Lake Superior Hits August Water Temps (59F) This Week - New Record Temps Possible - Star Tribune

[hatrack]

C'mon in -- the water's fine (relatively speaking). Long notorious for its bone-chilling frigidity, Lake Superior is far warmer than normal for this time of year, and could be headed for record-setting high temperatures later this summer. Thanks to less ice last winter and an early spring, the top layer of the big lake will be "exceptionally warm by August," according to researchers at the Large Lakes Observatory at the University of Minnesota-Duluth.

Temperatures in the top 30 to 50 feet of water usually peak at 59 degrees in mid-August, but they hit that mark this week. The record of 68 degrees, reached in 1998, could well be matched or broken.

The heat is welcome news for swimmers and some species of fish, but streams feeding the largest Great Lake have seen some fish kills. "It's going to mean a more pleasant year for tourism," said Jay Austin, associate professor of physics at UMD who is studying lake temperature trends. "It is going to mean a warmer year everywhere on the lake." That extends to people who live or play along the North Shore, he said. Winds coming off the lake are not so cold this year because the lake is warmer, he said.

The reason for the warming is primarily because of a mild winter with less-than-normal ice on the lake, and a spring that arrived earlier and with higher temperatures. That sped up the natural cycle, in which summer temperatures create an upper layer of warm water, floating above the bulk of the lake's much colder and denser water. Usually the warm layering begins in mid-July, but this year it started a month earlier. As a result, Lake Superior is about 20 degrees warmer than normal at this time of year.

EDIT

http://www.startribune.com/local/98102664.html?elr=KArksD:aDyaEP:kD:aUq9_b9b_jEkP:QUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aU7DYaGEP7vDEh7P:DiUs

[LiberalFighter]

1. Possibly also as result of industrial pollution by BP from their refinery on the Indiana side?

In Lake Michigan and the pollution expanding to Lake Superior?

[hobbit709]

2. Get your geography straight.

And don't blame BP for this one. There's plenty of stuff BP can be blamed for without imaginary ones.

[Angry Dragon]

3. We can blame bp for anything we want

If they do not like it they can sue...
And the geography is correct....all the lakes are connected

[hobbit709]

4. Which way does water flow?

Uphill or downhill.

The RW nutjobs make up enough shit, we don't have to.

[Angry Dragon]

5. I am sure there are all kinds of currents

in the Great Lakes that do not flow in only one direction

Every thing is connected....things do not flow just one way. The sooner that humans
realize this fact the better it will be.
You do something one place, it has an affect on things around it and then
goes out from there in a ripple affect.

[hobbit709]

6. Two different lakes, and BP is several hundred miles

on a different lake.. Get real and study a little science.

[knownothing]

9. Doubtful (and I'm sick of NIMBY)

I somehow doubt that oil pollution affects water temperature that much. Besides, I'm sick of people acting as though BP is the only (or even the worst) oil company for pollution. There's an oil company called Chevron being sued for DELIBERATELY dumping OVER 18 BILLION GALLONS of oil waste into the Amazon Basin. Meanwhile, Shell is environmentally destroying Nigeria. If we want to truly stop oil pollution, we have to move beyond the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) attitude, and realize that whatever happens in one place can affect the entire planet.

It's great that BP oil spill pissed everybody off. Now let's not be hypocritical about it and act as though they are the only sinner. We have to get off of all oil from all oil companies, because all oil companies pollute.

[Nihil]

10. Welcome aboard!

You are exactly right (though I have no doubt that there will be people
who are too far in denial to appreciate your honesty!)

:hi:

[pscot]

7. The ecology of decline

University departments will be springing up around the new discipline.

[joshcryer]

8. The Anthropocene period.

Will be a required course.

[n2doc]

11. The Great Lakes will be the new vacation playground

...for a while. Then as the temperate zone bands keep moving northwards, even they will become too tropical....