Talk:Lake-effect snow

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Maybe we should have an article on snowbelts too, detail hereThadk 19:42, 2004 Jun 14 (UTC)

I added snowbelt into my revision. There seems to be opinions not backed up with facts throughout the article. I have marked where citations are useful and/or needed for those occurances. And another thing: Just who calls lake effect snow 'The Great Grey Funk?' Must be a Canadian/Midwest thing. Like mispronouncing the letter 'O' or calling carbonated beverages 'POP' rather than 'SODA.'216.170.144.5 12:51, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

I believe it is a local term in some US areas. User:CuffX 03:38, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Graphic

I question whether the animated graphic accompanying this article really depicts lake effect snow as it is classically seen. Perhaps it would be better to replace it with a graphic that depicts the typical diagonal bands of intense snowfall associated with the lake effect. --A user

I agree, the graphics shows a radar image depicting a squall line passing through with multicellular clustered bands of snow which look like more of a synoptic phenomenon. Steep height falls are often found behind a cold front with an intensifying cyclone, and residual warm air near the surface can be mixed upwards to generate synoptic snow squalls, so the animation is not depicting lake effect snow at all but rather another similar phenomenon. The more traditional "classic" linear banded snow squall are far more representative of lake effect snow and much easier to visualize and understand. The animation at present is also very choppy and hard for most people with no weather related background to follow. Theonlysilentbob 06:53, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
I fixed the graphic, added in a new loop, this image also shows the historic lake effect storm which crippled Buffalo, October 12 - 13 2006. I also linked it into the Lake Effect Storm Aphid article. Theonlysilentbob 03:12, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Western Edge of Lake Erie Snow Belt

Lake effect snow: Hey, ya reverted me edit. I grew up in Ashtabula County, Ohio in the NE corner of OH and I assure you that we get a inordinate amount of snow. No one considers it a suburb of Cleveland--an hour+ east of Cleveland. Mentor, maybe, not 'bula. Cheers. --Thadk 18:50, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Mentor, Kirtland, Painesville, Eastlake, and places like that were what I meant. Ashtabula is also in the snow belt, but isn't the western edge of it. I used to live in Lake County, and had friends who lived in Euclid, and when the lake effect snow would come ashore, there would be a profound difference in the snowfall level across a sharp edge measured in a few blocks. One side would get two or three inches; the other would get the full dumping that the snow belt gets. Susan Davis 18:54, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lake effect redirect

Hi everyone, I suggest we should break the lake effect snow topic away from the lake effect redirect.

The whole issue is because the term “lake effect” simply refers to any atmospheric phenomenon which is a result of a lake. For example, the oasis effect is a lake effect phenomenon which occurs in the summer. There may also be lake induced thunderstorms which are September/October events and of course, lake effect rain which while very similar to snow is still not snow.

Just my 2 cents.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Lake_effect"

[edit] Snow Squall Redirect

The term snow squall also redirects to this lake effect snow topic, I suggest this be changed since many snow squalls do occur throughout the world in winter weather environments from mesoscale forcing along trofs or waves and the term itself is highly generic referring to blinding snows. Thus while lake effect snow is a form of a snow squall there are many different types of snow squalls which are not just lake effect in nature such as the squalls which disrupted Dallas Texas in March of 2004.

Then do so. Go to the snow squall article, remove the redirect, and create an article that differentiates between Lake Effect and snow squalls that occur due to significant height falls outside of lake effect areas. As long as you include Lake effect in a See Also section, all should be well. Thegreatdr 19:56, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Contents

this part is messed up. (look at it) would someone who knows what they are doing fix it?

Do you mean, the table of contents? That's automatically generated, we can't do anything about it (other than maybe hide it). Or do you mean the actual content of the article, in which case you should be more specific. -- dcclark (talk) 21:34, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Maybe the comment refers to the text above the Contents? That text (which is messed up) is:

In order for lake effect rain or snow to form the temperature difference between the water temperature between the surface and 850 mb should be at least 13 °C.

The "What is lake effect snow?" link presumably has the original text from which the above is derived. I think it should be something like:

In order for lake effect rain or snow to form, the moving air needs to be cooler and less humid than the surface air. Specifically, the air temperature should be 15 to 25 °C cooler than the water, and the dew point at an altitude where the air pressure is 850 mb should be 13 °C lower than the dew point of the air at the surface.

