Buffalo today!!!!

[Big Rig]

Lake effect snow squalls need a few factors to get them going - cold winds that are fairly well lined up with each other with height, but stronger as you go upward (wind shear), blowing over a sufficient amount of open water that's about a 13 degree C warmer than the air 1500 metres above it. That gives enough evaporation from the lake's surface to produce the instability for clouds to form and eventually produce precipitation that will freeze into snowflakes in the cold air. At the same time, it provides the right push from the winds to keep the clouds rolling along over more open lake surface to gather more moisture and keep them moving along after they reach land (and thus lose their connection to the moisture supply). The last piece of the puzzle falls into place when the 'fetch' - the amount of open lake water the winds have to blow over before they reach land again - is at least 100 kilometres long. As well, Buffalo is between two great lakes.

Now that they know exactly what causes it they need to figure out how to ameliorate it. That has to be a lot easier than landing a spacecraft on an asteroid.

 

[one.of.a.kind]

Things just keep getting worse. Meteorologists are now predicting 12 to 24 more inches of snow in the next 24 hours for Buffalo.

 

[anon1]

Now that they know exactly what causes it they need to figure out how to ameliorate it.

Thermo-nuclear detonation at 20,000 ft?

 

[SchlongConery]

Now that they know exactly what causes it they need to figure out how to ameliorate it. That has to be a lot easier than landing a spacecraft on an asteroid.

Perhaps they can find a fancier word that might do the trick?

But seriously.

Landing a spacecraft is a technical challenge.

The energy involved in winds, convection and phase change of water etc are almost incalculable. Not even Cachet Ladies calculator can handle those numbers!

To put the energy in perspective. Imagine five 747's with 4 engines each chocked to remain stationary and then running all of those engines up to full power and all the jet fuel they would burn! Stand back 500' and you will feel nothing.

Can you imagine how much energy there is in a 80 km/h wind blowing hundreds of miles across open water? And the energy liberated in the phase change from liquid to water vapour?

There has been almost measurable success in inducing building cumulus clouds to shed their rain early before they fully develop into supercells and tornados by "sseding"them with silver nitrate particles. It is expensive and takes a fleet of dedicated planes that scramble during the right conditions. The best they can do is barely reduce the crop damage by the monetary value of the cost to send the planes up.

Stopping lake effect snow? Easier to land a Cessna on an asteroid!

 

[DanJ]

The Bills are offering $10 hour and free tickets to people coming to help shovel the stadium out for this Sunday's game. I looked at the pics, you just have to wonder where the hell you start with that lol. The field already has 4 feet on it, and the stands are full of snow too. Where the hell do you put it?

 

[DanJ]

And further to that story, I'm watching CNN and the banner headline said the city has removed 5000 tons of snow from the streets so far. The Bills story said they have 220,000 tons of snow in the Ralph to remove.

 

[mandrill]

Buffalo lake-effect snow: What it is, how it happens

Buffalo has seen the lake-effect snow phenomenon before, but not like this — at least not in some time.

As much as an additional 250 centimetres of heavy, sopping snowfall was forecast to collect on the ground in the Buffalo and western New York area by the end of Thursday. The day before, the city was buried under 170 centimetres.

Even for a city that knows winter wallops, that’s significant, according to Environment Canada's senior climatologist David Phillips.

"This week, we saw a year’s worth of snow in the Buffalo area, so they got a real workout," he said, noting that the average annual snowfall for Buffalo is 245 centimetres.

So what’s so different about the latest round of squalls? It helps to understand some of the environmental conditions that fuel it.

What is lake-effect snow?

For one thing, it’s not really a storm system that dumped all this white stuff, said CBC meteorologist Jay Scotland.

Rather, it’s more of a weather phenomenon that occurs when very dense, cold air pushes across warmer water, in this case Lake Erie, forming steam clouds as the air overloads with moisture.

There’s also a magic number at play.

