Vince_Condella's Blog

After a couple of chilly late-April days with winds off the lake, many of you would love to pave over the lake and cover up that cold water.  But that would only make it easier for an attack from the people of lower Michigan.

Seriously, that lake water temperature is cold in spring and any hint of a breeze from the direction of the water insures us of a chilly day.  Water has a huge heat capacity, which means it does a wonderful job of storing the heat from summer, but an equally good job of hanging on to the cold from winter.  Water is much slower to change temperature compared to land.

This week the mid-lake surface water temperature is around 39 degrees and the lakeshore surface water temperature is perhaps a degree or two warmer.  Daily temperature charts of the lake surface can be seen HERE.  The data is compiled from a satellite with a sensor that can measure surface water temperature remotely.  There are also buoys out on the lake with thermometers to directly measure the water temperature.

Monday and today (Tuesday) were also good examples of how chilling the air can get without help from the sun.  The late-April sunshine packs a pretty good punch and can provide some warmth.  Not the warmth of a high-in-the-sky mid-July sun, but still not bad.  The clouds over the past two days didn't help our efforts to warm the air.

High temperatures on Tuesday were a full 5 to 7 degrees colder than my forecast simply because I didn't factor in the lack of sunshine.  I was calling for nearly full sunshine.  But without it, our hope for warmth is....well, hopeless.

Ahhhh, but Lake Michigan provides us with such beauty, we wouldn't really want to cover it with a layer of concrete, would we?  The fish would hate us, Michiganites would invade our fair state, and eventually somebody would want to put up a shopping mall right about where the Milwaukee harbor breakwater is located.  No, I'll take the chill instead.