Could This Happen For The First Time In Three Decades To Lake Erie

By just about any measure, this has been a pretty long and cold winter. While there have been a few warm and bright spots, for the most part, it has been snowy and frigid for weeks on end. In Western and Central New York, the people of the Empire State have had to deal with snow that you need a yardstick to measure and consecutive days with frigid temperatures.

Thanks to a large mass of polar air from the Arctic Circle, several places all over New York State have more closely resembled the movie The Day After Tomorrow.

It's been so cold lately that the Great Lakes have seen more ice form on them than has formed in several years, and if this cold streak continues, one lake in particular may do something that it hasn't done in 30 years.

Lake Erie Could Be 100% Frozen Soon

As of February 9, 2026, the Great Lakes have had a combined ice coverage of around 60%. When you consider that the five Great Lakes have a total surface area of nearly 95,000 square miles, or almost 61 million acres, that is a lot of ice.

Lake Erie, the shallowest of the five lakes, is 95% covered with ice. Now, while NASA's GOES-19 Satellite captured a huge crack developing in the ice shelf, if the cold snap that we've been in continues, the lake might freeze over for the first time since February 1996. That would be an incredible feat considering the fact that there was nearly no ice on the lake on New Year's Day.

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While it would be an amazing meteorological feat for this to happen, it's not actually likely since we're on the verge of a warmup.

According to the National Weather Service, parts of Western and Central New York are going to see a major swing in temperatures between Monday, February 9, 2026, and Tuesday, February 10, 2026, with the thermometer going from -7°F to 36°F in Buffalo, a more than 43-degree temperature swing.