Great Lakes Still Near Record Highs; Winter Gales Taking Their Toll

This popular tourist attraction, a sea stack in Lake Superior, collapsed
in high water and  windy blizzard this past week. It's a symptom
of heavy damage due to persistent very high water levels in the Great Lakes.

Residents around all of the Great Lakes have been struggling really for two or more years now with high lake levels.

Unusually heavy, persistent precipitation has been going on basically for the past five years in most of the Great Lakes watershed, keeping the water levels high.

Also, several winters in the past five years have had greater than normal ice extent on the lakes. The ice greatly slows evaporation and evaporation is one of the main ways water levels in the Great Lakes can decline.

These lakes are much bigger than say, even Lake Champlain, so water levels in the Great Lakes change slowly.  It takes a long time for them either to rise or fall. Small lakes like Champlain can flood, but the water will go down within several weeks after a flood event.

The Great Lakes have remained stubbornly high. This time of year brings storms with very strong, gusty winds, so shorelines have been eroding steadily, with very damaging results.

Many shoreline homes and cottages this fall and winter from Lake Superior to Lake Ontario have been damaged or even destroyed in these storms.  A famed sea stack -  pile of rocks near the shore of Lake Superior, collapsed this past week amid unusually high water and a very windy blizzard.

It'll probably get worse.  Great Lakes water levels do usually fall in the winter, but melting snow and spring rains make them rise again in the spring. So the first half of 2020 might turn out to be especially destruction in all of the Great Lakes, especially if it's wet.

Even near normal precipitation in the late winter and spring will keep the lakes at near record high levels.

Here in Vermont, there's absolutely no telling how high Lake Champlain will get next spring. Right now it's a little higher than average for this time of year due to a wet fall and early winter. But whether there will be any spring flooding really depends solely on how much snow and rain we get this winter, and how wet the first half of spring is.

Back in the Midwest, just six or seven years ago, Great Lakes water levels were at unusually low levels, due to increased temperatures in the region. Water evaporates more readily when it's warm than when the water is chillier.

Scientific American says more wild weather patterns, largely brought on by climate change, might be making this a "new normal" in which water levels seesaw up and down to more extreme levels than in past decades.

Here's a couple recent Great Lakes videos:

This is a recent CBC report from the Canadian side of Lake Erie:



Here's a Lake Michigan park and walkway being pummeled and wrecked by waves recently: