CBC - Labrador Temps 4C Over Avg Since Mid-December; Sea Ice Thin To Nonexistent, Hampering Travel

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Elsie Hunter had a very different snowmobile ride to the cabin from her home in Nain this past Christmas. "It was quite an adventure travelling over the hills.… I'm used to travelling on the ice and having the ice road, and it's flat, and the conditions are completely different than travelling over the hills," Hunter said in a recent interview with CBC News.

The overland adventure didn't happen just to spice up Hunter's trip. Ice travel, and the ice road, are no-gos so far in Nain this winter, and Hunter said she's not the only one altering routes or forsaking them altogether, with many locals facing conditions far outside the norm. "It's a completely different year here up in Nain. It's a harder year," she said.

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A harder year, and a much warmer one. According to the Canadian Ice Service, all of Labrador has been averaging four degrees Celsius above normal since mid-December. "It has been a very warm winter so far, yes, and has been rightfully noted as translating into lesser and thinner sea ice," said Brad Drummond, a senior ice forecaster with the service. Those temperatures, along with storm systems that have broken up ice in its fragile forming stage, mean ice coverage is lagging about two to three weeks behind what's typical, said Drummond, although he noted that what constitutes "typical" is changing.

"We can and have seen some slower starts in recent years, so in kind of a short-term history, this is becoming more normal," he said. Rex Holwell of Nain has been watching the sea ice shift for decades. "When I was young, we were on the sea ice sometimes as early as the end of November. But conditions with climate chance happening the way it is, I mean, last year I wasn't on the sea ice until late January," he said.

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EDIT

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/sea-ice-labrador-coast-2021-1.5877188