White Out Snow Storm and Lake Superior Ice Cover

Yesterday it snowed all day.  The wind was intense with constant 25 mph speeds, but gusting to over 50 mph.  The snow piled up behind my house, and everywhere else.  We probably received around 8 inches, but there was intense blowing and drifting.

This is what it looking like outside my front window:

 

I looked up the Lake Superior ice coverage statistics.  Last year at this time Lake Superior was around 95 percent.

This year, as of yesterday, the ice coverage on all the Great Lakes, including Lake Superior is only around 10 percent.  The color on the charts is a bit confusing, but there is a difference between the dark blue in 2015 indicating almost full ice coverage and the light blue in 2016, indicating almost no ice.

Lake Superior detail:

Ice cover chart for this year:

The NOAA satellite image from yesterday:

CITES
http://coastwatch.glerl.noaa.gov/modis/modis.php?region=s&page=1
http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/res/glcfs/glcfs-ice.php?lake=s&type=F&hr=01
http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/data/pgs/glice/glice_2015.html