I will submit that my guess of fifty square miles was off but there sure wasn’t 250 sq. miles of ice on Sunday.

It seams wasteful to send up a plane or chopper when we have MODIS images except on cloud blocking days.

My ice watching in the last 15 years has provided me with observations of more years without total ice cover, and more years with short duration periods of ice cover. I really avidly watch the comings and goings of lake ice and seiches. I’m not a scientist but I know the many seasonal moods of the lake.

The amount of pollution from western coal plants is another documented reality and currently a new coal plant goes into operation every month in China. Meanwhile ice shields and glaciers continue to be documented around the world and show they are melting rapidly.

The weather in the Great Lakes is something I have observed in a way that few WNYer’s have experienced. This does not make me an expert but like an ancient Polynesian navigator one can sense the lake weather from years of experience and changes. Modern scientific technology and better understanding of our planet’s weather has benefited all of us and saved many lives across the globe.

My feeling is that perhaps weather accuracy would be advanced and we could learn more about local pollution by having more weather and pollution observation stations along Lake Erie and the Niagara River. In addition some of the Buffalo Public Schools on the West Side would also provide good weather observation opportunities for students and the community to learn more about our weather.

Air quality plays a big part in our health, weather and perhaps even greater Lake Erie ice melting. Science has documented elevated respiratory health problems on the West Side of Buffalo.

The waters of Lake Erie play a big part in the weather we get here.

A few years ago I witnessed an intense storm cell with a funnel cloud formation. This storm with lightening crossed west to east, on the north shore of Lake Erie. On that day the water temperature and air temperatures were over ten degrees in difference. The funnel never got down to the surface of the lake. In a short time this storm hit Cheektowaga in the Union Rd area and took off a roof on a restaurant then it rolled into a trailer park in Wyoming County and caused a fatality.

It would be terrific if we had live weather cameras on the inner and outer break walls of Buffalo. The storm images would be better than those seen at Hoaks in Hamburg. Another seiche camera on the Black Rock canal under the Peace Bridge would be a way to show water displacement images of the water rising and declining.

As the teacher said in school there is no wrong question. Learning and new discoveries are made by studying scientific information and connecting the dots into new understandings.

Thank You again Don for your time and weather knowledge.

The studies on the ice boom have been exhaustive, Aeolus. I’m glad you were able to make a conclusion concerning global warming that scientists cannot possibly make. Particularly because a number of decades passed following the use of the boom before there was any discernible evidence of warming in our region from climate change.

If I sounded defensive, it’s because you seem to have assumed that no studies with intellectual and scientific rigor have been undertaken on this topic.
To the contrary, this is a settled issue in the scientific literature. It’s not that your questions struck me as foolish or poorly thought out. They were sensible questions, but they have been answered thoroughly and conclusively to the contrary of your hypotheses.

Most of the surveying is done by fixed wing aircraft and helicopters. Your estimate of 50 square miles of ice was, at the time you made it, substantially off the mark.

I can’t answer your question about studies of pollution particulates in the ice.

Just wondering if there were studies of the effect of lake ice on Buffalo temperatures before the advent of the ice boom? If the answer is there were no earlier studies made on lake temperatures before the ice boom than this situation reminds me of how scientists once wondered if there was an effect on North American temperatures from aircraft contrails. I would enjoy to learn if there were comparative studies conducted on temperature dynamics with the ice boom and without the ice boom.

First I never learned if MODIS or aircraft observations or both sources of information were used to determined when to open and close the ice boom.

Global climate change is probably the cause for Lake Erie thawing one day earlier. Warmer water from the shallower western part of Lake Erie coupled with greater and warmer sunlight exposure indeed melts lake ice. This is shown from the Lake Erie water temperature transects from the past month. I watch them regularly.

Out of curiosity do scientists sample pollution levels found in the Spring ice of eastern Lake Erie? Today, my wife and I were discussing how dirty the lake ice looks during this period of thawing. We were wondering if the dirty appearance indicates automobile and coal plant pollution and if it could be another factor in earlier lake ice thawing.

A comment we take for granted what the U.S. space program has done to improve our lives. MODIS is a wonderful tool that is now being shared with us ice watchers. I’m also fascinated to be able to daily sediment patterns being shown by MODIS before and after rains, wind storms, from river and stream run off and after winter ice thawing.

Also I love it when we see the weather both in WNY and southern Ontario. The weather does not stop at borders. Thanks for the local wind speeds. The competition often pays the wind speeds no heed.

In other words, nothing has changed to keep ice at the ern end of Lk Erie since the boom went in. Sorry to sound prickly, but there is no evidence to support your hypothesis about the ice boom. None. The National Academy of Engineering was also involved in an earlier study, and found no such evidence.

End of story. I realize that sounds arrogant, but that’s the way it is.

“The National Weather Service did an extensive study of ice out dates and temperature data during the spring at Buffalo. The data clearly shows the ice boom has no impact.”

No impact of exactly where in Buffalo? What places were the NWS data collected from? I think this study is inaccurate and inconclusive if it didn’t measure temperatures up and down the Niagara River from the Erie Basin Marina to the foot of Hertel Avenue and include temperatures farther inland from Niagara east to West Avenue.

If this data was exclusively obtained from the Coast Guard Station in Buffalo and the Porter Avenue weather station than in my opinion the data would be lacking in scope.

It makes no sense to myself to tell me that a body of water covered in ice does not effect the shoreline temperatures along Lake Erie and farther inland eastward into Buffalo. The retention of that ice behind the boom instead of letting it flow naturally down the Niagara River has to have some effect on West Side temperatures. In Spring high water displacement events more ice would be pushed down the Niagara River and that surely would make the water stay cooler along the shoreline of the river.

One thing that isn’t being declared a myth. The water temperatures on the West Side of Buffalo near the Niagara River and Lake Erie have a later planting and harvest season.

Also I submit that the sediment plumes running out of the Buffalo River and down the Niagara River make the Spring water temperatures on the U.S. side of the river slightly higher than on the opposite shore of the Niagara River. But not enough to counter the water cooling effect of ice being in the water being chilled from the ice boom.

These questions may not be important to he rest of WNY but to the people on the West Side the chill is still in the air and it will feel warmer when the ice boom has allowed the ice to flow again down the majestic Niagara River. Let her rip!

After the same rainfall event is the water temperature in the Niagara River colder in Canada because the water is clearer, with less sediment on the Fort Erie side of the river?

These statements about no effect on the weather temperatures for the West Side of Buffalo when Lake Erie ice is being dammed up above the source of the Niagara River seam similar to Morton Thiokol telling Richard Feynman that o rings won’t crack in the cold.

If we are standing at the foot of Porter Avenue and there is ice behind the ice boom in Lake Erie (above the source of the Niagara River), and the wind is blowing SW at approximately 25 mph, than is the temperature colder compared to when there is no ice behind the ice boom and we have the same wind direction and speed?

Does ice in water not make the lower level, air temperatures become colder or stay colder for neighborhoods in close proximity to Lake Erie?

This discussion we are having is getting off the subject of my posting.

Is MODIS or an airplane used to factor how much ice is in Lake Erie in order to pull the ice boom out?

Has the ice boom been removed when ice covered approximately 200 square miles of Lake Erie?

In my opinion there is less than 50 miles of ice coverage on Lake Erie after looking at Sunday’s MODIS image.