No Swimming - Beach Closed
Winter has arrived a little earlier with a little more intensity than usual here in northern Ohio. We got hit by the same winter storm that hit the upper Midwest over the weekend. On Saturday we had temps around 40F (5C) with heavy rain, but on Sunday the thermometer started dropping in the morning and didn’t stop until it reached 12F (-11C) on Monday morning. I don’t think we got as much snow as was predicted, but it’s hard to tell because the 45 mph (75 kph) north wind scours some open areas clean to the pavement, but piles up 3 foot (1 m) drifts in the lee of objects like houses and parked cars. I can see bare frozen grass right next to drifted snow.
I was working near the Lake Erie shore, to the west of Cleveland yesterday, and we finished our job a little after lunch. Instead of heading to my warm home, I drove toward the city and visited Lakefront State Park and Edgewater Park, a few miles to the west of downtown. With those temperatures and that wind racing down from Canada across 60 miles (100 km) of open water, the wind chill factor on open flesh was around -10F (-23C). I could barely open the door of my vehicle against the force of the wind, and to take pictures I had to stand behind it, both to protect the camera from the spray of the crashing 6 foot (2 m) waves and to keep myself upright on the thick ice of the parking lot.
If these temperatures hang around from here on out, Lake Erie will begin freezing by Christmas, and could be frozen across by the first weeks of February.
Fishing pier at Edgewater Park in Cleveland.