Massive amounts of snow continues to be dumped on New York State by Sean Batty
The county of Oswego, in upstate New York, continues to be buried under phenomenal amounts of snow. The hardest hit towns and villages of the county are the ones which lie on the banks of Lake Ontario. The reason for this is because the snow has been caused by a phenomenon called ‘Lake Effect Snow’.
Lake effect snow is when cold air travels across relatively warm waters of a lake and collects moisture. This can create massive clouds known as Cumulonimbus, which may bring copious amounts of snow if the temperature difference between the air and the water of the lake is big enough. This has happened in New York state with frigid air sweeping out of central Canada at around -25C at times. This air then travels over Lake Ontario’s waters, with a temperature of around 6C, which is a large temperature difference.
Scenes in the county are of people trying to salvage their cars, which are completely buried under the snow as well as desperately trying to remove metres of snow from their roofs before the weight gets too much and collapses.
The residents of Redfield, a town near Lake Ontario are used to getting vast amounts of snowfall in the winter, but the total from the last 9 days snowfall has reportedly come to more than 11 feet (3.3 metres). To take an official measurement The National Weather Service is sending a team of meteorologists to the area.
Once officially measured, Redfield’s total of 136 inches (345cm), could break the state’s previous record for the most amount of snow to fall in a week. The previous record is held by nearby Montague where 10 feet, 7 inches (318cm) fell over seven days, ending January 1st 2002.
A little further south the town of Parish has got around 115 inches (292cm) of lying snow.
In a typical year the region gets around 300 inches (762cm) of snow, this being the snowiest region east of the Rocky Mountains. The record for the most amount of snow to fall in a year was 466.9 inches (11.9cm) set at Hooker on the Oswego/ Jefferson boundary.
The lake effect snow will ease off but a large area of low pressure is set to move up the eastern seaboard this week and will bring more snow to the area through the week.
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