Happy 100th!

This lovely pic is in celebration of the 100th post on LakeMichiblog. Thanks for joining me here in appreciation of our inland sea, with many more daily pics to come!

No, you are not paranoid...

A perfectly innocent ice floe sits out there, several hundred feet from shore. Nothing alarming about that.

20 minutes later it's closer, but it is still keeping a a polite distance.

Next thing you know, it's lapping at the shoreline. I expect tomorrow there will be a big pile-up of shore ice. Just in time for the 100th post! See you tomorrow.

Glassy

Wow! look at that shine! This is from the morning.

And this is from the afternoon. If you squint, you can see a big white ship out there, among the ice floes.

The Sound and the Fury

Apologies to both Faulkner and Shakespeare, but the Lake is in a MOOD today--big swelling waves, laden with collected snowfall, crashing into the rocks on the shore. Now the snow is coming down harder and visibility is much lower than when I took these earlier.

Vast

We are experiencing an eerie calm now, as we're about to get dumped by 4-8 inches of snow (which should make for interesting pics tomorrow, so stay tuned). The Lake seems very large and foreboding, like a sleeping giant about to wake up. So I went outside to take this and try to capture that feeling.

Very Glare-y

The best photo showing the waves from this morning is also the glariest. Oh, well. The Lake, as you can see, is brown today, and loud, and the waves (at least earlier this morning) were high.

Fast and Flurryous

Oh, the puns you can make with the word flurry! Even if snow flurries can't be captured with a low speed camera.

Whitecappin'

They're small, but you can see 'em. From yesterday.

Yesterday's Take on the Lake

Blogger was clogged for a good part of Monday and into yesterday. But my camera worked, so here's a pretty picture.

Slow Roll

The Lake did not have actual waves today, but more than ripples. There was a slow roll across the water.

Great Book Gift

Late blogging this, but I got a great Christmas gift that is Great Lakes-related and probably of interest to readers of this blog. The book above, which I have yet to read, is about the Edmund Fitzgerald tragedy. I’m putting it on my list for summer reading. Not really escapist literature, but of interest to the Lake Michigan/Great Lakes obsessed.

I received this as part of our family used book exchange, described here.

Pixelated

The water is very active today, moving around in such a way that it looks like moving pixels. There are no waves, not really even ripples, just constantly shifting little peaks of water. I'm not sure video could capture it either, but this pic is the best I can do.

Cotton Candy

So, yesterday, just as I was leaving the office, I looked out the window and saw all of this amazing color in the sky.

Just like pastel cotton candy, I thought. Enjoy.

Still

The lake is very calm today, with a blue stripe at the horizon. It has cooled off a lot. Snow is probably on the way.

In a Fog

You know how sometimes, you wake up in the morning and you had a rough night and don't feel right and things just seem kind of fuzzy? That's how the Lake felt this morning. But, too bad for the Lake, it cannot get a cup of strong coffee to make everything right. It's a gray and hazy day out there, warm, but rainy. Buck up, Lake, it will get better!

We're Having a Heat Wave....

....A Tropical Heat Wave.
Warm today, most of the snow is gone, the lake is a lovely brown/blue/green stripey color.

Warm(ish) Waves

It's wavy out there today. And WARM. Tomorrow it might get up to 60 degrees. The snow will melt, just in time for a fresh white coating in the next few days and weeks (oh, you know it's coming, it's only the 2nd week in February!)

Icebergs

One reason I'm sorry that I missed blogging in December and January is that we got some hefty snowfall during those weeks and lots of snow + Lake Michigan = interesting ice formations. See that brown blob above? That's a huge chunk of ice, coated in sand and seagulls. It is a leftover from the December and January snow, and it's melting in the warm weather we've had the past few days. (Please also note the moon overhead. This was taken at 3pm on Saturday.)

Here's a wider view, with more "icebergs" in the foreground.

And here's another view, this time looking south instead of north, with the "icebergs" blending right in with the shoreline rocks. (This series was taken from a park near my home, not from my office building).

Lake Erie Ice Fishing Tragedy/Farce

As one who is inexperienced in ice fishing, I feel a bit out of my depth reporting on this topic, but surely anyone reading this blog has heard about the unfortunate event over on Lake Erie. On the one hand, I feel very sorry for the man who died. One the other hand, I think the sheriff who helped with the rescue operation put it best when he said: “What happened here today was just idiotic. I don't know how else to put it.” Read the whole story here. Watch videos here.

I will hold my tongue on the utility of fishing on Lake Erie at any time, let alone when it is cold outside. You really can't eat the fish anyway.

Monochrome

In person it looks more gray than blue, but there is very little difference between the sky and the Lake today.

This photo doesn't show it, and my weak camera really can't, but there's also a lot of lovely duck action on the Lake today. They are very busy swimming, diving down, and occasionally flying as a flock, low, skimming the water. The cuteness of the little duck bottoms sticking up in the air cannot be adequately described with words or a still photo. Must learn how to do video....

Ice Cubes and Gull Islands

Amazing thing yesterday afternoon: the ice out on the Lake started drifting toward shore and then breaking up in the waves. For about 15 minutes, you could hear the big chunky cubes of ice rolling into shore and piling up against the rocks. And at the same time....

The ice that remained out on the Lake was the temporary perch of hundreds of seagulls, congregating out on the ice, taking a rest and enjoying the warming weather before all the ice melted. That the two conditions existed at the same time was weird. The shoreline was loud and violent, and the ice islands, just a few yards away, were peaceful oases. Amazing.

Thin Ice

This is yesterday's daily pic. You can see the little patches of ice and the rippling open water. Birds love the open water, but as you'll see in the extra pics from yesterday (next post up), some of them love the ice. too.

Bonus Birds

Just as I was leaving the office today, I noticed these guys huddling there in the tree. It's about 2 degrees outside, so you can try to imagine how cold it must be up in that tree, but it would be pretty hard.

Steamy

There was mist rising off the lake again this morning. The air was crisp and cold, but the water was rolling so it couldn't freeze.

Calm, meet Storm

This is from the morning, when it was still cold enough and calm enough that there was a light layer of ice on the Lake. The patterns remind me of a paint-by-number kit. And then....

The waves have been picking up speed and ferocity, and are now audible. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next few hours.

Hint of a Half Moon

If you were here, you could have seen it. If you look at that white-ish spot of ice on the water, and then look directly above it, you can see the hint of the half moon, which was visible here at NOON. I can still see it now, but it is too high to get a pic of the moon and the Lake. And that's why we are here, people, to give you pictures of the LAKE, not some random satellite.