If you like snow, then Buffalo is for you. Last winter, this upstate city in New York received more than 100 inches of snow!
Over 5 feet of this snow arrived during one storm in November. The storm led to hundreds of major roof collapses and structural failures, thousands of stranded motorists and scattered food and gas shortages due to impassable roads. Numerous trees also gave way due to the weight of the snow, causing isolated power outages.
A second storm arrived a couple days later, dropping another 1 to 4 feet of snow. Storm totals from the two storms peaked at nearly 7 feet, with homes submerged in dense snowpack.
While Buffalo was swamped in what residents called “a wall of snow,” a few miles inland the snow only amounted to a couple of inches. How come?
The reason is the city’s location on the shore of Lake Erie.
When really cold air from the north comes down over Lake Erie, the warm lake below acts as a source of energy, producing lake effect snow. The cold air sucks up warmth and moisture from the lake through evaporation. How long the air spends over the lake is called residence time, and how far it travels over the lake is called fetch.
Residence time and fetch are very important because if the air doesn’t spend enough time over the lake, it doesn’t get enough energy or moisture to make lake effect snow. The wind must be coming from the right direction over the lake to produce record amounts of snow.
When the air reaches the shore, it dumps all of that moisture in snow form. These snow storms form in narrow bands that don’t really move, so five miles away it could be sunny, but in the storm you could get feet of snow. That’s the power of lake effect snow.
So, if you like snow, Buffalo is for you!
