Watch the Great Lakes Freeze Over

Time lapse satellite imagery shows the Great Lakes icing over in one of the coldest winters in memory

Time lapse satellite imagery shows the Great Lakes icing over in one of the coldest winters in memory

Byran Walsh, reporting for Time:

You can measure a winter in many ways: temperature records, snow cover, even travel delays. But to truly see how frigid this winter has been—at least for the eastern half of the U.S.—you need to go way up. Satellite imagery shows that an incredible 88% of the Great Lakes—Superior, Michigan, Huron, Ontario and Erie—are now frozen over. That’s the largest ice cover the Great Lakes have experienced since 1994, and it means that there is an astounding 82,940 sq. miles (214,814 sq. km) of ice covering the biggest collection of fresh water in the world.

As we've changed the system, things that were once normal are now seen as abnormal.