I dont think this wind is going to do anything to the ice . It is still frozen solid across the Western basin all the way to Canada . No room for it to be able to move this year. Earlier we had a few days with gust over 40 mph for the SW and the ice didnt budge . We have had open water East of Kellys pretty much all winter long as this is the norm for Erie .

No one has really seen ice like this since 79 so no one really knows for sure what and when the ice will go bad .

With the rivers having so many ice jams in them , it will restrict the flows out to the lake until some of them are gone . The last warm up we had took like 2-3 weeks before seeing any dirty water that had come out of the rivers due to the ice jam problem in the rivers . Another reason the runoff will not be as bad is the fact that the ground is still frozen .

Dont get me wrong as I love the boating season as well , but think we are looking at a good month to get rid of the ice in both the lake and channels to have enough room to fish out there .

The shore ice will go bad before any of the other ice and air boats will be the only means of fishing at that point for a couple of weeks .

Like I said you never know with this much ice still out there but this is just my thinking .

Dale