Great Lakes Lake effect in full force

KMSP, Minneapolis - The arctic blast that Minnesota endured this weekend stirred up a little more trouble downstream. The brutally cold air passed over the relatively warm waters of the Great Lakes and as a result, many communities downwind got blasted by lake effect snow. Take a look at the radar shot from this past Sunday and you can clearly see the bright white snow bands on the eastern edge of the Great Lakes. Many locations received well over a foot of snow in just a day.

THE LAKE EFFECT SNOW MACHINE

When the waters of the the Great Lakes are not frozen over enough, then at thirty something degree moisture can be picked up by some extremely cold arctic air and dumped onshore as some heavy snow.

The map below shows the usual dumping grounds for this anomaly of Mother Nature to be the eastern shores of the Great Lakes and such cities as Cleveland, OH and Buffalo, NY.