Warm Lake Michigan could lead to another snowy December


Hopefully everyone went out to Lake Michigan this past week for one last hoorah on the water, because Lake Michigan's average surface water temperature is extremely and abnormally warm. The lake temperature has been mostly above normal all year, except for late this summer, when temperatures stayed cooler than normal for most of August and the start of September.

Since mid-September, hot weather has caused the lake temperature to sky-rocket. Lake Michigan is now around 71 degrees, which nearly ties the peak temperature that was set on August 1st.

This is the warmest Lake Michigan has been, this late in September, in the past six years. However, the temperature of Lake Michigan in late September of 2016 comes in at a close second. This could give us some foresight into what early winter will look like.

Because the lake stayed so warm, so late into the summer season, the water was still warmer than normal by winter. Last December, Michiana experienced multiple lake-effect snow storms, because the water was warm and many arctic cold fronts moved over the lake. Since the water is even warmer this year, we could see the same effect as arctic cold fronts start to move in during the early winter months.

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