June Sea Ice Area and Melt Ponding

I've previously blogged about the anomaly cliff in CT Area during June and its relationship with melt ponding. This anomaly drop is also seen in Wipneus's area and extent calculations based on gridded NSIDC data, it is not peculiar to Cryosphere Today Area.

However are the recent June anomaly cliffs simply due to spread of melt ponding, or is there something else going on?