After having kept a close watch on the Bering Sea (which is now practically empty of sea ice), we turn our attention to the Hudson Bay, by comparing this year's sea ice concentration with that of previous years.For this I have again gratefully made use of the University of Bremen archive of sea ice concentration maps:
If we disregard the colours and just focus on the shape of the ice pack in Hudson Bay, we see that 2006 and 2010 had less area covered than this year. It looks quite similar to 2005 and 2007, although the ice pack in those years seems to be less concentrated than now.
When the melting abruptly stalled last year towards the end of June there was some speculation that this had to do with the rapid melt of the 'easy ice' in Hudson Bay coming to an end. This might have played a role at first, but the slow decrease of sea ice area and extent continued all the way to mid-August due to weather patterns.
This year the rapid melting seems to have taken place elsewhere (Siberia) as 2011 is approximately 200K square km behind 2010 in Hudson Bay, according to Cryosphere Today: