They play the browns at 1:00. Snow is to start Thursday night and end Monday at 6:00am.
Buffalo to get three feet of snow over the weekend
- Thread starter Obliviax
- Start date
Football in the snow is the best
My nephew's hockey team was supposed to have gone to Niagara Falls this weekend for a tournament, but fortunately it was canceled a few weeks ago. Based on that forecast, I'm sure we wouldn't have gone anyway. I just can't imagine living in a region where you have to worry about shoveling your roof.
I read on AccuWeather yesterday that Lake Erie still was 55 degrees, which is considered to be very warm for this time of the year. When the Great Lakes are that warm and you get the right winds, that's the kiss of death for regions like Northwestern NY and Northwestern PA and the area east of Lake Ontario heading towards Syracuse.
Several years ago I was in Orchard Park picking up a car. The guy at the dealership said that were expecting a foot-and-a-half that night. They got seven feet.
As we know, the precise wind direction makes a huge difference. There's this:
Lake effect snow!As we know, the precise wind direction makes a huge difference. There's this:
but it can easily swing down toward Erie. Hunker down!
Buffalo gets hit if the weather comes from three of the four directions
Yes! But hit harder with (expected) wind from SW than from NW
Correct - the prevailing wind direction when the winter "arctic wind" comes is slightly southerly from Canada - IOW from the NW as you say. Erie typically gets more snow then Buffalo from a typical winter "arctic wind" path because of how it is situated on the Lake Shore which runs Northeasterly, not horizontally East-West -- essentially, Erie is located directly opposite where the southerly-dipping "artic wind" blows across the entire width of the Lake (Buffalo gets more from a true westerly weather pattern.).
Yeah I grew up in Erie. Lawrence Park - sometimes too close to that warmer lake to get the immediate snow dump but go a couple of miles inland (e.g., Behrend) and you see it pile up fast!
I-90 runs just north of the "glacial ridge" - the heaviest snow is caused by the change in elevation of the Glacial Ridge (also why many of the orchards are on the north-side of the ridge as that is where the heaviest morning dew falls.
I lived in Buffalo from 1956 to 1959. The snow would get so deep that we will jump off my grandmother's 2nd story backyard porch into the snow drifts. We were poor and I made good money shoveling sidewalks.
I'm amazed at how the snow is so concentrated in the Erie area. I travel often to New Castle and Hermitage which are roughly 80 miles south. I always call the people to see what they're getting. On reason is obviously travel. The second is its really hard to pick out large holes in the ground (mine subsidence) with 3 feet of snow. Even when Erie and Buffalo are getting pounded, those areas seem to get little to nothing.
It is rumored that the tears and collective grumblings of the PSU fan base after losing to both Michigan and OSU again are the cause of at least one tropical storm. 🙂
The answer is lake effect snow. See Woodpecker's post above. This time of year, the lake temperature is behind the climate temp. So you get these polar express fronts coming down from Canada over the lake. Heat rises so the cold, dry front picks up moisture from the lake and dumps it a mile to 20 miles inland (being on the lake, the lake temp keeps it from snowing as it is too warm and it takes a while for the moisture to form into flakes). The spring has the opposite effect where the lakefront is typically 5 degrees or more cooler than inland (depending upon wind direction).
I get all the mechanisms at work. I'm just amazed at how concentrated the snowfall is. Like you said, 20 miles out seems to be the line.
Around here, NE Ohio, if you travel enough you start to get an idea of the "bands" of weather that are common to lake effect snow. Most of it comes from Canadian fronts traveling in a SE-rly direction. Others are nor'easters. But if they are SE-rly, there is a two-mile stretch just north of Breaksville Ohio on Rt 77 that is a mess. You are clipping along on a wet highway at 65 mph and then get his by a mile stretch of snow-covered and icy road for a mile. Then, suddenly, back to wet with no change in temperature. Cars would be wrecked all over as they hit the icy patch at 65 and spin out trying to slow down or miss cars already spun out. I got to the point, on that commute, where I knew the say it was going to happen when hopping into may car to make the to-downtown-CLE commute. I know other areas are similar.
Again, it is the Glacial Ridge that causes the snow to stack up just inside it. As I understand it, the significant change in elevation slows the weather pattern as it moves across it causing the larger accumulations.
The cure for lake effect snow is when the lake freezes over. Ice subliminates much slower than watery evaporates. It also solves the problem of every day being a cloudy day.
Just air. Not really weather, lol, since it’s sunny everywhere else, often. I live in it and watch it come and go. Pretty entertaining.
And it’s snowing right now.
I wouldn't think that you would get anywhere near that amount of moisture in the air that far from a body of water.
No. We certainly don't, but I probably implied it. I was more talking about storms stalling out over top of us. It happens here, but not with the severe results that the Lakes get.
Question for those more knowledgeable. Do all the cities and towns along the Great Lakes experience similar weather patterns?
Wind generally blows west to east
Lake effect follows the air movement so it's typically the Eastern side of the lakes that get it
not with 3-4 feet of snow coming. As much as everyone likes snowy games this is different
No, it depends on which lake you're talking about. These are inland freshwater seas, not really lakes - they are very large bodies of water that can run hundreds of miles in length or width. Lake Erie is situated quite differently than the lakes to its West (Huron, Michigan and Superior as you go west) - these lakes are all north and west of Lake Erie. Lake Erie runs Northeasterly from Toledo, OH to Buffalo - not horizontally E-W. The artic weather pattern dips Southeasterly as it hits the Great Lakes Region and then bends back Northeasterly right after it crosses Lake Erie and essentially blows directly through New England (again creating a southerly "dip"/bulge right over Lake Erie), so this combination of the Arctic Wind coming SE down right over Lake Erie combined with the way Lake Erie sits geologically (i.e., Northeasterly starting in Toledo and running to Buffalo - approximately 300 miles tip-to-tip, but Buffalo is probably 150 miles North of Toledo, but Toledo is only about 200 miles West - IOW, 300 miles tip-to-tip straight across the middle of the Lake is the hypotenuse of the right-triangle formed if you went 200 miles due east and then 150 miles due north). This creates a situation where the extremely cold artic air is pushing SE across the full width of the Lake for the upper-half of Lake Erie (i.e., smack dab where Erie, PA is located) - so the upper-half of Lake Erie (i.e., Lake's shore further east) gets the most snow in typical winter storms as compared to the lower-half (westerly half).
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Buffalo fans will cry b******* on that move. They are really really tough people.
Not the first time Buffalo has had a snow storm. For the first 50 years this was just fine. Now the pu$$ies have taken over the sport and suddenly we can't play mommy, too much snowwww...
I think the greater concern will be player health. The playing surface of Ford Field is considered a health hazard by the NFLPA. If a key Bill blows out a knee there will be incredible blowback. There had to be a better venue to relocate this game. Maybe Soldier Field? Thinking outside the box, Toronto?
