NASA Satellite Reveals Ice-Covered Great Lakes from Space: Winter is Still Here

Spring is just about four weeks away but the winter remains the coldest it has been all year. Despite warmer days in the past week, winter is still roaring in certain areas. A NASA satellite photographed the Great Lakes on Feb. 19^th and showed that the bodies of water were 80% frozen.

According to the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, the lakes were 80.3% frozen last week. And for the first time since 1994, the lakes were 88% frozen earlier this month, which was well above the 50% average ice-cover of the bodies of water. The lowest average came in 2002 when only 9.5% of the lakes froze. Here's a view provided by the NASA satellite last week.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrodiameter (MODIS), a key instrument aboard the Terra and Aqua satellites, provided the images last week. MODIS helps improve scientists' understanding of "global dynamics and processes occurring on the land, in the oceans, and in the lower atmosphere," as defined in the NASA website. The MODIS instrument uses colors to help scientists distinguish snow, water, ice, clouds, etc.

The freezing of lakes and other bodies of water has been common this year in this part of the U.S. For the first time in five years Apostle Islands National Lakeshore in Wisconsin completely froze over and allowed 35,000 visitors to travel over Lake Superior (which it's connected to). People were able to explore caves and view ice formations caused by the freezing conditions. This occurrence was said to be a one-in-a-lifetime experience.

"We had an early ice season this year, owing to cold temperatures in the fall and early winter," said George Leshkevich of the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration at the Great Lakes lab, on NASA's website. "Ice was reported on bays and harbors of the Great Lakes as early as the end of November, as opposed to the normal timing of mid-December."

This year's winter has contributed to some of the coldest February's in various Midwest cities. Chicago and Green Bay have had some of its lowest temperature averages for the month of February, and Detroit has experienced its coldest winter since 1978. Which is no surprise since 4/5 of the Great Lakes are completely frozen over with less than a month left in the winter season.

To read more about this historic winter and the Great Lakes, visit this NBC News article.