here and there. Overall, it seems as if the cold weather in early April did thicken the ice a couple of inches. That’s less than I would have guessed. Compared to past years, it doesn’t sound like the ice is very thick. We often see peak thicknesses of 36-40 inches, but this year people are sending me numbers in the 20’s, including some in the very low 20’s.

That’s all for now. I expect we’ll be hearing from Sean soon, and perhaps seeing some of his graphs.

 

 

April 6, 2023: Turning the Corner?

Well, we had quite the snowstorm. Environment Canada issued a storm warning  calling for Kenora to get 15-25cm of snow from an intensifying Colorado Low.

We got more than that. Wednesday’s snowfall accumulation was 27.2cm which was not only an all-time record for April 5, but also far more than what fell in Winnipeg, Dryden, Sioux Lookout, Fort Frances or Thunder Bay. Thunder Bay got about 12cm, Winnipeg got a little over 4cm, and the others fell in between.

Throw in the snow that fell on Tuesday, and Kenora’s total topped 30cm. If you’re not used to snow in centimeters, that’s a foot!

However, with that storm over, things might be about to change. The forecast has improved sharply. Before the storm, long-term forecasts were talking about slightly above normal temperatures by next Tuesday. A normal high this time of year is around 7ºC. Now they’re talking about more warmth, and sooner. Easter Sunday might reach 8ºC, and after that, The Weather Network is talking daytime highs of 10 or 11, give or take a degree or two. Environment Canada is going all in, calling for highs in the teens and saying that Tuesday, April 11 could spike at 20º!

I took a screen capture of that forecast, and I’ll be watching to see if Environment Canada backs down, or if the Weather Network starts to agree with them.

As further evidence that spring may be arriving, I see that the Winter Roads have been declared closed. The warmer weather will likely turn all that recent snow to slush, and the landings will deteriorate badly. Read a bit more at Kenora Online.

 

April 3, 2023: One Normal Day

Yesterday we staggered up to 5ºC for the 4:00pm reading at the airport. An average high for April 2nd is 4.6º, so I guess we’ll call that a win. That mild weather was supposed to come with some snow or rain, but at my house there was only a little drizzle, and then just a skiff of snow.

While we’re feeling like we’re making gains, here’s a couple of pictures from Brandon Laubach, who spent a few days at his place near Crow Rock Point recently.

Open water at Crow Rock Point.

He was there from Thursday until Saturday, and said he watched it go from dark ice to open water about the size of a football field.

His other picture is of French Portage.

French Portage.

Thanks, Brandon!

Signs of spring: Got word today that the first gull has finally arrived; it was spotted on Sunday. I haven’t seen one myself yet, but I thought I heard one near the Main Street Dock today.

That brings us to the end of the good news.

Our Winter Storm Watch has been  elevated to a Winter Storm Warning. This is due to a Colorado Low that’s coming our way. We had quite enough of those last year, so I hope this isn’t the start of a trend. The warning calls for the bad weather to start and end earlier than the preceding watch.

Meteorologists now think things will turn nasty on Tuesday afternoon or evening with snow and ice pellets. Precipitation will persist all day Wednesday before tapering off Wednesday night. By then we could have as much as 15 or 25cm of snow. Maybe don’t plan any fun trips for Wednesday; wind and blowing snow are likely, too.

Before I go, I’m still eager to hear from people who were ice fishing on the weekend. I’d like to know how deep the ice was. A short comment will do, but please include the day you drilled and the location, as well as the depth.

April 1, 2023: Satellite Saturday

If you live here, you know it hasn’t been very warm. Yesterday we hit a maximum temperature of 1ºC at 4:00pm, and then it cooled off again.

The only way we were going to see dramatic change was if I put up an April Fool’s post this morning. I thought about claiming the lake had thawed due to, oh, I don’t know… a magma bubble under the Precambrian Shield? Anyway, not.

So the reality is, no change in the past week. Here’s the latest MODIS image, captured today by Aqua satellite.

MODIS image of Lake of the Woods from Aqua satellite, April 1, 2023, in false colour.

Apart from the wisps of cloud, I can’t tell the difference between this shot and last week’s.

