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Lake Ontario Land Breeze Event
(January 28, 2005)
| What a fantastic example of a land breeze induced snow band! This band formed during the night over Lake Ontario under calm prevailing wind conditions. With a lake temperature in the low 30s and adjacent land temperatures dropping well below the freezing mark, a local land breeze developed that was directed from the cold shorelines toward the center of the lake. The band of clouds formed out over the center of the lake, paralleling the shoreline nicely. As the night progressed, several small vortices developed along the band, in fact, I describe these as a train of vortices. The most pronounced vortex is evident over the eastern third of the lake. If you click on the 1st link below, you can actually watch a loop of these images in time and see this vortex spinning. In addition, we can see a nice strip of ice cover off the south shore of the lake and more ice cover along the north shore. The second link shows the entire eastern Great Lakes ice cover. Lake Erie had no lake effect snow on this day. Do you know why? Finally, you will get blown away by the image in the third link. It's a close-up of eastern Lake Erie and western Lake Ontario taken from a polar orbiter satellite. |
