Spring Approaches

Loreen Niewenhuis is an author, adventurer, and dynamic speaker. 

She has completed a trilogy of 1,000-mile adventures exploring the Great Lakes and has authored three books about these adventures. 

To learn more about her work, or to engage her as a speaker, go to 

http://www.laketrek.com/great-lakes-speaker/

I love watching the ice recede in the spring. 

Today I walked along the shores of Lake Michigan in Leland, Michigan.

The shelf ice is stacked in places, eroding into strange shapes and bridges and icebergs.

There are places where a layer of thin ice has broken, revealing what lies beneath.

Spring approaches.

The Break-Up

Loreen Niewenhuis is an author, adventurer, and dynamic speaker. 

She has completed a trilogy of 1,000-mile adventures exploring the Great Lakes and has authored three books about these adventures: 

To learn more about her work, or to engage her as a speaker, go to 

http://www.laketrek.com/great-lakes-speaker/

This time of year when the days warm above freezing, then the nights plunge back down to recrystallize the world, the effects on the icy cover on our world are evident.

Icebergs develop cracks...

and fissures.

Ducks in the water give scale to the 

stacks of Lake Michigan shelf ice.

Trapped bubbles long to be liberated.

Pancake ice bumps up against fracturing shelf ice. 

Spring 

is 

creeping.

Ice on the Great Lakes

 This has been a frigid winter with polar vortices, snowfall breaking decades-old records, and widespread ice formation on the Great Lakes.

Lake Michigan was just over 93% covered with ice on March 8, setting a new record.

Ice near Chicago

Overall, the Great Lakes were just over 

92% iced over on March 6, 

not quite breaking the record.

Windrow ice near Chicago

The lakes are dynamic, so the ice breaks up, gets pushed around, and then stacked near the shore making elaborate formations.

 Close shot of windrow ice

Peak ice coverage for each Great Lake this year:

1. Lake Erie – 96.40% on March 6, 2014
2. Lake Huron – 96.30% on March 6, 2014
3. Lake Superior – 95.74% on March 5, 2014
4. Lake Michigan – 93.29% on March 8, 2014
5. Lake Ontario – 61.52% on March 6, 2014

Some reports stated that Lake Ontario has less ice coverage due to its volume-to-surface-area ratio, but this ratio is similar to Lake Michigan's which had higher ice coverage. I think it's more likely that the inflow from the Niagara River disrupts ice formation at the western end of the lake. The river also carries dissolved minerals from upstream into Lake Ontario which depresses the freezing point of the water. Another consideration is the effect of industrial and municipal usage and return of water at the western edge of the lake which may increase the temperature of the water. One additional factor may be the retention time for Lake Ontario which is only 6 years compared to Lake Michigan's 99 years. This means that the water in Lake Ontario is moving much faster than in Lake Michigan.

More information on ice on the

Great Lakes HERE.

Winter on Lake Michigan

For many people, the Great Lakes are a summertime place, a place of heat and sand and cooling waters in which to play.

There is a certain beauty, though, of the lakes in other seasons. And a serenity to these waters after the first snow of winter.









Some people have never seen the shelf ice form on the lake and stretch out miles from the shoreline, quieting the waves. Some have never seen that ice break up in the spring to get tossed around by a late winter storm and stacked like crazy ice houses on the sand.


There was one Easter Sunday when my family drove to the lake and met up with some friends. The day was incredibly warm and the sun had thawed the frozen ground to the point where we could shed our shoes and walk barefoot on the warm sand. The ice, however, still decorated the beaches, large slabs of lake ice marooned on land and slowly melting in the springtime sun.

The lake speaks to us in all seasons and I am thankful for my time on the shores of Lake Michigan this fall
and winter.

Say goodbye to the ice...

Spring is approaching and the ice is receding from the shores of Lake Michigan.






























Say goodbye to the snow-topped dock supports,

the shelf ice, the icicles,

and the boulders of ice clunking together in the surf.

Welcome Spring!

FROOO------ZENNNNNN!

To the LAKE!!

I took my book out to see the LAKE this week!

I'd been away from Lake Michigan for too long. Several trips were scuttled by heavy snows or thwarted by other happenings.

It was so good to see the lake, to view the shelf ice reaching out from the shore, to see where the waves have stacked up broken chunks of ice to form these temporary hillocks and mounds on the surface of the lake.






I climbed one of these formations just to give some scale in the photo. While standing there, I noticed a large crack near my foot that was slowly opening and closing as the water pulsed beneath the layers of ice.

Yikes!





























The lake has many moods and I am drawn to the frozen, quiet force of it in the winter.
These photos are of the Black River heading out to the lake, its surface covered with pancake ice.














Speaking of Black River, I'll be at South Haven's BLACK RIVER BOOKS on Saturday, May 28 from 1-4 signing books.










And I'll be at Buffalo Books in New Buffalo the Thursday before (May 26th) to do a reading/signing. Hope to see you along the way! Check the sidebar here for my developing Book Tour.

The book will be available everywhere
March 1 !!!
(Ask for it at your local indie bookstore.)