Daily Mail – by Mia de GraafMore than 4,700 square miles of ice formed over the Great Lakes in just one night on Tuesday.
The Arctic blast that swept the Midwest and Northeast saw a near-record amount of Lake Ontario was iced over, with just 20 per cent of open water left.
Overall 82 percent of the five water bodies sealed up.
Temperatures are expected to drop again on Thursday night, leading forecasters to predict that figure to climb significantly by Friday morning.
Ice is largely uncommon on Lake Ontario, which normally sees around 11 percent cover.
Particularly deep, it retains heat longer than its neighboring water bodies.
Lake Erie is almost entirely iced over, with 96 percent cover.
Almost 92 percent of Lake Huron is covered, and 89 percent of Lake Superior.
Michigan remains the most ice-free with 57 percent of cover.
Iced over: An overnight chill saw 4,700 square miles of ice form over the Great Lakes
A woman walks past frozen mounds of ice along Lake Michigan in Chicago, Illinois, on Thursday
This time last year, 32 percent of Lake Ontario was iced over. Now, 79 percent of the water is covered, which is the closest to the record of 86 percent since 1979.
A ‘Siberian Express’ was barreling up from the Southeast to the Midwest and the East Coast bringing 100 record lows across the region on Thursday, according to forecasters.
Kentucky was the first to experience a record-breaking low in the early hours of Thursday when the city of Paducah felt -8F – the coldest temperature in 120 years.
Tennessee, the Carolinas and Chicago were all warned to wrap up for record lows on Thursday.
Temperatures have dipped to as low as -13 in parts of Illinois with wind chills forecast to fall to between 20 and 30 degrees below zero
Boston, Washington, D.C., and New York were forecast to drop into the low single digits overnight into Friday.
Six inches of snow was expected in Maine and New Hampshire by Friday. Three inches of snow was also forecast for the Midwest, Tennessee Valley and in the southern Appalachians.
The current blasts of arctic air meant that it was now even colder than the subzero lows felt in the Midwest and Northeast last weekend, accuweather.com reported.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2960716/Lake-Ontario-sees-record-frozen-4-700-square-miles-ice-forms-Great-Lakes-ONE-NIGHT.html#ixzz3SJ0Hu8fX
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