Isle Royale Forums

I stumbled across a Canadian website that monitors ice conditions on the Great Lakes (and the oceans). This is a map of ice coverage in lake Superior as of 2/18/2013. At least on this day, it looks like an ice bridge may be starting to connect Isle Royale to Ontario.

Cool chart, treeplanter!

I struggled for a while trying to figure out what the legend means, wondering if 10/10 meant one whole foot thickness of ice or one meter thick.

Turns out it is neither. Instead it is a measure of the ice concentration, defined as follows:

"The ratio expressed in tenths describing the area of the water surface covered by ice as a fraction of the whole area."

So right off Huginnin Cove (on the far NW corner of the island), the ice concentration is 70 to 80% (The chart is now 2 days old). Along the entire north shore of the island (E of Huginnin Cove), ice concentration is only 10 to 30%. Besides, any wolves coming straight down from Canada would first have to make their way past the Sleeping Giant.

When the winter study began last month and they first spotted 3 wolves in the Huginnin Cove area, and then later Isabelle alone in that same area, the thought crossed my mind that maybe the wolves were drawn to that area of the park, to see if an ice bridge had formed; that maybe Isabelle was looking for a way off the island. Especially when the study crew had commented on how they had observed the coldest winter study temps since 1994.

Somewhere I read that even if an ice bridge forms, it's not likely a wolf will emigrate to isle royale, due to new development along the Canadian shoreline. The chart, however, seems to suggest that the best chance of a bridge would be from the Grand Portage area.

Then again, the fuel surcharge might have them thinking twice. Luckily, most wolves are age 11 & under, so at least they're exempt from the park's daily user fee. Let's hope sequestration doesn't put an end to that.

If you were a Canadian wolf, would you really want to say farewell to socialized medicine, with all of this talk (across the border) about the "fiscal cliff", "sequestration", and various other euphemisms for "we Americans are screwed"? Let's hope they don't watch the news.

Yeah, the map is kind of hard to figure out. You can get a good idea of the kind of ice forming by the colors. Gray is "fast ice" and is stuff that you can drive car onto. Red is the next best.

The Canadians update their maps about once/week. I'll post updates as they become available.

I can tell you that a good strong wind can change things overnight. What looks to be a promising ice bridge can be destroyed in hours but a strong wind (from the right direction).

The "development" along the Ontario coast doesn't worry me regarding wolf movements. I live in Michigan's northern lower peninsula and wolves have moved across the Straits of Mackinaw whenever a good ice bridge forms between the U.P. and the lower peninsula (NLP). Both sides of the Straits are developed. The U.P. has a lot of wolves and the NLP have a few. If wolves have the urge to find new territory, they'll do so.

It will be interesting to see if any wolves move from the U.P. to the NLP this winter. The Straits have been frozen solid (fast ice) for a few weeks now.

Latest MODIS imagery. Looks like a bit of water would have to freeze up given the overall lack of ice on Superior.
http://coastwatch.glerl.noaa.gov/modis/ ... 3.250m.jpg

Maximum ice coverage on Lake Superior usually occurs about March 15th. After that, the sun's increasing angle and warmer temps start the melt cycle.

Lake Superior ice conditions as of Friday, 2/22/2013. Looks like the SW part of the island may connect to Minnesota. The bad news is that the 8 - 10 day forecast is calling for higher than average temps over the Lake Superior basin.

MODIS image from 2/28
http://coastwatch.glerl.noaa.gov/modis/ ... 3.250m.jpg

Yep, just when an ice bridge starts to form, winds break it up.

Here's the latest from the Canadian ice tracking website. As of today, 3-1-2013

Update as of 3/7/2013. Kind of an ice bridge, though I don't know if I'd walk on it:

If they only knew how sweet a sight/site Little Todd is, I think they would go for it. Can a wolf smell the large # of moose on the island, across such a distance?

I've no doubt that Izzy is thinking about leaving the island. If she knew that Ozzy was about to do a concert in Thunder Bay, she would roll the dice for certain. The concert promoter is still working on Ozzy's "eh", as it was fairly unintelligible at the start. The best they've done so far is to just have him say "egg", and it comes out pretty close.

"You know, I'm bloody British, egg?".

Well, he is a good egg, and a mighty fine chap as well.

"Izzy" = Isabelle

It's amazing the difference one day can make with this ice bridge. Here's the latest as of today, Friday, March 8th. Compare with the March 7th map.

Latest ice map as of 3/18/2013. Usually lake ice starts to break up by mid-March. Not this year due to way below average temps in the Great Lakes area.

As for IR, there is an ice bridge of sorts, but I don't know if I'd walk on it.

Still an ice bridge, of sorts, but the late-March sun is starting to break things up.

The Canadian ice maps are somewhat deceiving, there has not been complete ice coverage to the island this winter. Just like open water forecasts will predict wind speeds and wave height, they are not absolute and vary greatly by just a few miles of change in location, these ice maps are potentials for ice coverage. In the morning after a calm night from mid-late February the lake is cold enough to freeze and will form skim ice all over, it would never support even a goose let alone a wolf and it lasts only a couple of hours. There are also a lot of ice flows, many of which have piled up on the north side of the island this winter, with changing wind direction and wave action these seldom freeze hard enough for travel without being locked into a bay. Most of the ice on the north side of the island now is ice that was broken by the ice breakers in Thunder Bay preparing for the shipping season. A strong NNW wind early last week blew much of this ice out of the bay and it is being pushed up against the island and around the open water now. Being out on the ice on the MN/Canadian shore several days per week I get a chance to see where the ice is from day to day, it's suprising how many miles out you can see the ice, even being only 14-15 miles from the island. There are several of us that have longed for the chance to ride our snowmachines over the pack ice to see if we could get to the island, luckily for us either the buzz wears off before we can muster the courage or the fish start to bite.

Thanks for the input and clarification Captain Don. It's always good to get first-hand knowledge of the ice situation. No matter what, I got to believe that we had more lake ice form this year than all of last.