I sometimes mention that the MODIS satellites cover a lot of territory every day.  Here’s a larger part of the  University of Wisconsin’s USA3 composite, as if we had zoomed out. You can click on this image to see it full-screen, but it won’t show a better level of detail than the small picture above.

MODIS false-colour image spanning from Lake of the Woods to Lake Superior. Aqua satellite, April 1, 2023.

Just in case you’ve forgotten what open water looks like in the infrared, Lake Superior is almost entirely open. Lake Nipigon, north of it, is not.

I did rummage through the Sentinel Hub to see if Sentinel 2 got a good look at Lake of the Woods this week. Not really.

Sentinel image of Lake of the Woods from March 28, 2023 in short-wave infrared.

Sentinel did make a pass right over Lake of the Woods on March 28, but there were a lot of little clouds. Most of the black patches on this image are just cloud shadows. The outline of the lake looks faded out, especially at the south end, and I think that’s due to fresh snow on open ground.

Are you wondering what Lake of the Woods looks like at this time of year during an early thaw? Here’s one from the archives.

MODIS image of Lake of the Woods from Aqua satellite, March 31, 2021, in false colour.

This is how things looked two years ago yesterday. For perspective, 2021 was a pretty good year. Inflection date* was in early March, and the ice was all gone by April 24th.

Don’t let that get  you down, most years look more similar to this year on April 1st.

According to my records, inflection day only happens during March in about one year out of three.

*when we start spending more time above freezing than below.

Signs of spring: no news there, except one negative sign. There’s a group in Kenora that watches for the return of the seagulls every spring. A member told me that this is the first year on record in which a gull was not sighted on Safety Bay in March. They’ve been keeping track since long before Ice Patrol began.

What about the forecast? Things look a little better for the second week of April. We may continue to fall short of normal daily highs, but the overnight lows will be milder than average. Bear in mind that the forecast that far ahead is subject to revision.

 

March 30, 2023: Continuing Cold

Not much good news on the thaw, so I haven’t been posting updates.

It’s minus fourteen as I write this, and it feels like minus twenty three. Sigh.

The forecast is calling for below average temperatures for the next while. There will be very few hours of above freezing temperatures in the next week or two. The Weather Network’s fourteen day forecast shows continued below average daily highs. In the second week, overnight lows might improve a bit.

So, you ask, how bad is ‘below average’? Well, according to Environment Canada the averages for March 30th are a high of 3.6ºC, with an overnight low of  -6.7ºC. But we’re still bottoming out at around -15ºC most nights, and on my daily walks by the river, I’m seeing fresh ice on the quiet stretches.

Oh, that reminds me: Hydro One is taking both the Kenora Dam and the Norman Dam offline today to work on the local grid. That means no water will pass through the turbines at either dam, and that will affect flow. The LOW Control Board will try to compensate by removing some stop logs from the Norman dam, but there will be fluctuations in the water levels on the Winnipeg River. See the LWCB’s notice here.

By the way, if you have a place on the river, you should probably visit the LWCB home page and sign up for their bulletins, if you haven’t already.

Sunday might be our best shot at mild temperatures. The Weather Network is forecasting a high of 4ºC, but Environment Canada says just 2ºC. Unfortunately, that slight rise in temperatures will probably come with fresh snow. It doesn’t look like I’ll be taking my winter tires off anytime soon.

I’d be very grateful for another round of ice measurements via the comments section. The last batch were very helpful, but I have a gloomy feeling that new numbers will show that the lake ice has gotten noticeably thicker. Still, we might as well find out.

In conclusion, recent conditions have not been favourable. The weather will have to change significantly for us to approach Inflection Point, where the temperature is above freezing more than it is below. That’s when the lake ice will really start to melt.

 

 

 

March 25, 2023: Satellite Saturday

Hi! I’m not posting every day yet, as things are still pretty frozen.

For the same reason, I haven’t been pestering my pilot and drone operator friends for aerial views (yet).

However, I thought you might like to see for yourself what the satellites can show us.

Remember, you can click on these images to see them in full resolution. 

Here’s an image from the Sentinel 2 satellite from Thursday. I’ll start with the Highlight Optimized Natural Colour version, because it shows the outline of the lake best.

Sentinel 2 satellite image of Lake of the Woods from Thursday, March 23, 2023.

