A coastal stewardship coordinator with the Lake Huron Centre for Coastal Conservation says ice cover on Lake Huron can vary dramatically from year to year and this year the ice cover on Lake Huron, at this point, is well below the average.
But Hannah Cann added that's not unusual.
“The average for January 10 is 16 per cent ice cover. In 2017 we had twelve per cent, the year before that we had around one per cent and this year we're hovering between zero and one per cent," she said. "But when we look at the ice cover since 1973, which is when ice cover on Lake Huron started to get recorded, that average has been decreasing almost 20 per cent since 1973.”
Cann also pointed out, we're not out of the woods yet as ice cover tends to peak between mid-February and mid-March.
Cann said more ice cover means less snowfall because the ice cover restricts the amount of evaporation that eventually turns into snowfall. But she said ice cover also protects the shoreline against erosion. She explains ice cover protects the shoreline against the storm surges and waves that pound the shoreline in the spring and fall and without that ice protection, the shoreline is vulnerable to higher rates of erosion.
“When we have ice cover protecting our shorelines, it takes the abuse of the storm surges and the waves and it protects the erodible shoreline. But if we don't have ice cover on the lake, our coastline can experience higher rates of erosion," she said.