{"id":105217,"date":"2026-02-04T20:09:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T20:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/105217\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T20:09:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T20:09:11","slug":"lake-erie-nears-100-ice-coverage-after-record-cold-stretch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/105217\/","title":{"rendered":"Lake Erie Nears 100% Ice Coverage After Record Cold Stretch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It has been 30 years since the last time Lake Erie was 100% frozen over in February 1996. This year, however, Cleveland\u2019s Great Lake has come extremely close.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">As of Feb. 3, 2026, Lake Erie is 94% frozen over, a figure that far exceeds the average ice peak of 65-70%, according to the National Weather Service Cleveland.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Over the past five years, peak ice coverage has swung dramatically, ranging from a high of 94% this winter to just 11% in 2023. Meteorologists attribute this to the prolonged stretch of extreme cold and this year\u2019s record low temperatures.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">According to Alexa Maines, a meteorologist at NWS Cleveland, January held one of the longest cold stretches ever recorded, with eight consecutive days below 20 degrees Fahrenheit from Jan. 24-31. Only two years \u2014 1899 and 1961 \u2014 have experienced longer streaks, each lasting nine days.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">\u201cThis is certainly an abnormally long stretch of really cold weather, so that&#8217;s what caused the lake to freeze over more than a lot of recent years,\u201d says Maines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It has been 30 years since the last time Lake Erie was 100% frozen over in February 1996.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":105218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[136,138,137],"class_list":{"0":"post-105217","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-erie","8":"tag-erie","9":"tag-erie-headlines","10":"tag-erie-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}