'GloBULLwarming' - Huge ice cap on Lake Erie puts arrival of spring on hold

'GloBULLwarming' - Huge ice cap on Lake Erie puts arrival of spring on hold. (BuffaloNews).

The large ice cap still encrusting most of Lake Erie would cover all of Long Island, Connecticut and Rhode Island combined.

It’s two feet thick in many places, and melting oh-so-slowly. Last year, it wasn’t completely gone until May.

The lake ice is the biggest, whitest sign that spring’s arrival is again delayed. And the temperature is not going to warm up any time soon. This will be the longest it has taken to reach 60 degrees since 1980.

Farmers have crops to plant. Boaters want to get into the water. There are fish to stock, buildings to fix and driveways to repair. All of this is delayed.

“As soon as they can, they’ll get out there,” said Rich Davenport, a North Tonawanda fisherman of his fellow anglers. “Some will dodge icebergs. I’m not one of them.”

A later-than-usual spring also means the ice boom will stay in longer again this year.

The boom, a fixture in the Buffalo harbor since 1964, is removed by April 1 under order of the International Joint Commission, but can be delayed if more than 250 square miles of ice remains in the eastern end of the lake. That’s an area about half the size of Niagara County.

“We’ll be waiting for the 250 square miles of ice,” Lou Paonessa, a spokesman for the New York Power Authority, said late last week.

The ice boom protects power production water intakes further downstream on the Niagara River from massive ice floes and prevents ice damming on the river, damage to shorelines and docks. It was taken out last year on April 29.

Fishing from a boat is impossible for now. When the ice finally starts to subside, it drifts eastward toward the ice boom. That opens up waters first near Barcelona and Dunkirk.

The calendar says it’s already time for farmers to plant corn and lettuce. But that’s going to have to wait.

“Every season is different,” said David Walczak, sales and operations manager for Eden Valley Growers Inc., as wet snow fell over plowed fields late last week along Route 62. “You deal with it.”

The ground in the fields was thawing out, but drowned in water and mud.

“They’ll keel,” it you put them into those conditions, Walczak explained.

“There’s still frost on the ground,” said Dan Henry, the vice president of nearby W.D. Henry & Sons growers in Eden. “That has to be thawed out and dried out.”

The slow transition from winter to spring isn’t worrying Walczak or Henry just yet. It’s still relatively early.

But if April starts looking like a dud, growers may start getting anxious. By the middle of April, cabbage, broccoli and other leafy greens should be planted. “Hopefully, we’ll be able to catch up,” Henry said.

“If we start a week or two weeks late, it doesn’t mean we’ll be a week or two weeks late come harvest time, it could be a couple of days,” Henry added. “It might mean instead of having sweet corn on the Fourth of July, it means having it on the 10th or 11th.”

The Henry farm – and many other local growers – are already limping out of the gate this year.

November’s double lake-effect snowstorm destroyed the massive warehouse at the Henry farm, along with a few of its greenhouses.

“Agriculture is challenging enough as it is,” Henry said. “It just makes what we do a lot more challenging.”

Grapes of winter’s wrath

Grape growers are also taking the brunt of another brutal winter.

Last year, vast percentages of wine grapes were wiped out by the bitter cold. This winter, extreme temperatures of up to 30 below zero killed off the buds in up to 60 percent of the hardier native Concord and Niagara grapes, according to Luke Haggerty, a specialist for the Lake Erie Regional Grape Program of the Cornell Cooperative Extension in Portland.

Bud loss affects grape production in the coming year. The real damage – death to the vascular tissues of the grape vines – won’t be known until later this year.

“It’s the coldest it’s been in this area for 80 years,” Haggerty said. “There’s a lot of anxiety as far as what to expect and what is coming.” “Our biggest concern with Concords and Niagaras is they are the bread and butter of what we grow here.”

Research by Terry Bates, the director of the extension’s Lake Erie office, found a correlation exists between the amount and length of time there’s ice on Lake Erie and the calendar date when grape vines first bloom.

“If it stays cold like they’re predicting, it’ll be late and it’ll be a shorter growing season,” Bates said, not just for grapes, but fruits and vegetables too.  Hmmmm......I'm sure that if you would be crazy enough to start talking about 'globalwarming' to any farmer in North America ....you better start running for your life.Read the full story here.