On the shores of St. Clair, Michigan, the ice season only lasts for a few weeks, unlike 30 years ago, when the ice would last for a month. The unpredictability of ice can be attributed to a trend (of less ice cover and shorter duration), or maybe the seasons just go in cycles. However, the unpredictability does have a big effect on people’s livelihood. The ice season in the area was a “disaster”, according to bait shop owner Veronica Pinto. Due to the unpredictable ice last year, a lot of ice fishing events were cancelled. Bait and tackle sales were way down, as The Huffington Post detailed:
“It’s been a terrible time to be trying to sell fishing tackle. Nothing is predictable,” she says. “We don’t have the seasons anymore like we used to.”
Pinto doesn’t think the lakeside economy here in St. Clair Shores can absorb another bad ice year.
Not everyone agrees that what’s happening this year is a trend. Tim Muir, president of the Lake St. Clair Walleye Association, which puts on the Cold as Ice festival, is one of them.
“I mean, it goes in cycles,” he says. “Some years you get a lot of ice and it’s all the way through March, and other years there’s no ice, sorta like this year.”
It may be counterintuitive, but Sacka, Pinto and Muir are each correct, in their own ways. Long-term climate data show a definite trend toward less ice cover overall and a shorter duration of the ice on the Great Lakes since 1973. But year-to-year, the variability is so high you might miss it.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climatologist Jia Wang says maximum ice cover during the 2020 season was about 16% across the entire Great Lakes basin. The average since 1973 is 55.7%, ranging as low as 11.9% in 2012 and as high as 80.9% in 2019.
image via The Huffington Post