Drone video shows Michigan frozen lake after winter storm days
Night drone captured the stunning view while ice covered with ice Michigan on February 19, 2025.
Night drone through history
- February in southeastern Michigan brought colder than normal temperatures
- After two warm winters without ice, Lake St. Clair froze this year, increasing the business for retailers with ice fishing.
- Snow businesses, which usually operate on seasonal contracts, had a busy winter due to frequent snowfall.
A year ago at this time, John Bacarella was destroying the cold but open waters of St. Clair Lake. He owns the Direct Direct’s Direct, a Bait and Tackle Shop to Harrison Township, just outside St. Clair Metropark Lake, and a second straight winter of a frozen lake was destroying the ice fishing business, which he rests in the winter to make his own cash ring.
“A very significant percentage of our annual income – more than during the summer with a wide margin – comes from fishing on ice. No ice essentially hurts us,” Bacarella said in February 2024.
This extremely cold, snowy winter, St. Clair Lake is almost completely covered with ice throughout January and February. She has given Bacarella, his business and his customers for ice fishing a lake to stand.
“It has been amazing, absolutely night and days from last year,” he said.
Bacarella said he is seeing more business than he remembered the previous winters of the frozen lake, which he foams on the closed demand.
“It was a true god, I’ll tell you after a few years without ice,” he said. “This helped the stores with large boxes have given up the ice fishing completely. They were not prepared at all.”
February was mostly normal, even if it felt too cold
It was a colder February, snow than usual in southeastern Michigan, though nothing close to records. Perhaps it was felt that way, given the gentle winters of the last years.
The average February temperature until Thursday was 25.6 degrees, below the long -term average of 27.9 degrees, said Kevin Kacan, a meteorologist with the national weather service in White Lake.
The high temperature failed or exceeded the freezing point of 32 degrees in 13 days this February. “Last year, there were only two days in February 2024 where the temperature did not reach or exceeded 32F,” Kacan said.
But it should only return in February 2022 to find the last time with 13 days under freezing per month, and had 15 days in 2021, he said.
February snowfall in Detroit was 12.2 inches, a nearby quadrant of February 2024 of 2024, but almost precisely fulfilling the average long-term weather of snow for February 12.1 inches.
Great Lakes were generally 52.25% of ice covered recently on February 21st. A late month’s heating has repeatedly knocked it again, at 25.32% ice cover in general since Thursday. This is compatible with the long-term average of winter ice cover of 52% returning in 1973.
A soft weather model La Nicha has continued in the Pacific Ocean this winter, a weather phenomenon marked by surface water cooler than average in the Eastern-Central Equatorial Pacific. It tends to affect the weather models and the flow of aircraft over North America, leading to cooler and wetter weather in the region of large lakes.
“La niñas are very lucrative for snowfall; you get an El Niño (a Pacific weather model with warmer surface temperatures that generally leads to smoother winters in the large lakes region), is very bad,” said Chris Chambers, owner of Baypointe Lawn and Snowprowing LLC in Waterford.
The vast majority of snow companies work on seasonal contract, as the costs of expensive vehicles and leaves are no matter how soft or heavy winter weather is, Chambers said. “If you didn’t, you would be out of business after a couple of years El Niño,” he said.
This winter has implied much more frequent plowing for each client.
“It was a busy winter and it’s not over yet,” the Chambers said. “We’ll probably get one or two snowstorms.”
Contact Keith Matheny: kmatheny@freepress.com