I hope the current forecast holds, so we can get decent ice formation. In the first couple of days, we have very cold Hudson Bay region, with favorable winds from the northwest, then Chukchi should get going (finally!) with cold weather + wind from the north, and most importantly it looks like the cold could stay there and in the basin as a whole, for a while at least. Kara could close too, but we'll see.
We'll see if SST in Chukchi is still too high to freeze, even with favorable conditions, I hope not.