a lake and dead winter trees at dusk

The Great Lakes depend on ice. Last winter, they barely froze.

The region comes alive during winter. But both culture and the economy suffer when the cold doesn’t come.

JANUARY 8, 2020. LAKE ERIE. With its iceless water stretching into the distance on a January day, Lake Erie’s Presque Isle State Park exemplifies the region’s warming winters.

Photograph by Amy Sacka
A version of this story appears in the September 2020 issue of National Geographic magazine.

It’s still dark and well below freezing when Kristie Leavitt pulls to a stop and turns off the ATV’s rumbling motor. For a moment, there’s no sound but the faint whisper of wind sweeping over the ice. The navy blue sky begins to lighten. The cold air burns in her lungs.

Bundled in a hot-pink coat that matches her fishing hut and gear, Leavitt hops down from the driver’s seat onto the 18-inch-thick ice that covers this corner of Munuscong Lake, on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Her boots crunch into a thin layer of snow as she begins the ritual of preparing for one of her favorite activities: ice fishing.

Leavitt is among the nearly two million ice anglers in the

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