[edit] Research on past revisions of "messed up" sentence

For several revs back in spring of 2006, the sentence read:
"In order for Lake Effect rain or Snow to form the temperature difference between the water and the air at 1500 meters above the surface must be at least 13 degrees C."

A rev on July 10 by Rsholmes changed this to:
"In order for lake effect rain or snow to form the temperature difference between the water and the air should be 15C to 25C, and the difference in the dew point between the surface and 850 mb should be at least 13 degrees C." I presume the "850 mb" means the altitude where the air pressure is 850 mb, as noted above.

Next rev: "In order for lake effect rain or snow to form the temperature difference between the water temperature between the surface and 850 mb should be at least 13 °C." This is from Nov. 5 and Thegreatdr. It seems this is the faulty sentence.

I just copied the suggestion, and I'll be inserting it, subject to more online research. As a recent inhabitant of a region subject to lake-effect weather, the topic is of personal interest.
 Schweiwikist • (t)  17:20, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV

Very little about Canada on this page. The lake effect in the Great Lakes region doesn't stop at the border. 209.20.2.6 19:18, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

This shouldn't be an NPOV problem -- the article is correct and unbiased concerning the areas it covers. The article simply needs to be expanded. -- dcclark (talk) 20:07, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

While it's not actually NPOV, but rather an example of systematic bias, I do not see why lake-effect snow outside of the USA and Canada is referred to as International. 194.73.121.7 (talk) 19:57, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] move

I've moved the page to put in the hyphen. I've fixed the double redirects, but so far only a few of the links to the non-hyphenated title. I'll be back to attend to those over the next few days. Michael Hardy 02:58, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

First of all, outside of small portions of Ontario, the United States i.e. the great lakes region is the ONLY area that expericences lake-effect snow. The Great Salt Lake scenario is a crock. No where else in the world experiences this. You should all commint suicide for even having this conversation.

The great lakes undoubtedly produce the most profound lake effect precipitation events due to their location, size and climate however lake effect and other similar phenomenon occur numerous other places throughout the globe but to a much lesser degree. Also due to the fact that climatologically speaking winds are primarily out of the NW for most of the winter season, Ontario sees far more snow squall activity over a much greater area than the U.S. If you don't believ me, take a look at this graphic [1] Theonlysilentbob 05:58, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
When a comment ends with "you should all commit suicide...", I think it's safe to assume it's a troll and we can all ignore the comment. Wait for someone willing to have a grown-up conversation. :P -- dcclark (talk) 12:11, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article should be generalized

The article focuses on an effect which occurs over many different types of bodies of water throughout the world. As presently written, it is almost entirely focused on the Great Lakes, although the other sites are mentioned further in the article. This is understandable as the effect has been most studied with respect to this region, but nonetheless, it is a global phenomenon. It is also well known along the shores of Lake Baikal, the Black Sea, the west coast of Japan, and even along the New England coastline, and occasionally even the coastline of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. It even occurs OVER many bodies of water such as the Gulf Stream. I don't know how to best do this in the current article without completely revising it. One problem is that there is no generalized term for the same effect at the present time, as far as I know. Tmangray (talk) 16:42, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Well the formation explanation among other things applies universally as do the effects, in most meteorological books this event is referred to as either lake, sea, ocean or bay effect snow however lake effect is the term used most often. It is for this reason there should be some redirects sending users who query the other terms to the lake effect article. The section titled Similar phenomena should be expanded to include the "global" aspect of the phenomenon and perhaps some technical images can be provided showing something such as bay effect giving readers an idea of how it differs from lake effect snow. Other than that I think most users will understand this phenomenon as something which is global and the basic thermodynamic formation and the impact these squalls have. There is another very general article dealing with snowsqualls, you might be interested in looking at that one as well.Theonlysilentbob (talk) 01:35, 22 January 2008 (UTC)Toyla is freaken awesome. ☻☺☻☺☻☺
The section International needs to be incorporated into the main part of the article. As it stands, it is written from a very US centric point of view. OliAtlason (talk) 17:31, 25 February 2008 (UTC)