Environment

Great Lakes Are Ice-Free at Last

After seven chilling months across the North American Great Lakes, winter’s grip on the region has finally ended.

With only days before the official start of summer, all five lakes became clear of the ice, which at one point in early March covered more than 92 percent of their combined surfaces.

That was the second-highest coverage on record, according to the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory.

Temperatures in the 80s helped finish off the few floating chunks that remained after the more than 2,000 hours of ice-clearing efforts by the U.S. Coast Guard this spring.

The last surviving chunk was on Lake Superior, near Marquette, Michigan.