U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Woodrush breaking ice in lakes. (EPA photo)
30% ICE COVER: Great Lakes Shipping Slowed by Persistent Cold
April 29, 2014
By: Dave Rogers
Reported loss of several hundreds of dollars in sales by one local home improvement chain store is indicative of the problems caused by a late spring.
Weather experts say the record cold also is slowing traffic on the Great Lakes, despite Coast Guard ice breaking efforts.
The Saginaw River is still awaiting the first commercial delivery of the season with the date of the first ship here already exceeding by 10 days the latest, April 18, that occurred in 2009, according to Todd Shorkey of boatnerd.com.
Last year the first ship arrived in the river on April 16.
The Saginaw River is open and the bay is clear just out to the Confined Disposal Facility a couple miles from the mouth, he wrote.
Coast Guard plans to send an icebreaker to Saginaw Bay have been canceled twice because the ships were needed elsewhere.
"Since its peak coverage of 92.19 percent on March 6, 2014, the ice has been melting slowly but still remains to some extent on each of the five lakes.
"Great Lakes ice coverage is shrinking but is still incredibly high for this time of year," said AccuWeather.com Senior Meteorologist Brett Anderson.
"Even though the ice cover on the Great Lakes has steadily declined over the past month, the area of ice that remains is the highest in over 30 years and more than two times higher than the second highest extent for the same week back in 1996."
The last ship in the Saginaw River was Dec. 19, 2013, when the USCG Cutter Bristol Bay escorted the tug Samuel de Champlain and cement barge Innovation to the Lafarge dock in Essexville, according to boatnerd.com.
Thirteen ships are stopped in the St. Mary's River or in upper Lake Huron awaiting escorts through the Soo Locks while four ships loaded with iron ore are at Marquette also are in a waiting mode.
Minnesota Public Radio reported thick ice on Lake Superior is causing shipping delays, with about 60 ships waiting to enter the area, according to the Coast Guard.
The ships are "certainly not delivering the raw material at the frequency that the facilities need," said Mark Gill, director of vessel traffic services for the Coast Guard at the Soo Locks between Lakes Superior and the lower lakes. "That's put a drain universally on steel production, power production, grain shipments, and many other industries that suffer as a result of that."
Lake Superior is still about 60 percent ice covered, Gill said. Three heavy icebreakers are escorting convoys of five ships across the lake, where wind-blown ice is still eight feet thick in places.
The season's first trip from Duluth to lower Lake Michigan took two weeks, said Gill. It normally takes less than three days. Some steel mills and power plants around the Great Lakes have run low on supplies of iron ore and coal.