It’s pretty obvious from this picture that the lake is essentially frozen from shore to shore.

In the Shortwave Infrared version, a few patches of open water stand out.

Sentinel 2 satellite image of Lake of the Woods from Thursday March 23, 2023.

Showing up as black patches in the infrared view, open water can be seen near Kenora, at the headwaters of the Winnipeg River, and also out in Keewatin Channel and the adjacent Second Channel.

I was surprised that there wasn’t a similar patch of open water down by Big Narrows, so I zoomed in for a closer look at that area.

Sentinel 2 SWIR view of Big Narrows from Thursday, March 23, 2023.

There are a few tiny spots of open water visible here near the centre of the image.

Now, I’m not going to go over the entire lake with a magnifying glass, because it’s pretty obvious where we stand. However, if you’d like to check out a particular area of interest, here’s a link to the Sentinel Hub. This satellite provides very zoomable images, and there are lots of cool filters to play with. Knock yourself out.

The downside with Sentinel is that it only passes by every few days, and it’s field of view is narrow, so sometimes it gets the Whitefish Bay side, and sometimes it gets Shoal Lake, and sometimes it’s not even close. Throw in some cloudy days, and we can’t count on Sentinel 2 every week.

Which brings us to the MODIS satellites, Terra and Aqua. They’ve been passing over Lake of the Woods every day like clockwork–one in the morning and one in the afternoon–for decades*.

Of course there’s a catch. The MOD in MODIS stands for MODerate resolution. Lake of the Woods is just a tiny part of what the MODIS system sees, and you can’t zoom in to see much detail. Rabbit Lake is about the smallest thing you can make out.

You can’t zoom in on this image. If you click on it, you’ll see a version with some helpful place names overlaid on the picture.

Terra had good conditions for imaging Lake of the Woods yesterday.

MODIS image of Lake of the Woods from Terra satellite, March 24, 2023, in false colour.

You can’t put too much trust in comparing a Terra image to a Sentinel one, because they use different filters and so on, but if anything, I’d say there might be less open water after another cold night.

*Terra was launched by NASA in 1999, and crosses the equator northbound when it’s morning in the Americas. Aqua launched in 2002, and crosses the equator southbound in the American afternoon.

Both satellites image the continental USA every day, and luckily for us, the pictures include all of Lake of the Woods and as far north into Canada as Big Sand Lake.

That’s the good news. Sadly, the MODIS satellites are reaching the end of their mission. After nearly quarter of a century, their orbits are beginning to drift off track and off schedule. NASA plans to de-orbit both Terra and Aqua this summer. This is the last spring we’ll have their help on Ice Patrol. I’ll be sad to see them go.

Last I heard, no comparable replacements are planned.

Milder weather is finally here, but you should make the most of it this weekend. Monday night is forecast to be cold again. -17ºC as I write this.

Naturally, I’ve been following the long-term forecasts, too. After a string of La Niña years, we’re switching to an El Niño pattern, and we may be in for a cool, dry spring.

Here’s a screengrab of a Weather Network graphic for the long-term spring outlook. You can click on it to see the fine print. I had hoped to post a link to the entire presentation, but I cannot find it today.

So we may not see an early inflection date* this year. Their 14-day outlook is not rosy, either.

*For review, Inflection Date is the term we give the day when the Mean Daily Temperature goes above freezing on  a lasting basis. Even after that appears to happen, sometimes we have to wait a week to see if the mild temperatures are sticking around.

Let’s finish with something a little more positive.

A number of people took the time to tell me their ice thickness measurements or estimates. Overall, the numbers ranged from 20 to 30 inches, with the majority falling in the 25 to 30 inch range. That’s not bad for late March, when we often see ice augers bottoming out at over three feet. Forty inches, or just over a meter, is not uncommon.

Ferg Devins reported that a large hole he was monitoring showed an increase in ice thickness overnight during our recent cold spell.

Signs of Spring:

The Goldeneye ducks are back. They’re hardy little critters, or lazy migrators, depending on how you look at it. They are a very early sign of spring.

I saw my first pair of Canada Geese just the other day. They’re not as eager as the Goldeneyes, so that’s a bit more hopeful.

I’ve been hearing more songbirds, and some of them have been pooping on my car. Umm… yay?