Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

Today recorded the first snowfall of 2002 in the Syracuse region, resulting from that most wonderful (or hated, as the case may be) fact of climate and geography: the lake effect. For those who have better things to do than watch the Weather Channel, the "lake effect" happens when cold air blows across the surface of a warmer body of water, picking up a substantial amount of moisture as it does so. Then, when that now-moisture-laden air moves over land again, the moisture comes out as precipitation -- generally, snow, and lots of it. How much snow falls, and where, is determined by the direction of the winds as they cross over the water onto land. Lake effect snow tends to set up in narrow "bands" of intense snowfall, so one can be in the middle of a blizzard in one spot while someone else, just miles away, can be experiencing no snowfall whatsoever. And even weirder is if one is outside the band where the snow is currently falling, one can actually see the band of clouds during the day -- there will actually be this long, dark stretch of threatening-looking clouds to the south or north.

The gigantic snowfall that paralyzed Buffalo last December was a lake-effect storm. In that case, the winds traveled up the entire length of Lake Erie, picking up pretty much the maximum possible amount of moisture before encountering the first bit of land at the lake's opposite end -- which just happens to be where Buffalo sits. Ergo, gigantic blizzard in the city and the south and eastern suburbs, but nothing in the northern suburbs and little in "ski country", which is about thirty-five miles south of Buffalo.

Now that I'm living in Syracuse, though, the operative lake is no longer Lake Erie but Lake Ontario. The key difference now, the "unknown factor" as it were (unknown to me, that is; I'm sure the locals know all about it) is that Lake Ontario, being much deeper than Lake Erie, does not freeze over during the winter. This means that lake-effect snow is a constant possibility all through the winter. In Buffalo, though, once Lake Erie freezes over during the winter -- Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes -- the lake-effect "snow machine" stops, and for the most part Buffalo stops recording snowfall.

Another key difference is that Buffalo is far enough inland that the infamous Nor'easters do not affect it, unless the Nor'easter in question is positively gigantic. (The "Storm of the Century" in 1993 is a prime example.) Syracuse, on the other hand, appears to be poised to catch the westernmost cusp of the Nor'easters as they make their Baltimore-Philly-New York-Boston-Portland trek. Thus, in short: I am bracing myself for a lot of snow this year.