June 7, 1836: Remnants of a Long, Cold Winter
The winter of 1835-36 was a long and severe one after a number of mild winters in the early 1830s. The intrepid missionary Fredric Baraga spent his first winter in the Lake Superior region that year at La Pointe on the Apostle Islands of northwest Wisconsin. In June 1836 he wrote: “The winter of 1835-36 was very long and severe. As late as June 7th large blocks of ice were to be seen along the lakeshore.”
The last time we had a winter where the ice stuck around until June was back in 1996 (Image above). The last time the lake was close to frozen over was in early March 2009 (Image 2). This past winter, there was very little ice development due to the consistently mild temperatures. In fact, the mid-lake water temperatures are running at least a little above average due to the warm spring. In my experience, the “normal” temperatures in early June are in the upper 30s to near 40 at this time of the summer. This year, the buoy northeast of Copper Harbor had 40 degrees. It was in the low 40s north of Munising and out on the west end, northwest of Ontonagon, the water temperature was a downright balmy 50 degrees.
What really warms the surface water (where the buoy temperatures are taken) at this time of year is little or no wind. That’s what we’ve had lately. The wind should pick up some out of the warm-weather southerly direction on Friday ahead of low pressure approaching from the west (Image 3). This will herald a warm up, which may begin with some rain. There is a wise, old meteorological adage that states, “a “wet” warm up won’t last long.” We’ll see how this turns out. First, we’ll see if there is a decent rain in this generally dry pattern we’ve been in. Then if there is rain, we can test this bit of forecasting lore.
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