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U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Levi Read
USCGC Mackinaw
The Coast Guard Cutter Mackinaw breaks ice on the St. Marys River on Thursday, March 20, in preparation for the start of the shipping season.
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Kim Kosmatka
Aboard the USCGC Alder
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Kim Kosmatka
Aboard the USCGC Alder
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Siiri Branstrom / Lake Superior Magazine
Aboard the USGCG Alder
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Kim Kosmatka
Aboard the USCGC Alder
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Kim Kosmatka
Aboard the USCGC Alder
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Duluth Seaway Port Authority
Tug Helen H.
The Heritage Marine tug Helen H. works to free the Presque Isle on Thursday in the Twin Ports. The ore boat will depart for Two Harbors over the weekend.
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John Shibley / LSSU
LSSU Snowman Burning
Lake Superior State University welcomed spring by torching "Mr. Polar Vortex" during its annual snowman burning.
Coast Guard vessels and area tugs continue ice-breaking work
The Soo Locks open in just four days, on March 25, for the start of the shipping season. The U.S. Coast Guard posted photos this week of three of its cutters at work on the icy St. Marys River. According to a news release, the cutters transited through the locks this morning to cut a path across Lake Superior.
+ In Duluth, meanwhile, the Alder and local tugs continue to break ice. LSM Marketing Coordinator Siiri Branstrom and correspondent Kim Kosmatka were aboard the cutter yesterday. See their photos above.
The first lakers of the 2014 season will leave the port of Duluth-Superior this weekend, according to the Duluth Port Authority:
[T]raffic is set to start moving in the Port of Duluth-Superior as early as midday tomorrow – Sat., March 22 – with the anticipated departure of two Great Lakes Fleet carriers: the Cason J. Callaway and the Presque Isle. Both will head to Two Harbors, where they will load iron ore pellets bound for steel mills on the Lower Lakes. Plans are to have a third fleet mate that wintered in the Twin Ports – the John G. Munson – join them in Two Harbors to load on Sunday or Monday.
Those three lakers will then await the arrival of three U.S. Coast Guard icebreakers – the Mackinaw, Morro Bay and Katmai Bay – who are currently cutting tracks across Lake Superior from the Soo Locks to Duluth. After a respite to restock/refuel, the USCG units will depart, slowing down just long enough near Two Harbors to pick up and escort the GLF vessels in a convoy across the Lake and through the St. Marys River and locks at Sault Ste. Marie.
LSSU Melts "Mr. Polar Vortex"
To welcome spring and banish winter, each year Lake Superior State University burns a snowman effigy. This year’s burning reduced 12-foot “Mr. Polar Vortex” to ash.
+ NBC News: “Deep freeze no match for Coast Guard’s Ice Breakers.”
+ The Esko, Minnesota, boy’s basketball team won its first-ever state championship, reports Northland NewsCenter’s Sarah Wheeler. It’s the first title for a northeastern Minnesota school since 1991.
+ Magazine contributor Shawn Malone was interviewed by WLUC’s Shawn Householder in Marquette about photographing the northern lights.
+ CBC Thunder Bay: “Dozens of people gathered at a public meeting Wednesday night to hear the cleanup options for a 22-hectare patch of toxic sediment in Thunder Bay's harbour.”
+ WTIP North Shore Community Radio won four Minnesota AP news awards. The station broadcasts from Grand Marais.
+ Applications to perform at WTIP’s Radio Waves Music Festival are due by April 4.
+ A Soo Today reader photographed a local lynx.