GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) — The Coast Guard is getting ready to break out the Bay of Green Bay. Icebreaking operations are starting Monday.
Three Coast Guard Icebreakers will take part in the break out, the cutters Mackinaw, Mobile Bay, and Neah Bay will break ice on the bay, the Fox River, and elsewhere.
“Our objective is to get out in conjunction with abnormally warm temperatures,” Mark Gill, the director of vessel traffic services for the Coast Guard out of Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan told WTAQ. “We’re gonna break big pieces into little pieces and try to facilitate the opening of the port.”
Ice cover on the Great Lakes is way below average this year, due to rollercoaster-like up and down temperatures that never really set into a consistent pattern.
“Our statistical average for percentage of coverage on the Great Lakes is around 40-50%,” Gill said. “We currently sit at 9%.”
The easternmost Great Lakes–Huron, Erie, and Ontario, never saw any ice cover this year.
The Bay of Green Bay is one of the iciest areas on the lakes. The area between Chamers Island and Sturgeon Bay is known amongst Coast Guard crews as “The Triangle”. But this year? Breaking it might be a little easier.
“Green Bay has what it normally has with regards to percentage of coverage,” Gill said Friday. “[But] the thickness is nowhere near.”
Commercial shipping is set to begin again next week.
