At a Glance

Lake Erie went from nearly ice-free around Christmas to almost completely ice covered in about two weeks.This was thanks to the coldest late-December to early-January stretch on record in many Great Lakes locations.Great Lakes ice cover is already more extensive than the peak from last winter.

In just over two weeks, Lake Erie went from virtually ice-free to almost completely iced over, thanks to the coldest late-December through early-January stretch on record.

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On Dec. 23, as the onslaught of bitter Arctic cold was first taking shape, less than 1 percent of Lake Erie was ice covered, according to .

High-resolution visible satellite images of increasing ice cover on Lake Erie from Dec. 25, 2017 through Jan. 6, 2018.

(NASA Worldview)

By Jan. 8, just over 87 percent of Lake Erie was covered by ice, , NOAA-GLERL data indicated.

This is also well above the lake's average ice cover for the second week of January – about 25 percent.

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Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes, and therefore, most winters that are sufficiently cold.

However, the lake typically maxes out its ice coverage in mid-February, after a long winter of cold weather.

The two-week stretch from Christmas Day 2017 through Jan, 7, 2018, was the coldest such stretch on record in Detroit, Toledo, Ohio;Erie, Pennsylvania;and Buffalo, New York, according to the Southeast Regional Climate Center.

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A Great Lakes Towing Company tugboat breaks ice on Presque Isle Bay in Erie, Pa., Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2018.

(Greg Wohlford/Erie Times-News via AP)

Only a similar stretch in 1878-79 was colder in Cleveland than this recent two-week period.

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Not surprisingly, was more expansive than at any point in the 2016-17 winter season, with just over one-quarter of the surface area covered by ice, as of Jan. 8.

, the second highest peak Great Lakes ice coverage in the 45-year period of record.

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Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been an incurable weather geek since a tornado narrowly missed his childhood home in Wisconsin at age 7. Follow him onand.