As you know, I try to stick to local weather, but from time to time, a weather event occurs that you just can’t help talking about. Over the course of the last two days, areas in the snow belts around the Great Lakes have been pummeled by an epic lake effect snow event. The snow belt in the Tug Hill Plateau south of Buffalo has seen the worst of it, with snowfall totals in certain neighborhoods already approaching six feet. And it isn’t over yet!
Based on observations from the National Weather Service data, it looks like wide swathes of the area south of Buffalo just got hammered with snowfall ranging anywhere from 36″-60″ (3-5 feet!) of snow.
The snow is so brutal that the Buffalo Bills are scrambling to clear Ralph Wilson Stadium ahead of a scheduled game on Sunday. Lake Effect Snow Warnings are still in force in the area – and there are forecasts of an additional two feet of snow in the next couple days. The NFL may need to move or postpone the game if the Bills can’t get the snow cleared in time. The team is giving away tickets and such to anyone who’ll help dig out.
What is Lake Effect Snow?
Lake effect snow occurs when very cold air flows over a relatively warm body of water. As the cold air blows across the surface of this warmer body of water, it can quickly become saturated with moisture that evaporates (cold air can become saturated quickly because it inherently cannot hold that much water vapor). When this now saturated airmass hits the opposing shoreline, orographic (terrain) forcing causes the air to rise up (leading the airmass to become so cold that the moisture is forced to precipitate out), and provides the energy to spark of often intense, highly localized precipitation events.
This particular event has been so prodigious partially because of the alignment of winds over the surface of Lake Erie. Fetch, or the distance over which air flows across a body of water, greatly influences the severity of a lake effect storm. The longer the fetch, the more time the air has to pick up moisture off the water. In this case, the water temperature of Lake Erie is still relatively warm since air temperatures have not been that cold yet, and the winds are oriented such that the fetch is maximized over the surface of the lake (from west-southwest to east-northeast). Conditions should improve rapidly by Friday as high pressure over the Central Plains moves to the east and winds shift to the northwest.
