I’m in Burlington, Vermont this week. This is the view out my window at just after 6PM local time today:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0epvot4fiVE?rel=0]
Yes, it’s April 8th.
Flying in to Burlington on Monday, we passed over Lake Champlain where I noticed that it seemed at least 90% covered in ice. From the Burlington Free Press, February 17:
For the second year in a row, the lake appears to be frozen from one side to the other. National Weather Service high resolution satellite images show ice pretty much everywhere on the lake.
That’s enough for meteorologists to declare the lake as “closed” or frozen over, said Peter Banacos, a meteorologist at the NWS office in South Burlington.
Burlington has had below freezing temperatures throughout February, he said. This weekend Vermonters experienced wind chills as low as minus 40, which likely consummated the freeze-over.
The lake froze completely in 2014, but this is the first time in a decade that the lake has closed two years a row. Vermonters last saw the lake completely freeze consecutively in 2004 and 2005.
The instructor of the class I’m taking here went down to the lake last night. He reported the ice is still “about a foot thick.”
Atmospheric CO2 is now at 401PPM.
Current sunspot activity is low and declining.
I know where my money is riding on this question.