Limited ice allows for lake-effect snow

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Geoff Cornish takes a look at the Great Lakes' water temperatures, the slow growth of ice and why lake-effect locations typically see a front-loaded snow season.

Transcript

00:00Well, the ice sculptures were being created in many areas. Here's an example from State College PA, but you know,

00:07with ice on the mind,

00:08we haven't seen a whole lot of ice yet on the Great Lakes, and that means the lakes are still open for business.

00:13I wanted to talk a little bit about the rhythm of lake effects snow season. Here we have

00:17monthly snowfall averages for Erie, Pennsylvania.

00:21You're going to notice that it's a front-loaded season. If it were a total bell curve,

00:26the snow climatology might be more like this,

00:28but in reality, in an area like Erie, PA, where it's largely driven by lake effect,

00:34a lot of the snow falls in the early part of the winter, late fall, and winter.

00:39In fact, we see almost as much snow in November as we do in March,

00:42but you can see quite a bit more in December and early January compared to in the latter part of

00:48winter, and that's because the lakes gradually turn colder. The greatest fuel for lake effect snow production is a warm lake, and

00:55back on November 26,

00:57this was at the end of a very mild November before we really got cold.

01:01You can see the lake water temperatures were at near record highs for that time of the year.

01:06Check up on where we stand now. Yes, we did chill down a lot.

01:09We saw a big drop into early December, but actually some lakes have stabilized. If not, maybe even gained a couple degrees back.

01:15So lake water temps still running a bit above average, and if we take a look at the ice coverage,

01:20well, you got to search for it. Some of the bays here in the Green Bay, for example,

01:24with some ice, the shallower waters,

01:26but we're not really seeing much yet, and that means the lakes are still very much open for business,

01:30and we're going to see some significant lake effect snow pile up. Take a look at this here into Thursday.

01:37We're going to see a connection between Lake Superior, the Georgian Bay attached to Lake Huron, and Lake

01:42Ontario dumping heavy snow into the areas around the Tug Hill Plateau

01:45with one to two feet into Syracuse as well. Heavy snow downwind of Lake Erie as well.

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