© NOAA
A satellite image of Lake Superior ice cover on March 4, 2019.
And still growing, compared to its 50% average winter cover.
The extreme cold this winter helped cover more than 90 percent of Lake Superior in ice this week. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports ice cover approached levels not seen in
four years.
Lake Superior was around
91 percent covered in ice Monday, said Jia Wang, ice climatologist with the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory. Ice cover was only expected to be around average, or about
50 percent, this winter.
"We didn't expect this much ice cover," Wang said.
Last year, maximum ice coverage topped out at
77 percent. Wang noted the polar vortex brought colder temperatures that caused rapid freezing on the lake from late January through February.
As of Monday, only the southeastern corner of the lake near Michigan's Upper Peninsula had open water.
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