Brutal, Continuous Lake-Effect Snow

Blog reader Draupp from Michigan emailed me today to say:

I have to admit that sometimes we don't cover lake-effect snow well. This is because it happens so frequently in relatively low-population areas. But that doesn't mean that it's insignificant and I would encourage any of those of you who live in lake-effect areas to help us promote it more by sending your snowfall photos to our Photo Gallery and entering your snowfall amounts into the SnowMatrix.

However, the next few days will feature prime conditions for lake-effect snow, and we are covering the story today in our Weather Headlines (PREMIUM | PRO) and Breaking Weather News Page (PREMIUM | PRO), as well as our new Midwest News Blog (PREMIUM | PRO) -- this new blog may allow us to cover it more effectively in the future too, though you should monitor the new East News Blog (PREMIUM | PRO) for New York lake-effect.

Here's our official snowfall map (through Monday) from the AccuModel on the Pro site. As you can see, if you live even close to the eastern side of any of the Great Lakes, you are going to be using your snow shovel a lot this weekend.

I didn't realize that it had been snowing anywhere for 21 days straight, that is very impressive. Though I'm not surprised, now that I think about it -- during a normal winter, the lakes would be much colder than they were in mid-January when the cold air finally settled in. The bigger the difference between the water and air temperature, the more lake-effect you'll have, and the longer it will last (for a more complete explanation of lake-effect snow, see "Lake-Effect Lasagna").