• Dlayknee@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Floridian here (I know, I know) - this is completely foreign to me. What am I looking at? Is that just a huge down burst of… snow?

    • Senshi@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Cold air from the north moves over a large body of water which is (relatively) warmer and thus takes up warmth and humidity.

      It then hits the cold shore, causing air temperatures to drop again as well. Colder air can carry less humidity, so it nearly instantly forms into heavy fog and clouds.

      As air can move more swiftly over water than over land, it also gets “compressed” slightly upon hitting the shore, which can lead to the just-formed clouds to thicken up enough to cause heavy snowfall.

      EDIT: what you see on this photo is the superhumid air condensing into fog and clouds.

      • Dlayknee@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Got it, so it’s not necessarily a wall of only snow - but it probably has a lot of it. That looks like it would be pretty intimidating to set out of your window. Dang nature, you crazy!

    • ArtieShaw@fedia.io
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      3 days ago

      Pretty much. Buffalo routinely gets hosed by blizzard conditions that don’t usually affect the cities on the northern side of the same lake (Toronto, Mississauga, etc). It’s feature of being on the south side of one of the Great Lakes.

      I remember hearing about one year where Buffalo got 6 feet overnight, or some other complete bullshit.

        • ubergeek@lemmy.today
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          3 days ago

          This picture isn’t a blizzard. Just a typical lake effect storm.

          Looks a lot like Aphid, aka Storm Knife we got 10 or so years ago.

      • archonet
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        3 days ago

        2017, in Erie, we got 5 feet of snow in a 24 hour period over Christmas. Not sure what buffalo got but I imagine they had quite a bit themselves, as well.

      • synae[he/him]@lemmy.sdf.org
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        3 days ago

        I remember a storm when we were living in Rochester, we expected 6 feet over couple/few days… Buffalo was expecting 9

        (i don’t recall the reports after, what we/they actually got, it was the forecast that stuck in my memory)