Lake Superior ice cover on pace for lowest in 8 years

There’s plenty of open water on Lake Superior this winter.

Analysis of ice cover on Lake Superior shows the big lake is only about 11 percent ice-covered as of Feb. 11. Compare that to last year when the lake was 72 percent covered at this time.

The entire Great Lakes system shows just 13.6 percent ice cover Tuesday.

Superior: Lowest in eight years

Ice cover on Lake Superior typically peaks in early March. It remains to be seen how much ice will be added before then. The cold shot this week could add some ice. But temperature patterns into late February do not appear to favor significant ice increases.

Tuesday’s 11.9 percent of ice cover on Lake Superior appears to be on pace for the lowest ice cover maximum in eight years. The last time the maximum ice cover extent on Lake Superior was under 10 percent was in 2012.