The Weather Notebook: The Lake Effect

The Lake Effect
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Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow from the Mount Washington Observatory and this is The Weather Notebook. Today, commentator Chuck Kruger remembers lake effect snows turning his New York home into a childhood playground.

Photo: Sault Ste. Marie, MI Evening News

"My childhood winters centered around our Auburn home, which sat smack across the blustery top of a steep dead-end street two hundred crow-flyin' miles northwest of New York City. Our house faced straight down the best sledding hill in the heart of the peaceful Finger Lakes. Well, peaceful except in winter. The roar of giant snowplows filled the pre-dawn countryside for two to three months a year.

Even when we had no blizzard, six foot drifts often formed overnight and closed certain exposed roads simply because of "the lake effect": winds swept up the snow lying on the ice covering the open expanse of hundreds of square miles of glacially dug lakes, and then dumped the white stuff wherever it would grip.

Auburn was one of those "gripping" places. Especially around our house. All Saturday and Sunday afternoons, and late afternoons on school days, there'd be as many as thirty kids sledding from in front of our place. Starting early December, and lasting into February, this cul-de-sac became our primary playground.

On a school day alone, we might get in a dozen runs before six-o'clock suppers. And around five o'clock, when intensifying flakes eddied in spheres of riffling silver light beneath each street lamp, and when the snow refused to crunch under our boots because of the cold, then we happily knew winter to be in earnest."

Chuck Kruger now avoids lake effect snows by living on an island off of the southern coast of Ireland. Funding for The Weather Notebook comes from Subaru and the National Science Foundation.