This story was originally published on The Conversation and appears here under a Creative Commons license. It’s hard for most people to imagine six feet of snow in one storm, like the Buffalo area saw over the weekend, but such extreme snowfall events occasionally happen along the eastern edges of the Great Lakes. The phenomenon is called “lake-effect snow,” and the lakes play a crucial role. It starts with cold, dry air from Canada. As the bitter cold air sweeps across the relatively warmer Great Lakes, it sucks up more…
