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But what Leavitt was doing the February day was a rare occurrence last winter across the Great Lakes. The long-term average for ice coverage on all five Great Lakes -- Superior, Michigan, Erie, Huron, and Ontario -- is 54 percent. Last winter, ice covered only 19.5% of the lake's surface is a near record low.
但這個二月天拉維特所做的事，在去年冬天的五大湖一帶卻不常見。長期以來，蘇必利爾湖、密歇根湖、伊利湖、休倫湖、安大略湖這五大湖的平均覆冰量是54%。去年冬天卻僅有19.5%的湖面有冰覆蓋，幾乎是創紀錄地低。
Some lakes in the region didn't freeze at all. Others saw only faint traces of ice around their edges, or froze briefly. The weekend before Leavitt's outing, temperatures in the region shot up to 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and ice anglers slogged through slush in T-shirts.
這一帶有些湖泊根本沒有結凍。另一些則只在湖岸邊有些微的冰，或只是暫時結冰。拉維特去冰釣前的那個周末，該地區的氣溫沖上了40華氏度，冰釣客是穿著T恤在雪泥中行走的。
One overly warm season isn't necessarily a harbinger of inevitable. But increasingly, scientists can pick out patterns in the scattershot records of change from across the Great Lakes, and those patterns are pointing toward a sobering conclusion: The 2019/2020 winter, with its faint traces of ice, is likely just a taste of the future.
一次溫暖過頭的冬季，不見得就預示了未來必定是如此。但是科學家也越來越能從五大湖各地散亂的變化紀錄中看出模式，而這些模式全都指向一個令人警醒的結論：只有少許湖冰的2019至2020年冬季，可能只是讓人提早體驗未來。