"If the air temperature is at least 13 degrees cooler than the water temperature of those prevailing winds, the result is that the moisture is picked up off the lake…and then released as heavy snow," Scotland explained.

"It’s heavy, wet snow because it’s ‘warm snow,’" he said.

As of Thursday afternoon, surface temperatures at some areas of Lake Erie were over 7 C, with the temperatures of prevailing winds around –13 C. Scotland said that the wider that temperature gap, the more intense the lake effect.

What else is needed for the lake effect to happen?

Phillips likens it to baking a cake. Aside from the at least 13-degree Celsius temperature difference between water and prevailing winds, there are some other key ingredients.

"You have to have the right winds, in the right direction," Phillips said. "If they’re quite variable, you won’t get the lake effects streamers, but just a little dusting of snow."

The combination ofcold, dry air across an open lake, and long, steady and strong winds are to blame for what’s happening in Buffalo.

In lake-effect conditions, winds are almost "locked" into a particular path, "almost as if you grease the skids and the air just flows in the same direction, speed and orientation and it just builds up and snows," Phillips said.

So why was the lake effect so intense in Buffalo?

The long expanse of Lake Erie has something to do with it, as well as its east-to-west orientation, Scotland said.

"The longer the distance of warm water that the air is travelling across, the heavier and more intense the snow will be," he said.

Climatologists and geographers refer to this overwater distance as a fetch. The longer the fetch, the more moisture it collects to fuel more intense snow bands.

As it happens, Buffalo is on the eastern tip of Lake Erie. Scotland said that means the cold air, acting like a sponge, soaks up more water vapour over the lake and then cools down once it reaches the shore to release a massive dump of snow.

"You have that long, expansive lake lined up perfectly with cold wind, and that’s what we’re seeing in Lake Erie and Buffalo. It’s a very pronounced situation," Scotland said.

The lake effect has been so dramatic that at least eight deaths in western New York have been blamed on the snow, mostly from people suffering cardiac arrest while shovelling out driveways.

Although the final numbers aren’t in yet, Phillips said climatologists are anticipating a possible U.S. record for snowfall during a 24-hour period.

How are the driving conditions in these squalls?

Motoring through a lake-effect snow event can alternate between periods of blustery white-knuckle driving interspersed with clear periods of blue skies, then back to a wall of blizzard-like conditions again just a few kilometres down the road.

"All of a sudden you can't see the hood ornament on your car and it's just blowing and drifting and coming at you, then you come out of it again," Phillips said.

These narrow bands of lake-effect snows are very common.

Scotland pointed out that while the polar blast swept southern Buffalo, it was relatively calm and sunny to the north.

"It’s highly localized, but it’s actually quite easy to understand," he said. "If you were to spray a garden hose on your lawn, is it your entire garden getting soaked? Or just the part of it that’s under the spray? This is literally like a hose shooting snow on top of you."

Is the lake effect all bad news, then?

Not if you’re a skier, apparently. A solid dose of lake-effect snow is actually welcomed by some ski resort operators, who see dollar signs when the rest of us see white.

"There have been some recreational areas built up because of the snow, so it’s not necessarily the curse or evil that everybody presents it to be," Phillips said.

Some resorts in the past have been able to open earlier than planned due to abundant lake-effect snow.

Phillips said the lake effect typically lasts from November through January, and then peters out in February as the lakes begin to cool off and ice over, cutting off moisture to the air.


http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/other/buffalo-lake-effect-snow-what-it-is-how-it-happens/ar-BBeTU0V

 

[Insidious Von]

Von,
Go to Santsiero's, Niagara and Lafayette. A dive if there ever was one. About 3 minutes north of the Peace Bridge. Have the pasta fazool.
Thank me later.

Considering what Buffalo goes through they probably make better pasta fagioli (with a generous portion of hamhock) than anything you can find in Italy. I'm not surprised, but they have such a shitty hockey team I have no reason to go there.