Lake Erie is flirting with a milestone that has happened only a handful of times in the modern record: a complete freeze-over.
As of this week, the lake's ice coverage reached 95.3, according to an analysis by NOAA's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory. It is the second year in a row with substantial ice coverage on Erie.
Widespread icing of this magnitude happens once every two or three years, but what is much rarer is for Lake Erie to be completely covered by ice. Since record keeping began in the early 1970s, it has only reached 100 ice cover three times: 1978, 1979 and 1996.
An ice-covered Lake Erie seen from space on Feb. 1, 2026. Photo courtesy of NOAA/Aqua/MODIS/NASA Worldview
AccuWeather Great Lakes expert Brandon Buckingham said Lake Erie's near-total freeze this winter has been driven by repeated shots of cold air and sustained below-average temperatures.
