Watch: Buffalo may be getting the worst of it, but Canadians aren’t out of the woods. Lake effect snow has also been falling around Toronto. Eric Sorensen explains what’s fueling these historic snowstorms.
TORONTO – Toronto called in the army after 113 centimetres of snow fell over two weeks in 1999. Now, imagine receiving that same amount in just 24 hours.
READ MORE: Incredible images as historic snowstorm blankets upstate New York
That’s just what parts of Buffalo are dealing with after battling snow for more than two days. The main cause of the 123-plus cm of snow (4 feet, for Americans) is due to lake effect snow.
To illustrate just how much snow has fallen on Buffalo, we decided to compare it to Global Toronto’s meteorologist Anthony Farnell — who happens to be over 6 feet tall.
Simply put, lake effect snow is caused by temperature differences.
It’s most common when fall becomes winter around the Great Lakes. Cold Arctic air flows down from the north, meeting the warmer bodies of water. Winds carry the system inland.
- Canadian man dies during Texas Ironman event. His widow wants answers as to why
- ‘Sciatica was gone’: hospital performs robot-assisted spinal surgery in Canadian first
- Honda’s $15B Ontario EV plant marks ‘historic day,’ Trudeau says
- Several baby products have been recalled by Health Canada. Here’s the list
“So lake effect refers to the phenomenon that occurs when you have very cold air travelling across relatively warm water,” Peter Kimbell, warning preparedness meteorologist with Environment Canada.
“And when it travels across the water, it picks up moisture, it condenses and causes cloud and will eventually dump that moisture in the form of precipitation on the other end of the water.”
The greater the temperature differences between the two, the greater the enhancement. In the case of Buffalo, the winds made all the difference.
The winds were travelling parallel to the lake, from the southwest to northeast, leaving Buffalo and surrounding areas right in the crosshairs.
Jason Franklin of the U.S. National Weather Service (NWS) discusses how much snow the Buffalo area has seen and what else residents can expect
What made this event particularly difficult was the persistence of the cold air and the extreme temperature difference between it and the warm water of Lake Erie. The winds stretched the length of the Great Lake and just wouldn’t let up for 30 hours.
“The Great Lakes receive lake effect snow every year. This is nothing new; it’s been going on forever,” Kimbell said. “This year is a particularly cold outbreak that we’re getting right now in November.
But why Buffalo?
“Well, Buffalo is at the head of the eastern part of Lake Erie,” Kimbell said. “And Lake Erie is a very long and narrow lake. So if you have the winds oriented exactly parallel to that lake, from the southwest to the northeast basically picking up moisture as it travels along Lake Erie, you can get situations as we saw yesterday, where a lot of snow can get dumped on the city of Buffalo in a short order of time.”
The worst part is that it isn’t over.
A large-scale system is pushing into western New York and Ontario. But then the winds over the lake — which had moved to the north dumping more snow in Niagara and St. Catharines Wednesday afternoon — are expected to return to the southwest.
The NWS has issued a lake effect snow warning from 11 p.m. Wednesday to 1 a.m. Friday.
To get real-time weather for your area, download the Global News Skytracker weather app.
With files from The Associated Press
Comments