Winter 2104 and the Icy Shores of Lake Ontario

oshlo.blogspot.com - An ice arch along the Lake Ontario Shoreline near Cobourg, Ontario Randall Romano Photography

There is no doubt that the winter of 2014 has to be one of the coldest in the past few decades. This has lead to the one of the greatest ice percentages on the Great Lakes since 1994. In all the past few weeks have seen 88% of the Great Lakes frozen over. Although many of the Great Lakes have a high percentage of freeze over, Lake Superior is 95% frozen and Lake Erie and Lake Huron almost completely covered. Lake Ontario in contrast has only achieved a maximum freeze over of 41%.
What makes Lake Ontario different than the other Great Lakes is it’s depth and it’s location at the farthest eastern geographical location of all the lakes. Water is flowing into Lake Ontario from the other Great lakes and combined with it’s depth and geographic location (further away from the westerly flowing colder air) it is not as prone to freezing over.
The highest ever-recorded ice cover for Lake Ontario was in 1974 when 85% of the Lake was frozen over. 1994 saw 55% of Lake Ontario covered in ice. Regardless of the records for ice cover on Lake Ontario this year has been an amazing year for photographing the shoreline ice.

I have walked and photographed the shoreline on two separate occasions this year, both when the temperatures were around minus 30 degrees Celsius. Before going onto the ice I always put on ice cleats with are essential to traction. No matter how well dressed I am, photographing on the cold windy shorelines means retreating back to the car to get warm, as hands and cold tripods don’t work well together. However despite the difficulty, the landscapes is one of extreme beauty and definitely worth the effort. It reminds me, even though I haven’t yet been there, of photographing in the Arctic, with the shoreline ice being like large glaciers about to break off into icebergs. I am still hoping to get down to the shoreline one more time this year, as the colder weather on this last week of February, makes the ice still viable to photograph.

The giant ice chunks along the Lake Ontario Shoreline. February 2014

Shapes of ice along the Lake Ontario Shoreline, Feb 2014 Randall Romano

source : http://dailymotion.com, http://canadaphotodiary.blogspot.com, http://docstoc.com

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