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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Great Lakes Freeze-Over Means Colder Wisconsin Spring

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Monday, March 10, 2014   

GREEN BAY, Wis. - As of this weekend, more than 90 percent of the surface of the Great Lakes was covered in ice, and that will affect the spring weather, according to meteorologist Jeff Last, National Weather Service, Green Bay. Such a freeze-over is rare, he said.

"To have over 90 percent ice cover on the Great Lakes is pretty unusual," Last noted. "The last time that happened was back in 1994, and before that back in 1979, so it certainly does not happen very frequently."

Last said the frigid winter caused so much ice to form on the Great Lakes that, in turn, it will affect how fast temperatures warm up this spring.

"It'll take a while for it to melt. That means that the Great Lakes will be colder as we go into spring and even the early part of the summer, and that may have an effect on our temperatures then. Because the Great Lakes do cover a lot of area, that cold source will affect springtime temperatures as we go through the next few months," he said.

In 1979, the ice cover on the Great Lakes was 94.7 percent, the largest recorded by scientists since 1963, the first year Great Lakes ice coverage was tracked. Last said it is a good bet that that record will be broken this year, because the cold weather has not yet relented.

The good news, according to Last, is the heavy ice cover will mean higher lake levels this summer.

"The ice actually keeps the lake levels up. It reduces the amount of evaporation which typically occurs in the wintertime. With that ice, evaporation is minimized, so that means that the lake levels will stay up," he explained, "and that's good, because they have been at historic lows over the last decade or so."




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