Okay, I am sure everyone has seen this already over at the main melting thread. Many thanks to bairgon for posting it.
Relevance to this thread:oh crap it sure looks like Baffin Bay is coming right up the channel after poor #14. This looks like 100 miles of fracturing opening up overnight, not much more than another hundred to get to #14's present location. And here I thought we were going to get to watch some melt ponds form, some nice in situ melting.... (LOL)
Look back at 2015: this area was completely open then, yet there where Obuoy14 is ice was breaking up in August. In the winter of 2015 a polynya was operating pretty much up to Resolute. In January ice usually keeps breaking up to the islands just west of Resolute (have to look at the band31 IR images in the darkness)
Sure its fun to spot something new and exciting and be the first to tell the others, but its also fun to look into the background and find out more about it (I think). But yes, I don't have as many friends as I might have in a "PHWOAR isn't XYZ amazing!!!" crowd. Guess I never liked crowds much somehow, my parents saw how nasty that can get and it must have rubbed off on me.
Sorry, I'm probably overreacting.
Back on topic: expect further break up up to those islands, how soon is not really predictable. Channels to the south will break up soon. Lots of surface water there on the southern NWP route.
The basin where Obuoy14 is is pretty tough this year, but there are cracks from earlier in the year where things will start to happen because they are covered with thinner infill.
Will it all disappear in two weeks? No way, not even four.