12/28/2001 Archived Entry "Weather - Cold, but no Snow in Toledo. Six feet of Snow in Buffalo"

(from my greymatter-powered hypermart-hosted blog)

For the nearly the past week the weather has finally returned to more normal temperatures. The days of November and December where temps were in the 50's and 60's are long gone for now. It's been an amazingly warm, snow-free fall and early winter.

Temperatures over the past five days have remained below freezing. We only have a trace of snow on the ground in the Toledo area. Some areas in the snowbelt of Michigan have two feet or more of snow, which has fallen this week.

By far the big weather story is in Buffalo and the surrounding area. Even though the morning lows have been 10 to 15 above and high temps in the 20's, the winds all week have been out of the west-southwest. Because of the unusually warm fall, Lake Erie is much warmer than normal.

This is the first cold blast of the season and the winds have been brisk from the w-sw for several days and this has all resulted in a record snowfall for Buffalo.

This past November was the first time on record that it did not snow in Buffalo. They are paying for it now. The lake effect snow machine started Christmas Eve (Monday night) and it's still snowing.

Some spots around Buffalo have received six feet of snow as of this morning. Snow was falling at the rate of three inches an hour last night.

This week's cold snap will rapidly drop the temperature of Lake Erie, but not before significant snows have fallen. The forecast is for the winds to shift form the w-sw to the north-northwest, which will turn of the snow for Buffalo, but it's expected to drop two feet of snow in northeast Ohio and northwest Pennsylvania.

If the temps continue to remain below freezing next week, the lake effect snow machine will be reduced. Normally the winds don't remain blowing at a brisk pace from the same direction for this many days. Add to this the cold air and very warm Lake Erie and Buffalo ends up with a freak of nature event.

#toledo - #weather