Title: Lake Effect Storms
1Lake Effect Storms
2Cold Air Moving Over Water Surface Steam Fog
- Cold air off continent moves over relatively warm
water surface - Fluxes of heat and moisture from water into air
(bulk formulae)
3(No Transcript)
4Lidar Observation of Steam Fog
5Lidar Observation of Steam Fog
6Lidar Observation of Steam Fog
7Lake Effect Storm Types
- Wind/Shear Parallel Bands
- Shore Parallel Bands
- Shore based
- Midlake
- Mesoscale Vortex
8Lake Superior Lake Effect
9Shore Parallel Bands
- Land breeze mesoscale circulation
- Deeper than wind parallel bands ( up to 4 km AGL)
- Very intense precipitation over a small area
- May be short lived or last several days
10Lake Ontario Lake Effects
11Lake Erie Shore Parallel BandDecember 24, 2001
Buffalo
12Lake Erie Shore Parallel BandDecember 24, 2001
Buffalo
13Lake Michigan Shore Parallel Band
14Lake Michigan Shore Parallel Band
15Lake Michigan Shore Parallel Band
16Lake Michigan Shore Parallel Band
17Lake Michigan Shore Parallel Band
18Shore Parallel Bands
- Wind blows roughly parallel to major axis of lake
- Air warms from heat flux from water creating a
strong land-water air temperature contrast - Land Breeze is created forcing a land breeze
front and meso-beta scale convergence - Meso-beta scale lifting of air to as high as 4
km AGL (compared to 1 km AGL for wind parallel
bands) along land breeze front (s) - Land breeze fronts usually combine into single
convergence line - Parallel to shoreline of lake
- Pushed to downwind shoreline when winds are not
completely parallel to shoreline - Down center of lake when winds are exactly
parallel to shoreline of lake
19Shore Parallel Bands
- Most intense snows of all the different
lake-effect snow types, because - Concentrates all of the absorbed moisture and
heat along a single narrow band - Mesoscale lifting deepens the system to several
kilometers allowing precipitation processes to be
more efficient - Colder than 20 C
- Deeper layer Bergeron Findeisen Process
- Bands extend off shore and drop massive amounts
of snow over small region - Buffalo, NY (Lake Erie, WSW wind)
- Gary, Indiana (Lake Michigan, Northerly wind)
-
20Wind or Shear Parallel Bands
- Rayleigh Benard Instability
- Relatively shallow, i.e. depth of Boundary Layer
- So shallow, often can not form a viable
precipitation process - Long periods of light snow
21Lake Michigan Wind/Shear Parallel Band
2210 and 13 January, 1998
23UW Volume Imaging Lidarat Lake-ICE
24Characteristics of Wind Parallel vs. Shore
Parallel Bands
25Growth of Planetary Boundary LayerAcross Lake
26 Visible Satellite Loop
- Cloud rolls over water
- Spectacular Cloud streets over land
- Effect of lake shoreline
- Gravity waves perpendicular to flow
1704 UTC - 1748UTC
27Detailed Study of Shore Parallel Bands
28Sounding and Hodograph of Winds Incident on
Western Shore
29Rayleigh Numbers
30(No Transcript)
31Origins of Bands
32Type B Waves
33Wave Duct Leading to TypeB Bands
34Shore Parallel Bands
- Most intense snows of all the different
lake-effect snow types, because - Concentrates all of the absorbed moisture and
heat along a single narrow band - Mesoscale lifting deepens the system to several
kilometers allowing precipitation processes to be
more efficient - Colder than 20 C
- Deeper layer Bergeron Findeisen Process
- Bands extend off shore and drop massive amounts
of snow over small region - Buffalo, NY (Lake Erie, WSW wind)
- Gary, Indiana (Lake Michigan, Northerly wind)
-
35Predicting Wind Parallel Lake Effect Storms
- Lake temperature minus 850 mb temperature gt13C
- Wind fetch gt100 km
- Wind speed moderate to high, i.e. gt10 m/s
36Predicting Shore Parallel Lake Effect Storms
- Wind nearly parallel to long axis of lake
- Lake temperature minus 850 mb temperature gt13C
(can occur with less temperature contrast) - Wind speed light to high, i.e. gt 5 m/s