Shift to the White

“When the Gales of November come early” . . . is a line from the Gordon Lightfoot song about the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgI8bta-7aw

These days, winds sweeping out of Northwest Canada meet the still-warm autumn waters of the Great Lakes. What starts as a cold dry breeze can accelerate into a “Hurricane Westwind” as the latent energy of warm water vapour surges from the waves like steam from a boiling pot of water - as shown in this satellite photo of the Great Lakes.


http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap041130.html

In addition to occasionally sinking ships, the winds carry heat inland – where vapour condenses and then freezes into snow - releasing Gigajoules of energy and moderating the Southern Ontario climate - as explained at the link below:
http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap10/lake_effect_snow.html

A consequence of all this moderation can be extreme snowfall – and lots of it. In a small Ontario town many inches of snow can fall every hour.



The snow brings the Christmas decorations to life.


And, on a morning walk – a winter wonderland is revealed.


The "Lake Effect" is a journalistic challenge - leading to invention of the term “Streamers” of snow-laden wind – dropping heavy snow along one path – but leaving bare land a few kilometres to either side.



Newscasters may even film the traditional residential "clearing of the driveway" for their shows.




Further reading . . . .at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake-effect_snow