Mild winter keeps Great Lakes' water levels up

It has seemed more normal lately. But Michigan's mild start to winter has Great Lakes levels doing strange things.

"We've seen some very interesting conditions, to say the least, so far this winter," said Keith Kompoltowicz, the chief of watershed hydrology for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Detroit.

December saw record amounts of precipitation in many parts of the Great Lakes basin — but in the form of rain, not snow, he said.

"It basically put a pause button on the seasonal declines across the lakes in general," Kompoltowicz said.

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Water levels that typically decline at the onset of winter stayed constant, or even rose.

And then there's the ice cover. The warmer temperatures and lack of snow and ice have led to the entire Great Lakes system being only about 6.6% ice covered as of Friday. On the same day last year, the lakes were more than one-third — 34% — covered with ice.

One group that would normally celebrate such conditions is the Great Lakes freight haulers, the cargo ships moving iron ore, cement and other minerals and goods. The industry endured early stops to the shipping season, late spring starts and ice-jammed, snail-speed travel in-between the past two years.

But crashing economic demand for steel is putting a damper on the party, said Glen Nekvasil, vice president of the Lake Carriers Association, a trade organization that represents product-haulers on the Great Lakes.

"In a very real sense, it's almost like summer sailing out there, but we haven't been able to take advantage of it because of the lack of demand," he said. "The demand for cargo is down, because of all of the foreign steel flooding the market. The U.S. steel industry is running at 60% of capacity."

The problem has been ongoing for years, but has grown more acute, Nekvasil said.

"In my career, I've never before seen 1,000-footers (barges) lay up in November due to lack of demand," he said.

The relatively open, warmer water on the Great Lakes, combined with cold air passing over it, could spur evaporation of lake water, noted Andrew Gronewold, a hydrologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor.

"Usually, January and February is when we see big ice numbers," he said.

But in 1997-98, the last mild winter in the Great Lakes region caused by the El Niño Pacific Ocean weather pattern, there was not a lot of evaporation of Great Lakes water because the air was so much warmer than usual, Gronewold said. Even a smaller-than-usual snow pack in the spring doesn't necessarily mean slower seasonal rises in lake levels, he said, as other factors — including the amount and timing of rain and other precipitation and the moisture content of the surrounding soil —  also play roles, he said.

The lake level forecast for the next six months shows some of the lakes making very slight dips in elevation as winter goes on, but rising even further by June — up to 3 feet higher on Lake Ontario; more than 2 feet higher on Lake Erie; about a foot and a half higher on connected Lakes Michigan and Huron, and just under a half-foot increase on Superior.  All of the lakes exceed their long-term average elevation, a continuing trend over the last few years after a long period of being well below average.

"The longer-term forecasts do show above-normal temperatures," Kompoltowicz said. "That leads us to believe evaporation won't be as much as it typically is in the wintertime.

"What we're seeing now is largely being driven by El Niño. That doesn't mean we're never going to see winter — we've seen some evidence of winter in the Great Lakes already. But largely, we're expecting a warmer and a little drier winter."